On Thursday, February 2nd, master entertainer Kevin Smith (of Jay and Silent Bob fame) hosted a three-hour special event, broadcast into theaters all across the country. Smith is a unique and unconventional celebrity in that his indie films have all become cult classics, catapulting him to stardom. For those who know him, there are few filmmakers who can match his talent. For those who don’t know him, he’s just another wacky fat man.
Live from a theater in Toronto, this show featured the first one-and-a-half hours as his regular podcast, “Jay and Silent Bob Get Old.” As expected, Jason Mews (Jay) accompanied him on stage.
This segment was nothing more than a conversation between two old friends, about anything and everything under the sun; they never seemed to be working off any prompts, instead simply focusing on the discussion. They discussed pets, oral sex noises, first sexual encounters, wins, losses, hopes and dreams. There may also have been a rather long stint regarding tortoise gay sex.
The second portion of the show was the Q&A session, where Jason Mews was much less involved. They alternated between questions from the auditorium and questions from Twitter, read by Mews and answered by Smith.
Many of the in-house questions were accompanied by gifts such as glasses, flags, money, etc. The live guests typically had robust and dynamic questions, whereas the ones from Twitter tended to be much less engaging. This is presumably due to the fact that the live audience was not limited to 140 characters.
Perhaps my favorite part of the evening was when one of the live guests asked Kevin Smith which question he most commonly received. Kevin’s response was that there was no one question, but more to the point that he was asked strange questions people like Martin Scorsese would never get. I won’t spoil the surprise, but it had my theater rolling with laughter.
Kevin also spoke, in response to a query from Twitter, about “Hit Somebody,” his upcoming film about hockey (Smith’s second love). The most significant statement he made regarding this film was his claim that it would be his last.
The only real lackluster part of the event was the pre-show entertainment, which was an older Q&A session with just Kevin Smith in an auditorium. My lack of enjoyment from this portion was due to the profanity-censoring bleeps. The all-too-familiar tone was so frequent that it was more out of place and disturbing than any of the inevitable harsh language. It should also be noted that there was no censorship during the event itself, which was good. Had there been, viewers would likely have heard a single, three-hour-long bleep.
All in all, this was a very enjoyable event for any Kevin Smith fan, and it is highly recommended by this reviewer.
4 of 5 stars.
Edited by: Jeff Boehm
