Ahoy, squirts! Quint here with the continuation of my San Diego Comic-Con 2005 coverage. Now that the Con is over and I have half a second to breath (although that's not completely true as I'm currently sitting in a shitty ass Comfort Inn near LAX waiting to visit the set of the greatest movie in the world tomorrow) it's time for me to play catch-up.
There were a few panels that I didn't cover on my first time around due to just plain running out of time to cover the panels. There was a crazy amount of coolness this year and one of the best parts of the Con was Kevin Smith's hour to just bullshit with his fans and answer questions.
If you've seen his AN EVENING WITH KEVIN SMITH DVD then you know the kind of shit he does when he's put onstage in front of an audience of his fans. He only had an hour, but he had the audience rolling... I can't do justice to his timing and gags, but I will relate one of the stand-out moments... it involved a geek coming up and asking a question... somehow that got to Smith telling the geek that he had fucked his mother.
The geek said, "My mother's dead..." and Smith gave this look:
After the smallest pause, Smith shot back, "How do you think she died? I fucked her to death!"
The geek took it in stride... actually laughed. This is him:
But that's classic Kevin Smith. Lots of references to JERSEY GIRL bombing and his tardiness on the Spidey/Black Cat series. There was also a moment where he talked about THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST where he said that it's not his thing to watch Jesus get beat-up for 2 hours.
A crazy Christian from the audience started shouting out, 'HE DIED FOR YOUR SINS!" This wasn't a geek playing a role. You can tell the sound of that... usually a hollow, nervous kind of sarcasm... This was a true blue believer. He said it over and over again, loudly, until Smith responded. He was like, "What? What did he say?" Scary Christian screamer: "HE DIED FOR YOUR SINS!" Smith, "He died for my sins? I know that. I just don't want to see it. I love Jesus, I don't want to see him get beat up for two hours. Matter of fact, I love Jesus more than you, Mother Fucker!"
He then went on to describe how he would have done THE PASSION. He said he would have started with the crucifixion instead of leading up to it the whole movie... But as Jesus was on the cross, two ninjas would sweep in and kill all the centurians around and then one of them would have climbed up onto Jesus' cross with a hammer. While pulling out the nails Jesus would be saying, "But I'm supposed to die..." and the Ninja responds by throwing him over his shoulder and, descending the cross, would say "Not on my watch!"
The two ninjas would, of course, turn out to be Jay and Silent Bob.
That's Kevin Smith.
TIDBITS:
-Work on the CLERKS ANIMATED MOVIE has NOT begun and won't until next year, at the earliest.
-THE PASSION OF THE CLERKS will start shooting next month. He wanted to keep a lot of it under wraps, so he didn't give out much plot detail further than what's out there already.
-Smith is indeed directing the feature version of DEGRASSI JUNIOR HIGH next year. Smith is a longtime fan of the show.
That's about what I can remember from Smith's part of the panel that held any news interest.
Smith introduced friend Richard Kelly onstage and Kelly appeared with just about enough time to show a short storyboard sequence from SOUTHLAND TALES. The movie's still a mystery to damn near everybody, but what he showed was fucked up and funny.
CLIP:
It looked like it was from a commercial of some sort... like a ROBOCOP type of commercial, you know? Like, it'll play in the movie as a bit of parody on the commercials we get in the real world. These were all shown as storyboards, not animatics. They weren't moving, just went from board to board.
We see two cars in a suburban setting. I believe they were parked in driveways across from each other. Both cars get hit by lightning, one at a time. They start moving, with little lightning ripples still going over them... kinda DeLorean BACK TO THE FUTURE style. There are close ups of one of the car's exhaust pipe starting to grow... it stretches and elongates into a kind of snake looking thing, still attached to the auto.
There's another close up of the other car's exhaust pipe. It's transforming, too, the exhaust opening growing bigger with more ripples... into an almost oval shape. It was about here that I started going, "Heh, that's funny. The way the storyboard artist drew that it kinda like a vagina." Then we get another storyboard that shows that the exhaust opening has unmistakably totally transformed into a vagina. Labia, clitoris... it was all there. If I remember correctly, this storyboard had a an arrow on the bottom indicating a push in by the camera.
Before the audience could really let that image sink in, the board changes to a wide shot of the car with the huge, erect exhaust pipe mounted on top of the female car, like horny rhinos on the Discovery Channel. Then the brand name of the car comes up.
The audience erupted. Isn't that just a little fucked and funny? Still don't know much about this movie, but damn it if I don't anticipate it just a little bit more than I did before I went to this panel.
Oh, and Kevin Smith's character in SOUTHLAND TALES is an Iraqi War Vet by the name of Simon Theory who lost his legs and is in a wheelchair for the whole movie.
There it is. Because you demanded it. Sorry for the delay in getting it posted. Keep an eye out for the rest of my coverage and my one on one interviews with famous hottie actresses! 'Til then, this is Quint bidding you all a fond farewell and adieu.
-Quint
