Binge in the time of Corona - Kevin Smithology I

I have started watching smith with Dogma and over 20 years of fandom I’ve learned one thing, Kevin Smith makes good Kevin Smith movies. In his wheelhouse, he is unparalleled, outside of it he stumbles and it shows. I have to give him credit for continuously attempting to branch out of his zone of comfort, and I have to warn the public against following him there when it's bad. Smith has made 8 good Kevin Smith movies, the essential View Askewniverse experience, which will bring some much-needed levity and calm to the quarantined, and one amazing horror thriller that will definitely not.

Clerks (1994)

The Genesis of Smith, a.k.a “The Clerk Guy”, is a retelling of the Divine Comedy with a minimum wage job as a modern hell. Dante and Virgil are replaced by Dante Hick and Randel Graves making their way through a day as Clerks, abusing customers, dealing with interpersonal minutia and tackling the big questions of existence. Is it gay to fellate yourself? Were the contractors on the 2nd Death Star innocent victims of the rebel alliance? What is forbidden, what is allowed, what is excusable when life, death, and work collide? This $28,000 cinematic calling card was written with a framed napkin on the desk, reading “Kevin Smith will never be a writer” (gift from an ex-girlfriend’s mother), and it shows. This is the work of a man who had to make his voice heard, even if all he had to say was “I like dick and Star Wars!” because nobody else was saying it and he needed to see people like him on the screen. The jokes are tight, the pacing is great, moving you through a rich world of unique cool pop culture monologues and interpersonal drama, from not taking a good woman for granted, to the salary of a jizz mopper. It all leads to the collapse of Dante’s sanctuary of ignorance, the understanding that his imprisonment in a minimum wage life, chasing a highschool crush, is one of his makings. It was not a curse from the gods, he is not fortune’s fool, he is just a guy refusing to take responsibility or his choices, like many in the audience. And Smith simply asks “No that you know, what’s next?”

Mallrats (1995)

The Ironman 2 to Clerks Ironman 1. This was a rushed-out sequel and it shows. The movie is solid, enjoyable and quotable, but definitely a let-down after Clerks. Two early twenty men get dumped by their girlfriends and run around a mall having teenage sex-comedy hijinks. I have experienced Mallrats many times, it’s good background movies while working, but I won’t watch it with my full attention, as it is mostly surface. Funny and creative surface, but good glazing is only a small part of a good cake. The movie also losses about a billion points for making the explorer of female sexuality 15 for the sake of a plot point. The challenge of Dante dealing with the post-sexual revolution behavior of his current and previous girlfriends is wasted on a 15-year-old girl having sex with a 25-year-old man, so he can go to jail for statutory rape. It does not challenge in the slightest, awkward and cringy to watch, and altogether brings down an otherwise solid B movie dissecting Superman sex life and the need for a kryptonite condom.

P.S. Ben Affleck character is referred to in the movie as Buttman, he goes to jail and gets raped. Zack Snyder once said, "Okay, no, Batman's cool." .... "But he doesn't, like, get raped in prison. That could happen in my movie.”, not knowing that Kevin Smith already beat him to the punch in Mallrats with the future Snyder Batman, Ben Affleck.

Chasing Amy (1997)

I love Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks, but they have never and will never do a RomCom that talks about fisting, and that’s the main drive of Kevin Smith’s work. He makes movies about people like him that other film-makers will not do. Boy meets girl, the girl is gay, she falls for him and comes out as a bisexual to her lesbian friends, and the boy can’t handle her sexual history. Chasing Amy is a one of a kind display of the war between the heterosexual tribe and the homosexual tribe against each other, bi-sexuality and love itself. The movie will touch you in unique ways like only Smith can, best to watch with your significant other under a blanket. P.S. don’t drink anything during the scene comparing scars gained while giving Cunnilingus, you will spray the TV.