Kevin Smith Riffs on Spoilers, His New Show for Movie Geeks
Interview at Wired.com
Kevin Smith likes to talk. He’ll riff for hours on pretty much anything — comics, farting, hockey, Bruce Willis, the general state of the internet. But mostly he likes to talk about movies. A lot. With people. And with his new series Spoilers, that’s pretty much all he has to do.
The show, which will premiere June 4 on Hulu, will showcase Smith and 50 die-hard movie fans right after they’ve seen a big blockbuster movie on opening night, creating a monster gab-fest full of opinions, fights and — because it’s a Smith endeavor — plenty of gags and a bit of Jason Mewes (the Jay to Smith’s Silent Bob).
“Who doesn’t have something to say in this day and age? Everybody wants a platform — social media is all about, ‘I have an opinion and here it is!’”
The Spoilers audience will consist of fans who sign up through a website, launching Monday, and request the movie they want to see. Filming will take place at Smith’s new SModCo Studios on the Universal Studios CityWalk in Hollywood, where the attendees will watch the movies.
Putting butts in seats is the least of Smith’s worries about the show. “It’s going be easy to fill those slots, but the trick, of course, is filling them with people who have something to say,” the Clerks director said in a phone interview with Wired. “But who doesn’t have something to say in this day and age? Everybody wants a platform — social media is all about, ‘I have an opinion and here it is!’”
Harder than finding an audience for the show and getting them talking, though, will be keeping the ever-verbose Smith and his similarly passionate fans from going on too long and keeping their language in the realm of what can be said on network television (the standard that Hulu shows follow). Zak Knutson, the Chop Shop production company co-founder who will be editing the show, already warned Smith to keep it brief.
“He was like, ‘Look motherfucker. This is not one of those shows you can do for three hours and expect me to cut down to half an hour and deliver it to Hulu in the schedule we’ve got,’” Smith said.
Wired got on the phone with Smith to get the spoilers on Spoilers, which will begin with a 10-episode season and go up each Monday on Hulu and Hulu Plus. In the process, naturally, we got much more than that. Read on to get the geek auteur’s thoughts on Star Wars pen pals, having sway on the internet, and his aspirations for sucking Bill Murray’s dick. (Metaphorically speaking, of course).
Kevin Smith: Thank you! That, to me, was such a big win because as much as I love watching those dudes — you gotta realize Bryan and Walter are two of my dearest friends in the world, and I’ve always thought they were hysterically funny — so to be able to fucking turn on not just TV but AMC and see those dudes on TV? For six times I kept telling myself, like, “If they only do it six times, count your blessings, don’t bitch. Even if you don’t go to Season 2, you struck gold.” This never happens — people don’t turn to you and say, “Let’s do a TV show about your friends.” Then when they said, “Hey, we’re going to do Season 2,” I was just like, “Oh my god legitimacy! True legitimacy!” It was really neat, so I appreciate that.
“I got one of those long stick mics from the ’70s, like a Donahue-type mic, and I’m getting in everyone’s face like, ‘What did you think?’ When you turn the mic on the audience it’s pure gold.”
Wired: You’re becoming something of a force in TV now.
Smith: That led to this show [Spoilers]. Because, here’s what I learned doing Comic Book Men: When I pitched it, it was like, “It’s Pawn Stars in a comic book store.” And the spine was always going to be transactions — people coming in with stuff and Walter deciding whether to buy it or not. And what was learned when we aired the shows was the will-he-won’t-he-buy-it? — people didn’t care about that. It didn’t matter. What they loved was just seeing the thing come in and seeing the conversation that it kickstarted. So with Spoilers I was like, “OK, man, let’s take the notion of what we, those of us who really love movies, do online afterward — we go and we chitchat about it on an internet forum. Let’s take it and do it live.”
Being on Talking Dead, man, is a real eye-opener because it was like, “This counts? This TV show just happened and this TV show is about the TV show that just happened? This is amazing!” So, let’s take all this that we’ve learned, or what I did with the Red State tour, or what I’ve been doing for years, which is showing a movie and then having a Q&A afterward — let’s take all that stuff and put it into Spoilers. The notion is: Watch the movie with everybody, we take them out and pay for them to go see the movie, kick back — on opening day, none of this early bullshit, ain’t doing it like those critics, doing it legit — and then just go down the street, sit down and have a gabfest, man.
I got one of those long stick mics from the ’70s, like a Donahue-type mic, and I’m getting in everyone’s face like, “What did you think?” Instead of co-hosts in a movie-reviews show where you’ve got a fat guy and a skinny guy saying “yes” or “no,” it’s a fat guy and 50 other people. It’s not the normal constant. I was forced to watch Donahue as a kid. My grandmother would be like, “Oh, my Donahue is on.” The first half of it was painful because it was like pundits and windbags talking to each other. But what I loved when I tuned in was when he turned the mic on the audience. Because the whole time he’s up there, you see people in the audience shaking their heads and they’ve gotta get something off their chests, they don’t agree. And when you turn the mic on the audience it’s pure gold.
Wired: Especially movie geeks.
“I’ll have on my friend Malcolm Ingram, who hates everything. He’s one of these nihilists. If it’s popular he can’t stand it. He represents the internet.”
Smith: I figure, if I’m sitting down with movie fans who just watched a movie? These cats are going to be electric. I don’t need a co-host — I’m going to have 50 different co-hosts every week. That’s just for the first half of the show. Then we’ll get into the segments and stuff we do.
Wired: What’s the format? What kind of segments can fans expect from Spoilers?
Smith: We’re going to do a beat called Movie Goon where like I’ll have on my friend Malcolm Ingram, who hates everything. He’s one of these nihilists. If it’s popular, he can’t stand it. He represents the internet. So we’ll bring him on and let him have his say and then we’ll beat him up verbally and tell him why he’s wrong — have a good old-fashioned debate.
We’re going to do a bit called Criterion Corner, where we sit around and geek out over the library and talk about flicks that maybe people don’t know about. There’s so many titles in the Criterion Collection now that people don’t even know them all. We’re doing cartoons as well. We’ll be doing a Hollywood Babble-On cartoon.
Segment four is Icon Interviews, where we sit somebody down in the chair and gush over them. Grab a Stan Lee, or if we’re lucky, get man-of-the-moment Joss Whedon. Plop them down in what we call the “high chair” — it’s like a throne. We modeled it off the Conan throne. We just sit there and I Q&A with them, and then I turn it over to the audience and let them Q&A as well.
Then we’ll end with a little Jason Mewes bit as well. He’s excited to be the bit guy. We’ve got this bit we do in the live show called “Let Us Act,” where we pull people from the audience and they do scenes from movies with Mewes, so we’re going to do some of that.
Wired: You’ve done movies, podcasts, a TV show and countless other things. Why do a web show on Hulu?
Smith: To me it’s like, go where you got the juice. And where do I have the most juice in this world? It ain’t multiplexes — it’s online. Online I’ve got some sway. I’m like Lawnmower Man in that movie, I’m god here! You take me offline and in the real world I’m a fat, schlubby idiot. There it makes more sense for me, rather than be like, “Hey everybody! Close your computer and turn on your television!” It’s way easier for me to go on Twitter and drop a link and say, “Here’s the latest episode of Spoilers — go watch it at your convenience.”
Wired: It seems like more directors and actors are headed to web series these days, right?
“When I first got in the movie business people were like, ‘Ew, TV.’ Right now the internet is in the same place TV was when I started in film.”
Smith: When I first got in the movie business people were like, “Ew, TV.” Like, they ghetto-ized it. Now TV is this dominant medium and film people look at it and go, “Man, I want to do a TV show.” Right now the internet is in the same place TV was when I started in film. Everybody’s got a laptop. The fluidity between online and networks, it exists. Hulu is owned by a couple networks, so obviously the networks are very much alive and well. I watch my 30 Rock episodes on Hulu anyway and I know there are a lot of people like me. If I’m one of those cats and open up my Hulu and there’s 30 Rock and right next to it is Spoilers? What do I fucking know? It could be on some channel I’m unaware of. I’m just watching the show and then I’m like, “Oh it’s a Hulu original. Go figure.” There’s fluidity now. Nobody cares. There’s no difference now between what is a TV show and what is not.
Comic Book Men, when it ran on AMC, only ran in the U.S., but meanwhile on Twitter I would say 25 percent of my reaction came from people who were overseas who can’t possibly watch it except to BitTorrent or grab it on Usenet. So if they’re already doing that? Shit man, why am I wasting my time going over here, converting it, and then hoping that they catch up with it online when I can simply give them a link and say, “I’ll be over here on Hulu waiting for you any time you’re ready for me.” Create content, leave it there. No more of this, “Let’s spend a shit-ton of money to make sure they come on opening weekend!” That’s a fool’s errand unless you have The Avengers in your back pocket.
Wired: Speaking of Avengers, is Spoilers just going to focus on geek and genre pictures, or will you also throw in the random rom-com or indie film?
“I think you might be able to pull it off with [thought-provoking] movies like, ‘Oh my god, The King’s Speechwho knew?!’ Even like, ‘Oh my god the movie with Fassbender, his dick saves it!’”
Smith: We’re going to launch in the summer blockbuster season, so that gives us our pick of the litter of big, fun movies. But I’m a comedy guy, so we’ll mix those in there, and I’m an indie guy, so we’re going to try to mix those in there as well. But we know for a fact, god willing, if we’re lucky enough to go for a second season, if we launch a second season it would be Oscar season so we would have to do a different kind of Spoilers, where we’re looking at these thought-provoking pictures and stuff. Movies are movies, at the end of the day. Even Ordinary People is fun to talk about in a room, if you get enough different personalities talking about it. I think it’s possible to pull it off even with movies that aren’t like, “Oh my god The Avengers, wasn’t that cool?!” or “Oh my god The Dark Knight Rises, wasn’t that amazing?!” or “Oh my god Prometheus!” I think you might be able to pull it off with movies like, “Oh my god, The King’s Speech, who knew?!” Even like, “Oh my god the movie with Fassbender, his dick saves it!” You’ll get content out of it.
That’s the beauty of sitting down with 50 different personalities. While you’re shooting it, anything goes, man. One of them could knife me, you know what I’m saying? We’re sitting there getting so passionate about the back and forth — they don’t like the movie and I do and suddenly it’s like, “Aaahhh!” Hopefully we’ll have a metal detector and that won’t happen.
Wired: It’s not a good argument unless it comes to blows.
Smith: I’ll take a punch in the name of movies. Some people say I owe movies a punch or two based on Cop Out and Jersey Girl. I’ll take those punches.
Wired: So is this your chance to be a movie critic after being subjected to them for so long?
Smith: Film criticism became very, you know, yes-or-no, black-and-white, thumbs-up-thumbs-down kind of affair. You don’t really see movies handled by “professionals” on TV the way they’re handled on the internet. That’s where you see people just love on a movie. So, I’m like, “Let’s do that version.”
“I’ll never be a guy who’s just like, ‘It’s bullshit! It sucks! It’s the worst!’ I know what goes in to making a movie.”
Before I was a moviemaker, I was a movie lover. And I would sit around and watch At the Movies and Sneak Previews because A) I was a kid and I wanted to see clips of the movies that were coming, but B) These were the only two people in the world who talked about movies like they were important. They were the proto-geeks, the proto-internet — Siskel and Ebert — who talked about movies with such enthusiasm that it made you feel like, “Oh my god, this is as important as watching the evening news.” And it is. Movies are as important as watching the evening news because the evening news is so fucking depressing. You need a movie to escape.
For years I was just a movie lover and then for this weird, wonderful period of time I was a moviemaker. So that gives you this different insight into the process where, I’ll never be a guy who’s just like, “It’s bullshit! It sucks! It’s the worst!” I know what goes into making a movie. I know nobody sets out to make a bad movie. At least I’ll be able to bring some sensibility to it, having done it. For years, you were always able to throw at a critic, “Yeah? What does your movie look like?” So now, I’ve got a bunch of movies under my belt, so I can go out there and talk about movies in a judicious way. Plus, you stick around long enough, they give you chairman emeritus status on anything. I’ve been in the movie business 20 years, and even if I suck at the job, they’re like, “He’s been around, he’s an expert.”
“I would love to suck Bill Murray’s dick in that way that I do — not the actual dick-in-mouth version, but the verbal, ‘Oh my god, without you I wouldn’t be who I am!’ way.”
Wired: Do you have any dream guests for the show?
Smith: I can talk to absolutely anybody. But in the world of people that I would just love to sit there and be like, “Let me ask you this! Let me ask you this! Let me love you about this and let this audience do the same.” I think an ultimate get for me — and we’ll never get him — Bill Murray. This is going to sound weird, but I would love to suck Bill Murray’s dick in that way that I do — not the actual dick-in-mouth version, but the verbal, “Oh my god, without you I wouldn’t be who I am!” way. That’s the people I gravitate toward, who without their art I don’t think I would have gravitated toward mine.
It’s much easier to go to people I know I can get. I know I can turn to Edgar Wright and say, “Dude, let’s sit down and talk about Scott Pilgrim. Because this audience will still love talking about Scott Pilgrim. Let’s talk about Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz.” With Stan [Lee], it’s obviously easy because you have a lifetime to talk about. But I look forward to talking to cats that I don’t know that well, but I know their work and kind of dig it, like Gerard Way. I want to sit down Gerard Way and be like, “Dude, you could get so much pussy, why do you bother writing comic books?
Smith: When Clerks came out — and I’m not saying “I did this fucking first!” — but when Clerks came out nobody was talking about Star Wars anymore. Star Wars were three movies that happened and they were done and we had moved on as culture. George Lucas hadn’t started talking about, “I’m going to do this again!” So when I talked about Star Wars in Clerks, it was this weird moment because that’s what me and my friends would do. So Clerks plays at Sundance — but that’s in America and when the movie plays there, people talk about Star Wars, people are like, “Yeah, yeah, I remember Star Wars.”
When I went to Cannes and I sat down with a French journalist, and this was the first time I’d went overseas with the movie. I’m sitting down with a dude who doesn’t speak very good English, but I don’t speak any French whatsoever so it doesn’t matter, and he’s measuring his words so carefully so as to not sound like he doesn’t know English and this is what he says, “Uh, Jay and, uh, Bob ….” I say, “Silent Bob.” He says, “Yes.” Then, “They are R2-D2 and C-3PO, no?” And suddenly I was like, “What?! How do you know Star Wars?” And I realized that’s what we share. Everywhere people wanted to talk about it.
This generation, that would be The Avengers or the Harry Potter series or something like that. But the birth of pop culture was right at that moment. But the sad thing is it will eventually go away. Now it’s hard because everybody does it. It was easier for me, back in the day. Even in Clerks 2 I had to transition from talking about Star Wars to talking about Lord of the Rings. If I talked about Lord of the Rings now people would be like, “What is this, 2000? Move on!” Now if you want to pop culture riff you’ve gotta do Avengers, Hunger Games, stuff like that.
“I joined the Star Wars Fan Club and got me a pen pal. I had this dude up in Alberta, Canada, who I would write back and forth to about Star Wars.”
Wired: Do you think the rise of Star Wars fandom as it is, and the plethora of pop-culture references to it, coincides with the rise of the internet?
Smith: When I was a kid there was no fuckin’ internet, so if you wanted to talk to somebody about Star Wars you had to write a letter to Starlog and hope it got published. Or, like I did, I joined the Star Wars Fan Club and got me a pen pal. I had this dude up in Alberta, Canada, who I would write back and forth to about Star Wars. I always compare it to what I guess it’s like for gay dudes when they had to go into a public restroom back in the day — tap the foot on the floor to try and see who is interested. Back then, man, you would write to a guy — a stranger in another country — and be like, “Do you like Boba Fett’s jetpack?” and hope he’d write back.
Now, man, you can commune with people without communing with them. We can talk to strangers about the things we’re passionate about. And things that would never have fan bases can build fan bases. If there was no internet, my career would’ve been over years ago. But what I can do is put people in touch with one another. Here’s a dude over in Alaska who likes me, and a chick in Florida who likes me, and now they’ve fucking met through a website and you become a conduit. So thank god for the internet, it allows somebody like me to kind of thrive. Otherwise, short attention spans and costly budgets would’ve kept me from getting an audience together years and years ago. I would’ve been out on my ass.
