...that this really isn't a very good book at all.

Now. Let's get this straight. I have seen all of Smith's films, and don't think they are very good; occasionally watchable, but not particularly interesting. Maybe at 36 I'm too old to appreciate the splendours of Catholic Shit Monsters or endless conversations about tedious pop culture crap; I dunno. The ONLY reason I like the films is because I am a huge Jason Mewes fan, and could watch him in anything for hours. I was hoping Smith would write about his friendship with Mewes in this book, which is why I bought it. And he did write very briefly about Jay, describing the ex-smackhead describing an episode of ‘Buffy’ to him...and it's telling that this was the ONLY time I laughed during the length of the book. Not a very good omen.

Now. ‘Silent Bob Speaks’ is a collection of columns of Smith's from Arena Magazine (a British cheesecake tedious 'ironic' lad's mag, for those not in the know), Details, New Jersey Monthly and Film Comment. The first 92 pages are notes about casting the not-particularly-funny ‘Jay And Silent Bob Strike Back’ (and Smith himself seems to know it'll be a crock of crap, even mocking it in the pages here before it comes out) and encompass little that will interest people who are not fans of boring Hollywood gossip (about the likes of the Smith-christened 'Greasy' Reece Witherspoon or Charlie Sheen). Pages 93-257 (and you can barely call these 'pages', what with big, spaced-out type and barely 280 words to a page) deal with subjects as enthralling as Smith's homoerotic boypal love of Ben Affleck (Smith genuinely comes across as a repressed homosexual a lot of the time, to the point where he even addresses it in work he is in, as he did in the recent ‘Degrassi Junior High’ Canadian teen soap opera episodes he and Mewes were in which are out on DVD), the director's morbid obesity and shit-splattered underwear, a debate on the relative (de)merits of the movie of ‘Spider-Man’ (unsurprisingly for a man who named his daughter Harley Quinn after a Batman villain, comic books are a constant theme throughout), a fawning fanboy interview with Tom Cruise, teen television and lapdancing. Pages 257-303 are merely a retch-inducing lovefest puff piece about the production of ‘Jersey Girl’ (which I had the misfortune to sit through in censored form on a transatlantic flight) in which Smith breathlessly, endlessly kisses the asses of his cast and crew. Pages 303-315 are a defense of the first two new, forgettable ‘Star Wars’ films from a confirmed fanboybore of the series. Smith loves the films, unsurprisingly. But it's with the final 10 pages, in a satiric article about the San Diego Comic Convention, where the misogynistic creepiness that have regularly surfaced throughout the course of the book finally take over and Smith lets his retarded adolescent inner self have full reign over the proceedings. And it's not a pretty sight, believe you me.

As anybody who knows this Catholic 'oh-God-isn't-sex-dirty-and-funny-and-isn’t-poo-poo-funny-too' director's stuff will know, he is seemingly stuck at the intellectual, sexual and emotional development level of a 14-year-old boy. This is what has made him rich, and he spews damaged, scatological vitriol like a shit-spraying lawn sprinkler, seemingly regarding references to sex with dogs as the height of waspish Wildean wit and wisdom. Make no mistake: Smith is an intelligent guy, and he CAN write; words follow words into sentences into paragraphs into pages into chapters into, ultimately, a finished book. However. Just when you are sailing along reading something (and this whole book only took me a couple of hours to read from start to finish last night) he throws in some vile adolescent remark that completely knocks you out of the words and makes you want to go and have a hot cleansing shower.

Now. Taking Kevin Smith to task for being scatological and sick and juvenile and misogynistic is a pretty pointless thing, to be sure. It's WHAT HE DOES, and he has been taken to task endlessly for it. However, reading this book, I couldn't help but be creeped out that the man writing some of it was in his 30s and should know better by now. Take the aforementioned ComiCon article, for example, which The Face, another British lad's rag, wisely passed on. In it Smith writes a refutation of the fact that comic book geeks are sexless, socially inept shut-ins (which of course they are) by inverting this stereotype and having a Con where the nerds in attendance have wild sex and take drugs and indulge in all kinds of hip and crazy stuff. He keeps on going on about Alicia Silverstone, saying he sodomized her and used a vibrator on her, as well as watched her and Uma Thurman taking part in a floor show with a dildo. I doubt either of the women in question would be particularly thrilled at this sleazy form of anti-adulation by the writer, and this is not the only instance of creepiness towards women in the book.

Smith talks endlessly about having sex with his wife Jen, as if having sex with your spouse is a novel, groundbreaking concept, and you have to wonder why he does it. To be funny? Nope, it's just sick and stupid. To be controversial? Nope, it's just boring. To humiliate his wife? Maybe. She certainly seems to put up with a lot from the man - seem to recall reading somewhere that he had documented their first sexual experience on the net. But I suppose that keeping the money rolling in keeps a fat, fearless self-loathing (for make no mistake, Smith has serious self-esteem issues - he comes across like a geek who points out his own flaws first to make people laugh before some jock in a class mentions them - the old 'humour as a self-defense mechanism' riff) man in the 'pussy' he endlessly salivates on about. When he's writing about his wife having sex with him, he comes across like a man who can't believe that somebody would actually HAVE sex with him and his 'small dick' (which he keeps going on about, though I don't want to know anything about the veracity of this self-deprecating penile self-assessment) and thus he has to tell everybody in his geeky world that LOOK! KEVIN SMITH IS HAVING SEX WITH A BEAUTIFUL WOMAN! (AND NOT A MAN! NEVER A MAN! NO WAY!) It certainly makes a nonsense of his claim in these pages to have been some sort of high school Don Juan who could make endless women leave their boyfriends, laugh and come hard when fucking him because of his buying a copy of a book detailing how the vagina works. I for one don't buy it. Maybe that's just me being cynical. Then again, if the man has such a sick, stupid, juvenile sense of off-color 'humour' in his 30s...what must it have been like when he actually WAS a teenager?

You shudder to think.

Anyway. After that too-long, boring cod pop psychology examination of common recurring themes in these pages and in Smith's films in general...to sum up...shit, do you really need me to spell it out to you? At least I can get some credit when I trade this book in to Second Editions in Skokie against something that I want, cos I'm sure as shit never going to read this boring garbage again. And oh yeah, I really can't wait for ‘Clerks 2: The Passion of The Clerks’. The world needs more dick and weed and fart jokes…like a hole in the head. Kevin, please feel free to rearrange that last sentence into one about a 'head in a hole' and get a sex joke out of it. That one's on me, big man. Don't say I'm not good to you. Except when reviewing this cash-cow-milking book that is. Grow up, wee man. You're too old for this shit. Seriously. Sure your wife would appreciate being treated with respect in public too. Difficult concept to grasp, but I'm sure you can manage it if you try. Cos you're not stupid. Just stuck in a state (New Jersey) of arrested development...

Graham Rae is a Scottish scribbler from the cheery charming picture-postcard-perfect post-industrial up-and-coming internationally renowned tourist destination of Falkirk, now resident in the US. He has been writing for as long as he can remember (started at any early age, carving graffiti into womb walls) and am halfway through my first novel (well, third, but the other mishmash misfires don’t count),’ Weekend Warriors.’ He has been writing about film for various electronic and print publications for 18 years now, and you can see a sporadically entertaining eclectic selection of his ramble/rantings at www.filmthreat.com

© 2006 Laura Hird All rights reserved.