Sam Cheney Journal Contributor
Saturday evening, fan boys and girls, young and old, lined up around the block waiting to see their idol live before their eyes at the Wilbur Theatre. Kevin Smith, a well-known screenwriter and director of famed films Clerks, Clerks II, Mallrats and Chasing Amy, visited the theatre with one purpose: to talk. “An Evening With Kevin Smith” accomplishes this.
Aside from the die-hard fans, who else would want to go see that? Granted there are many fans who do more than get his autograph, one doesn’t have to be that way to enjoy his lecture. Smith is like the crazy uncle who always told you inappropriate stories when your parents weren’t around – yeah, it’s that kind of humor.
Smith started out the evening stepping onto the stage in a long trench coat. He stood straight in front of the audience and opened his coat, revealing a Bruins jersey. He has been called a “poser” in the past for this, he revealed later on, but that night the audience didn’t seem to care. He started by encouraging attendees to ask him questions. He revealed his favorite lightsaber fight is in the Phantom Menace, and said the newest Batman movie was a “religious experience” and “almost comparable to the birth of my child.”
Unfortunately, Smith was mixing in self-deprecating comments throughout the discussion. At one point Smith was concerned that if someone saw him with his dachshund, Shecky, they would say “Hey that’s a fat man with a little dog.”
As the night progressed with many typical fan questions about Star Trek and Aqua Man, the audience got a glimpse into the more sweet and serious Smith. Smith smiled and talked about how his brother had been married to the same man for 20 years and at the wedding there were nothing but bright spirits. Again, marriage became a soft spot for the somewhat vulgar director when a woman who was getting married in a week asked for a hug. He gladly obliged. Although Smith wasn’t so kind to his own marriage, revealing an embarrassing story about Jennifer Schawlbach to the audience, too crude for this publication, he meant no harm by it.
If you are into off-color humor and combination super hero-sex jokes, then you will be into this. Not just a director/writer with podcasts all over the Internet, with a super Twitter following and his show Comic Book Men, Kevin Smith knows how to be funny and entertaining, yet always genuine.
