My Boring-Ass Life (Revised Edition): The Uncomfortably Candid Diary of Kevin Smith (27 page)

Afterwards, we all come back to the hotel and play poker ‘til one in the morning. We say goodbye to Aaron and Stacie (who’re leaving in the morning) and make plans to hook up with Jackman and Mewes in the a.m. Then, Jen and I go to sleep to some
NewsRadio
.

Sunday 29 May 2005 @ 10:16 a.m.

Jen and I wake up, putter, chit-chat, then, realizing we have the apartment to ourselves, we settle into some awesome pre-noon nookie.

Afterwards, we call Harley to see if she wants to grab breakfast. She tells us that she, Nan and Pop were about to head to breakfast downstairs, so we join
them for some buffet.

Following brunch, the five of us head over to the food store to stock up for the week. We come back to the hotel, unpack the groceries, and get involved in some dollar-a-card family Bingo. Jay comes up to the room and joins us for a round as well. When Jimmy J. arrives, we set aside Bingo and play some poker instead, while Harley watches
The Incredibles
.

A few hours later, while we’re still knee-deep in the game, Quentin returns my call from the other day, and we wind up talking for over an hour about his flicks, some of my flicks, a bunch of other flicks, Michael Parkes, how insanely famous a movie star Don Adams would be if
Get Smart
had been a ratings hit in the current TV climate, when directors should quit the game,
The Man from U.N.C.L.E.
,
Inglorious Bastards
and
Fletch Won
. When you can bullshit with one of your heroes, life is good.

I emerge from the phone call to find that Mewes and Byron have gone to the gym, Gail’s resting in her room, and Jackman went down to his room to take a nap. Harley and I watch
First Daughter
while I swap the contents of my backpack into my new bag and sign the rest of the tip-in sheets for
Silent Bob Speaks
. Mewes joins us at one point to see if I’m up for some casino tonight. I tell him I will be up for it around eight, once I take a shower and such.

Harley goes to dinner with Byron and Gail, and Jen and I kick back with some
X-Files
. Then, I take a shower, kiss Jen and the returning Harley g’night, and head out with Jim and Mewes. We opt against the Holiday Inn casino and head out to the big, new River Rock casino near the airport.

We put our names on the poker list then bomb around the casino, playing blackjack for a bit. The beeper we were given goes off, and we head back to the poker room, where we manage to get on a $1/$2 No Limit table together. I kick some major ass, tripling up the hundred I sit down with (making up for my blackjack losses), and Mewes takes a bit of cash away as well.

We head home, chatting about
Degrassi
and tomorrow’s schedule, with Jim and Mewes trying to figure out if they’re gonna stick around another day to come with me to the set.

I climb into bed beside the half-awake Schwalbach, kiss her g’night, and fall asleep to some
NewsRadio
.

Monday 30 May 2005 @ 2:47 p.m.

I wake up, shower, and call down to Jim to tell him I’m heading downstairs. He says he’ll collect Mewes and meet me down there.

Mewes, Jim and I follow Driver Dave over to Coquitlam for today’s shoot. We get there a few minutes late, but I figure it’s cool, as they’re already shooting something else, and we can’t even block yet. Lori leads Mewes and Jim to my trailer, and I grab my iPod and head to the vanities, where Forest slaps on my hair.

The transpo van brings me, Mewes and Jim to set, for the blocking rehearsal. Jenno, Dave and Susannah gather around me to let me know they’ve gotten me a gift and present me with a small, wrapped package. I open it to find an alarm clock. The message is clear: stop being late.

Susannah pulls me aside to tell me, with a smile, that there are two Ns in her name — a subtle reminder that even the director can read
My Boring-Ass Life
. I ask if she’s bugged by anything I’ve written, and point out the glowing things I’ve penned about her, before we start chatting about the scenes she’s cut together already.

I head back to base camp with Jim and Jay and they chill at the trailer while Margaret finishes my makeup. I get into my costume, then the three of us hang out outside the trailer, catching a smoke. Mewes reveals that he finds Susannah hot, “in a studious way”. He also gives thumbs-up to Jenno, who I politely remind him is Chris Moore’s ol’ lady.

We head up to the set and Sam and I do the scene in three different set-ups. Take after take I bite into a smoker off a grill, delivering most of my lines through a full mouth. By the end of the scene, I’m feeling pretty far from hungry. The gate’s checked, and I’m done for the day.

I get back to the trailer and get into my real clothes. I head back to the vanities and get my makeup taken off, my hair removed, and the day-closing mini-facial and a hair washing. As Jim, Jay and I are getting in the car to go, Tim pops by to say hi to Mewes.

On the ride home, we stop at McDonald’s for Mewes. We get back to the hotel, and Mewes lays down in his room while Jim and I go over
Degrassi
stuff for a few hours in the apartment. We head down to Jim’s room to conference call Linda and Stephen about said
Degrassi
stuff, then Jim gets ready to catch his red-eye back to Toronto. He comes up to say g’bye to Gail and Byron as well as Jen, then heads off.

Having put Quinnster to bed while I was downstairs with Jim, I crash with the increasingly ill Jen, who’s suffering from the same shit I was fighting last week. I check email while watching
Law & Order
for a while, then cuddle up to Jen and fall asleep.

Tuesday 31 May 2005 @ 2:48 p.m.

Wake up, shit, check email. Wind up IM-ing with my sister Virginia, who lives in Kobe, Japan.

So as not to be late for work today, I decide to skip the shower and just throw on a hat, figuring Forest will wash my hair when I get to set. Mewes calls to tell me his car’s waiting downstairs, and do I want to come get the fan he borrowed from us (Mewes always needs an oscillating fan to go to sleep with at night; he calls it his wooby). I tell him I’ll meet him on his floor.

I wind up taking the elevator trip down to the lobby with Mewes. We stand outside, having a smoke, chit-chatting. Then, we say g’bye, and he’s off.

I head upstairs, grab my bag, and go back downstairs where I follow the teamster driver to set in my rental.

At the set, Lori grabs me a breakfast burrito, while Forest, God bless her, washes my hair. She dries me up while I scarf the burrito then puts my fake hair in. We get the call for the blocking rehearsal, so Sam and I walk the forty feet from the circus (where all the trailers are parked) to the set (a stage, on which they’ve built a portion of a storage facility). We greet Garner and Susannah, then block and rehearse the scene. It’s a quick one-er, with me having the only line of dialogue, but Susannah and John still find a way to shoot it more interestingly than I would have thought to shoot it.

When we’re done, we head back to the vanities. Margaret does my makeup, and I chit-chat with Sam a bit before heading back to my trailer to get into my costume.

Lori knocks to tell me it’s time to go, so I head to set and shoot the scene. By the fifth or sixth take, Susannah’s got what she wants, so I’m wrapped for the day.

I talk to A.D. Dave about whether or not we’re shooting the Juliette Lewis scene tomorrow, as scheduled. Since the weather’s so pissy it might be called off, and the idea would be to shoot a cover set tomorrow (something indoors), and move the me and Juliette scene to Friday. This means the four-day weekend in LA I was gearing up for is shot. Dave tells me he’ll let me know if that’s the case by midday.

I talk to Tish about my wardrobe then run into Jenno. We hang by catering, bullshitting about stuff and the schedule for a bit, then I head to my trailer to get out of my costume, and to the vanities to get out of my hair and makeup. We go through an astrology book to see if any of us have the traits our signs are supposed to sport, and Jenno joins us to suggest I head home today and come back Thursday night for the Friday shoot. I tell her it’s cool and that I’ll probably just stay in Vancouver instead.

I drive home and find only the maid in the room. A quick call to Byron and Gail reveals Jen and Harley went shopping. Moments after I get off the phone, Jen and Quinnster return. We all hang for a bit, and I read a
Walter, the Farting Dog
book to Harley, after which Jen reads a
Junie B.
book.

An hour later, Harley heads out for tea with Nan and Pop, leaving Jen and I trying to figure out what our new schedule’s gonna be, based on the elimination of the four-day weekend in LA. We finally settle on Jen staying with me in Vancouver ‘til Sunday, then heading back to LA where I’ll meet her on Friday. I’ll head back to Van that Sunday, shoot all week, then head back to LA for Harley’s kindergarten graduation and week-early birthday party. Then, we all come back to Vancouver to stay for the remaining month of the shoot. That settled, we turn on some
Law & Order
and I give Jen a baby oil massage. We indulge in a little room service, and then Harley returns with Nan and Pop and the five of us play Disney Yahtzee,
SpongeBob
Uno, and Bingo for about two hours.

I head to London Drugs to grab some water and other essentials, then come home and kiss the kid g’night. I check email and the board while watching more
Law & Order
, ‘til we eventually go to sleep.

Wednesday 1 June 2005 @ 3:13 p.m.

I wake up around eight, shit, and check email in the living room. Harley bombs out of her room heading for ours when I stop her. She tells me Jen insisted she wake her as soon as she got up, so I let her go.

I call for the car, head downstairs, and load Byron and Gail’s and Harley’s luggage into the Hate Tank. While Gail and Byron check out, Jen and Harley go for Starbucks and I grab a toasted bagel with cream cheese from the nearby deli.

We drop Byron, Gail and Harley at the airport, loading ’em all up with hugs and kisses. Then, Jen and I head back to the city.

En route, we look for a McDonald’s with a drive-thru, but find none. So we instead stop at the McDonald’s on Broadway, where I grab Jen some hash browns and a Diet Coke, and an Egg McMuffin and an orange juice for myself. While waiting for the food, I sign a few autographs for folks in line. The clerk asks me what movie I’m in town doing, and I tell him
Catch & Release
. He then asks if there are props in the movie. I curb the instinct to stare at him dumbfounded for a long beat and instead affirm that there are, indeed, props in the movie. He then tells me his buddy works at a prop house. There seems to be no connector to his statement: it is a pronouncement set adrift on a sea of idle banter. Mercifully, the food comes, cutting our non-convo (or non-vo) short.

Jen and I get back to the hotel and get into our woobs. The hotel room empty, we indulge in some early-afternoon boning. Afterwards, we bomb out to the living room and watch some
Law & Order
while looking for somewhere to eat tonight. I comb through the restaurant guide provided by the production, but I’ve got calzone on the brain, so I jump online and Google ‘calzones Vancouver’. Google hits me back with a few options, one of which is a pizza and live jazz joint called Capone’s in Yaletown, located on Hamilton — the same street I used to go to classes every day before the Vancouver Film School moved to Hastings. I suggest it to Jen, who’s down with it. We shower, get dressed and head over to Yaletown.

We somehow find a metered spot (finding parking in Yaletown is akin to finding American smokes in Canada), and as I park, I get a call from
Degrassi
producer Stephen Stohn. He’s in town and staying at our hotel, so I tell him I’ll call him after dinner.

Jen and I order, eat and chit-chat for an hour and a half, while a live jazz trio plays non-intrusive beats in the background. After some coaching, the calzone turns out spot-on, and Jen’s way into her Portobello mushroom, so we both agree that Capone’s is an excellent find.

When we’re done, we drive around looking for an ice cream parlor. But they’re harder to find than parking spots in Yaletown, so we head back to the hotel instead.

When I get into the room, I call my Mom. Today marks the two-year anniversary of my Dad’s rather sudden death.

My father had always been in ill-health for as long as I’d known him. Like his parents and brothers and sisters, he was a life-long diabetic, which later in life had led to strokes, a heart attack, and the loss of a toe and most of his eyesight on one side. We’d almost lost him to a heart attack a few months prior, only to have him recover completely in what his doctors deemed an inexplicable turnaround. What none of us knew was that Dad was living on borrowed time, at that point. While he’d suddenly seemed more vital and in love with life than he had in years, his heart was slowing, counting down to a death I’d say was almost magical.

A month before, Mom had called to say she was thinking about coming to Philly for the
Wizard
World Comic Convention that I was scheduled to attend for another Q&A. Her idea was that since my sister (who was then living in Hong Kong) was also gonna be in Philly at the same time, she’d come up with Dad and Donald, and the whole family could be together for the first time in a year. My first instinct was to talk her out of coming up to Philly as I was planning a hit-and-run appearance at the Con: essentially, I’d Q&A and leave. Having her, Dad and Don come up from Florida meant I’d have to stick around longer than I’d intended, and I just wanted to get back home to LA to finish up the
Jersey Girl
cut. But Mom seemed committed to going and very into the idea of all of us being together, so I relented and said I’d stick around Philly for another day.

My parents got to town while I was doing a signing on the Con floor. Malcolm, who I’d been out of touch with for nearly a year after a drunken email fight (his, not mine), was in attendance at the Con to lend a hand at the booth, and I’d put him in charge of meeting my parents and brother and sister and getting them into the Q&A. They were running late, and the Con folks were eager to start my panel on time, but I kept holding out from going up on stage, as I wanted to greet the fam before starting the Q&A. Mom, Dad and Virginia finally pulled up in a cab a minute before I was to go on, and I helped Dad out of the car, while Malcolm secured a wheelchair. I gave ’em all hugs and kisses and told them Malcolm would get them in and seated, and I went backstage for my entrance.