As anyone who has ever read anything I’ve ever written can tell you, I’m a big nerd. I own boxes full of comic books, I can (and do) watch most of my favorite cartoons on DVD whenever I want, and I worship Kevin Smith as a minor deity. His movies changed the way me and my friends thought about conversation. After my first girlfriend saw “Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back,” she realized that almost everything funny I had ever said to her was stolen from a Kevin Smith movie. (Thank God I never showed her “Caddyshack”).
To get to the point, most people, myself and Smith included, will agree that his movies are mostly one long joke about farts, dicks and/or being gay that never develop much beyond a very simple premise and even simpler characters. “Chasing Amy” flirts with the concept of actual characters who do more than spout monologues towards each other, but it has pacing issues in the last act that derail the train a bit.
Don’t get me wrong, I loves me some hot, unadulterated Kevin Smith action; I just also understand all the knocks against him. But Kevin Smith has produced one thing in his life that I believe is actually important in a semi-artistic/personal way that is, in most respects, unknockable. For several months on his blog “My Boring Ass Life” Kevin recounted his friendship with Jason Mewes, who plays Jay in the recurring duo Jay and Silent Bob, and told the story of Jason’s addiction to drugs. It is touching and candid and carries more actual emotion than all of his Smith’s movies combined. It has been reprinted in Smith’s new book, cleverly titled “My Boring Ass Life”, (that guy is just chock full of fresh ideas) but I also found it here.