Podcrushed - Kevin Smith

Episode Date: June 4, 2025

Kevin Smith, the acclaimed film director whose comedic films and franchises include Clerks, Mallrats, Chasing Amy and Jay & Silent Bob, swings by the pod to talk about the freedom of his (mostly) unsupervised childhood, his near-religious experience watching Raiders of the Lost Ark for the first time with his father, and his iconic cult-classic film Dogma, which is celebrating its 25th anniversary re-release.   And preorder our new book, Crushmore, here: https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Crushmore/Nava-Kavelin/9781668077993    Want more from Podcrushed? Follow our social channels here: Insta: https://bit.ly/PodcrushedInsta TikTok: https://bit.ly/PodcrushedTikTok  X: https://bit.ly/PodcrushedTwitter   You can follow Penn, Sophie and Nava here: Insta: https://www.instagram.com/pennbadgley/  https://www.instagram.com/scribbledbysophie/ https://www.instagram.com/nnnava/ Tik Tok: https://www.tiktok.com/@iampennbadgley  https://www.tiktok.com/@scribbledbysophie  https://www.tiktok.com/@nkavelinSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Lemonada. Kevin has turned to bright red and it's so endearing. It's still thinking about it. This will be the next thing I discuss with my therapist, kids. Welcome to Podcrushed. We're hosts. I'm Penn. I'm Nava and I'm Sophie. And I think we would have been your middle school besties. Never drinking water, always eating too much sugar and generally ignoring the signals from our bodies. But anyway, let's have a sleepover.

Earth to Penn. Are you going to welcome us? Are you ready? Yeah, I'm here. Oh, oh, you guys said you're ready. Sorry, I was still waiting for you because I've been waiting for you for a while. Please keep this at the beginning of this episode.

Yes, we should have it. Welcome to Podcrush. Welcome, don't talk over me. Welcome to Podcrushed. I am your podcast, pod host, Penn Badgeley. I'm joined by my podcast, pod hosts. Now, the Cavalant and Sophie, I'm sorry. I'm exhausted.

Yeah, just like I was. Unfortunately, I'm not in the rest of this episode. I'm not with our lovely guests today. I was so sick, you guys, on this day that you recorded this episode. It was rough. You know, Anaeis gave it to me. She goes into the daycare while I just do like a 30-minute workout. And as I dropped her off, I saw these two kids.

They're snotty little noses. And I was like, no. No. I know those kids. Well, we missed you, but Kevin was awesome. I have a question for you guys because Kevin was, I mean, we talked about so much, but he was largely here to promote the 25th anniversary of dogma. And he made an announcement on Instagram, which I thought was really cool and bold, which is that he's at Cannes. It's the 78th year of

can. And he has set the goal to be at Cannes 80, which is in two years, to premiere a new film. He says he hasn't written it yet, but in two years he is going to direct and write a can worthy film. So I'm going to put you guys on the spot and say June 4th, 2027. What are you guys going to do? Whoa. Here's what I'm going to tell you. I'm going to make this pun when Ken is turning 80. I'll say maybe they should start calling it can't.

No, you can't wiggle away. You've got to give me a real answer. In two years, where are you going to be Badgley? What's your big goal? What do you mean? I have no idea. Well, I'll have two more children. So I'll be alive, hopefully.

I will be successful, hopefully, you know, cross figures. Um, uh, that's, that's about as, that's about as much as I've got for you. Boo. So boring. So lame. So non-specific. You could do better. I know.

My goal for Penn is that in June 4th, 2027, he's announcing a rom-com. Like no murder, okay? No murder. No gossip. But I just, but I just, but please. No. Um, okay, myself, myself may, I mean, Shoot. I keep saying that June 4th, 2027, I will have a yard. I'm putting that out there. I will have outdoor space. You can really tell what kind of headspace I'm in with a toddler who bangs on the door in the morning to be let out. That's so boring, Nava. Sorry, where are you? June 4th.

Yeah, you guys are just really, I'm going to give you guys a spicy answer. Okay, this one doesn't come from me. This can. So you got, I don't know, listeners of the podcast might remember that I once spoke to a palm reader on Venice Beach. I have done it again. This time in New York City, spoke to a palm reader on the street. She's like, I need to give you a love reading. And she kept screaming at me. So I was like, all right, whatever. And she said that by next summer, actually, that's sooner than two years.

She said, you're going to be pregnant and married by in a year. So I'm going to say in two years, I'm going to have a one-year-old. I love it. That's what the palm reader said. But my personal goal. And she was like call me when you get engaged Because it's definitely happening Did she give you her number?

She gave me her number and she gave me the guy's initials She told me a little bit about him She was like very specific It's a little weird But you know But I'm going to keep that info to myself The goal that I will set for myself Is to be a homeowner in two years

There we go. You definitely did the best You should have gone first Wait you have a yard I have a yard yeah That's similar And Ply that in that is I'm one or two. And Penn is alive.

And Penn is still alive. Already a homeowner. Multiple times over. His wife is birthing the kids. He's not even doing that work. He's just watching it happen. I just want to go back to my joke about Kant. You know who can do it, though.

Kevin Smith. Today's guest is the acclaimed film director, truly. Kevin Smith, who's, who's, whose films and franchises include clerks, mallrats, chasing Amy. Are you there yet? Jay and Silent Bob? He's got a spree of horror films like Tusk and Red State. He's got a million podcasts,

one of which, he spoke about most smodcast. He's also got one with his daughter that he calls beardless, dickless me. I don't get it. But he's here today, he's here today celebrating the re-release of, the 25th anniversary we release, rather, of Dogma, which is a film so near and dear to my heart, especially when I was 12 and 13,

that cult comedy classic has a dedicated following. I'm one of them. It sold out a 25 city tour in the first 24 hours, right? Which fulfills my theory that Kevin Smith is a sellout. Hey, okay, we got a good show for you to guys. Stick around. Does anyone else ever get that nagging feeling that their dog might be bored? And do you also feel like super guilty about it?

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pulling the thread from Lemonada Media wherever you get your podcasts. what we always do in this show, we start at 12 years old for everybody. Oh, fantastic. And you strike us, definitely, as somebody who's reflected on your adolescence a lot. You seem like you were just total film, comic book nerd, total, you know, like a sketch comedy nerd.

So just like, and then not for nothing. I mean, this is not to both smoke up your ass, but to give you your flowers and just also state something that I think is objectively true. I mean, look, you're standing in a movie theater that you own. Yeah. You seem to me to be a person who somehow, very young, started creating the life they wanted.

So I'm just kind of curious. Start us at 12. How was 12-year-old Kevin seeing the world? What did he want to do? What was day-to-day life like? When I was, so I'm 12. I'm living in Highlands, New Jersey, which is about maybe three miles from here. Two towns, twin towns.

There's Highlands and Atlantic Highlands. Atlantic Highlands had the movie theater, so that's where we spent our youth, you know, all the free time we had. I had a pretty idyllic childhood, man. I guess we were one of the last generations that were encouraged to, like, go out and play. They tell me now that we were the latchkey kid generation, which meant that we were kind of in charge of ourselves. I grew up in a house where only one parent worked, my dad, and he worked at night,

the night shift at the post office, so Govy employee and stuff. my mom was a homemaker so there was always kind of somebody home in our house and and to show you like how wonderful it is i you know i know a lot of people have a problem with where they came from or the or their past when i was in the nut house like they were always like hey man like when you were a kid what about your parents they're always going at my parents and i'm like i i got to be honest with you like i got there's nothing there i mean yes there's some yeah insecurities probably built in and And I've, you know, I have no respect for anybody's time when it comes to lateness and stuff. And that came directly from my mother.

I'll throw her underwriter than a fucking bus for that one. But, you know, generally speaking, man, like my parents were wonderful. And so even now, like whenever I'm in this area and I come, we do shows here, it's modcastle all the time. It's like a ritualistically, I drive down to where I grew up. And my house isn't even there anymore. It was destroyed by a flood. And then they rebuilt and put it on stilts.

So there's nothing left from my childhood. where I actually grew up, but I still go past that lot, which has a house on it, and new family lives there, and that street all the time, because it was happy. I enjoyed my childhood. My parents were like, wonderful. We didn't have a tight relationship, though. They were 70s and 80s parents, man, and you didn't, you weren't besties with your parents back then.

Like, they were your parents. They were on pedestals. It's kind of the same relationship you had with God as a Catholic kid. And like you're supposed to fear the Lord. And you're like, wait, aren't I'm supposed to love the Lord? You're like, yeah, I love them all you want, but you got to fear them and stuff. And we feared our parents, not that they were abusive or anything, but they were in charge. They called the shots.

And we didn't have this buddy, buddy stuff that, like, when I had my kid, I went a different way. I was like, I'm 28 years old. I know about parenting, man. Like, I can't come across like I know everything to this kid. So I'm going to treat her like she's just a smaller adult. And our relationship was mostly closer, so much so that like when she moved out in age 23, I got like an existential crisis moment where I was like, oh my God, it's over. And I asked her, I was a kiddo, was I a good dad?

And she goes, I never really thought of he was my father as much as my fun older brother who had all the money. And I was like, oh my God, that's exactly the vibe I was going for. Thank you. So my father, I didn't have that relationship with him. But what I had with him was his love language, as the kids would say today, was taking me to the movies. Like, he took me to movies, particularly at age 12,

that were probably more advanced than I was absolutely ready for. I remember he took me to see the world according to Garp in this very movie theater. And in that movie, it's wonderful Robin Williams' movie about a character's life based on the great John Irving novel. and you know most 12 year olds probably wouldn't be into it you know they'd probably be like it was boring like I couldn't I saw no other kids in that theater when I was there with my father but it was kind of my father going you can handle this either that or is my father gone like nobody's going to see this movie with me so I might as well fucking take you but it always felt like that was him trying to communicate this is what I enjoy in life these are my tastes do you understand like that that was him raising me culturally so at age 12 my father's bringing me to the movies every Wednesday I think what happened was the way I've understood the story is my mom had a cat's in the cradle conversation with my father since my father worked at

the post office at night doing the night shift we we didn't have a lot of crossover with him like we'd see him in the morning right as he was coming home from work and we were going to school most of the time he had to be quiet in the house because he was sleeping because he had to get up and go to work in night and stuff so I guess my mom was like you're missing these kids growing up, man. And, like, you got to spend more time with them. And so my father, I guess, was like, well, the fat one likes movies.

So I'll take the fat one to movies more often. And so my mom told me one day, she's like, it happened when I was 12 years old. My mom told me one day, your father's going to pick you up and he's going to bring you to the movies. You pick you up from school at noon and bring you to the movies. I see him at night. I said, well, I'm not done until three, it ain't a half day. She goes, it doesn't matter.

He's picking you up. I said, what do I tell him the nuns? She said, you tell him your aunt died. And so I was like, all right, that's the kind of Catholic family we were. We were encouraged to lie to the clergy. And so they call me down to the office at noon, sister, Gloria Louise. And she's like, oh, my God, Kevin, I'm so sorry to hear about your aunt. I was like, yeah, it's all sudden just happened this morning.

And she goes, your father's here, pick you up, take you to the wake. I said, oh, okay. And she goes, we'll pray for your aunt. I said, don't bother. And so I get into the car with Dad. I was like, what are we doing? And he goes, we're going to see Raiders of the Lost Ark. Oh, wow.

So in this theater, we go see Raiders of the Lost Ark, man, matinee and stuff. Now, he wanted to see it more than I did. I was a big Harrison Ford fan because he was on solo, so I'd see anything he was in. But, you know, it looked old-timey to me. So we sit down to watch Raiders of the Lost Dark. This is incredibly fucking formative. Lights go down. and I know one version of my father,

the stern patrician, the patriarch of the family, you know, at the joy of Raiders of the Lostark lit this motherfucker up in a way I'd never seen him before. And he was like, oh my God,

he was talking to the movie theater. He goes, oh my God, this is a cliffhanger. This is the kind of movie I would go see with your Aunt Barbara and I was a kid. We'd pay 50 cents.

We'd see half a movie and they'd end it. We'd have to come back the next week. They're doing cliffhangers. This is amazing. I'm having a great time. You're having a great time. It was like he had done a rail of coke off my mom's ass right before he left the house.

And he was like, I'm going to take the kids in the movies, Grace. And so sitting next to that guy sitting in movie after movie in this very same fucking building in the dark, I learned who my father was, man. Like listening to comedy, George Carlin was a gift for my father. George Carlin's in dogman. And there's a reason for that. It's a direct line between like my father being like, you've given me. class clown his george's album at age nine and being like you can handle this just you know don't listen to it don't let your mother hear you listen to it and i never gave this to you and shit and i would

listen to it all the time because at nine you hear somebody cursing like you're into it it's like oh my god this one but you know you listen to carlin for a minute you get past the curses and he's just a whiz and soul even at nine years old the man like enraptured me because his love of language and his storytelling and he just seemed like a smart individual and stuff one day my mom came in the room i didn't see her here because i had the headphones on i was listening to the album and i was doing stuff and she was talking to me and then she did the mom thing she just yanks the cord out of the high-fi just in time to hear cocks sucker motherfucker tits and she was like oh this is george carlo where did you get this i was like i got it from dad and i threw him right under the fucking

bus so those were formative years where i was not sitting there going and because of this one day i'll be a filmmaker that didn't come to like nine years later when i was 21 i saw richard link later slacker I said, ooh, maybe I could do this. But my whole life, it was sitting next to my old man. I asked him one day, I was like, you know, because he was very non-communicative. He's not me. He didn't wear his heart on his fucking sleeve and shit.

He wasn't from that world. I said, Dad, what did you want to do when you were a kid? He was like, what do you mean? I was like, what did you dream about doing when you were like my age? You're like, you know how I dream about, like making movies? What did you dream about before you gave up? And he was like, I didn't give up. I was like, what did you dream about?

He goes, I dream about getting married. and having kids. And I was like, oh, so your dreams came true. I said, yes. And I was like, oh, all right. But inside, I was like, are you serious? That's your fucking dream? Anybody can get married and have fucking kids.

Where's this man's ambition? Like, no wonder we're in this little house in Highlands, New Jersey, because he's got no fucking ambition. Now, as a 54-year-old man, I can tell you without a doubt. My father was the smartest person I ever met. I often wonder, like, if I, you know,

if I hadn't veered toward entertainment, towards storytelling, which I have now been in longer than I've not been in it, right? Like for 23 years, I was a normal-ass human being doing good things and living a life like everybody else trying to figure it out. And then at age 23, like I get pulled into fantasy land and I've been there ever since. That's why I love being here. I come back to Jersey all the time because, and probably why I drive past my house. It reminds me of the dreamer, the kid who would, you know, walk these streets and didn't want to leave. My brother, sister couldn't wait to get out of our home fucking town they were world travelers and shit like

that i never wanted to leave like i was happy and i'm not saying and i'm not happy now like i found happiness elsewhere as well but this is the place that built me these are the streets that like made me dream and this is the movie theater where i saw film after film after film and never once thought maybe i could do this shit that had to happen in manhattan you know at a at an art house theater that's where i had my dawning revelation but anyway back to 12 years old so that's all the background that gets me to where I am at 12. I have so many questions, but I sort of want to bring it from your childhood into dogma. I'm curious about these kind of like spiritual and existential questions that you explore in that

movie and how much of it stems with spiritual and existential questions that you were exploring at 12, 13, 14. I was, uh, my cosmology was handed to me by, you know, my fucking parents. And my dad was more like, well, She fucks me, so whatever she says goes. He wasn't the hardcore Catholic. Mom was like hardcore Catholic. Dad's parents weren't hardcore Catholics.

So mom's parents versus they set the tone. So my mom's faith was handed to her by practically two strangers. My mom was an adopted kid. So she came to my grandparents, who I call my grandparents, through the Catholic charities. The Catholic Church would be like, we got these little babies on doorsteps. You want to raise a kid? They would just give kids to Catholic.

people to raise. And so my grandmother was given my mom at age like barely one or something like that. I'm not a psychologist by any stretch of imagination, but conversations I've had with my mother and other people have been adopted with a sense of like beyond gratitude, insane gratitude for, you know, being chosen. There's a, you know, psychology that goes along with why was I so easy to let go of or dot dot dot but to be quote unquote rescued by somebody else and and you know my mom's point of pride is like my brothers and sister she didn't have a choice my mom had this she chose me so when when you feel that way about your parents everything your parents say is religion and in the case of my mom my mom was raised in that faith as well she then inflicted it upon

my dad because my dad was like I want sex to keep going and then when we had it was she had us it was given to us and not in any sort of like you know cruel way it was like it was so matter of fact it was like this is what we believe this is true and it there was never a question in childhood of anything like you know and not like i as a child i was told not to have questions it just never even occurred to me it was like of course there was a war in heaven of course there was adam and eve of course you know the ark of course jesus like all of this is just as Real as raincoats. Like Marvel Comics, DC, that shit's fake.

But these stories, biblically true. So being raised in that, you know, there's just no bump whatsoever. I started bumping into it. Geez, probably around the time I started writing clerks as I was going to film school. Because dogma, I started writing even before clerks. Back then, it was called very ambitiously God. Thank the Lord. You were going to call him with God?

Yeah. At age 21. Like I had so much experience. As I got older, one day I tripped into that where I was like, hey man, we make fun of the Greeks and the Romans for believing all this stuff that we read now is literature. Who's to say that in 10,000 years? What we believe is Bible truth doesn't just turn out to be somebody else's literature that they're kind of goofing on us for and stuff. And those are blasphemous thoughts. let me be honest with you we're on the set of dogma okay so we're 1998 we're shooting and and how old were you then

20 let me see we start shooting so I'm 27 heading into 28 at that time um George Carlin you know and again dogma is an expression of a shaky belief system this is me trying to hold on to my faith so I'm working with George Carlin one of my favorite artists on the damn planet and whatnot somebody I sought for the movie I was like we got to get George Carlin to play a Catholic cardinal man like we reached out to his manager he goes you want george to do comedy in your movie i was like no no no i said we want george to play a character play a role to act and he goes what role would he play i said he'd play a catholic cardinal his manager goes oh fuck george'll love that shit so going into the flick i still believe so i'm on set with carlin who was a very famous lapse cap like it does

lots of capital which i love grown up and we're doing the sequence like if you know the movie like it's in the third act they're about to rededicate the church that these angels have to walk through it's my most plot-driven movie i've ever met although after watching it night after night it's really a movie full of people who just exposit the plot at one another and explain the movie to one another as the movie goes on but it's still kind of fun to watch so we're outside the church and you know ben and matt show up and all hell is about to break loose and george is there dressed in his cardinal whites so uh george goes hey What's going on in this scene again?

And I was like, well, boys show up. They say their shit. Then off camera, like, what happens is they kill everybody. And then they're going to walk through the doors of the church. And when they come out, presumably, they'll be gunned down by the cops, and that will send them straight to heaven. And George is going, where did you get this shit? I was like, it's called a plenary indulgence, George.

Like, it's a Catholic thing that happened in my church when I was a kid. In 1983, we had a centennial, and our church was granted, you know, a plenary indulgence day. Really? people see this happened that's why it's you know i'm not creative and shit the plot of dogma is predicated on something that happened when i was 13 years old but i was like wait a second you walk through this door and all your sins are forgiven they're like yeah i was like what if you killed people like all your sins are forgiven i was like what if i go inside come back out kill people then

go back in all your sins of forgiveness it makes no sense we've been told to like follow the rules and suddenly we walk through a doorway and so all the other kids let go of it i held down to it for years, it wound up being kind of the core of dogma. So there I am trying to explain it to George you know, right before we shoot. And so I'm going through the history of the plenary indulgence and shit, like a catechism. And George is like staring at me, just nodding. And he has to look on his face of like an adult when a kid over explains Star Wars to him and shit. He's just like, and then finally he goes, you really believe in all this shit, don't you? And I was like, yeah, I was raised Catholic. You were raised Catholic. You don't? And he goes, no.

I'm smarter than that, you know? And so that was to be getting in the end. I'll never lay my lack of faith on somebody else's feet. I'm a grown man and make my own decisions. However, tough to maintain your Catholicism in the face of one of the smartest people that you ever met, who was the one who really starts questioning going, really. So it wasn't until I was 27 years old that I was like, perhaps, perhaps there's more to this, you know, than I thought.

Stick around. We'll be right back. All right. So let's just, let's just real talk, as they say for a second. That's a little bit of an aged thing to say now. That dates me, doesn't it? But no, real talk. How important is your health to you? You know, on like a one to ten? And I don't mean the in the sense of vanity. I mean in the sense of like you want your day to go well, right? You want to be less stressed. You don't want it as sick. When you have responsibilities, I know myself, I'm a householder. I have a, uh, I have two children and two more on the way, a spouse, a pet, you know, a job that sometimes has its demands. So I really want to feel like when I'm not getting the sleep and I'm not getting nutrition, when my eating's down, I want to know that I'm being held down some other way physically. You know, my family holds me down emotionally, spiritually, but I need something to hold me

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so you can learn as many as you want whenever you want. Don't wait. Unlock your language learning potential now. Podcrush listeners can grab Rosetta Stone's lifetime membership for 50% off. That's unlimited access to 25 language courses for life. Visit Rosettastone.com slash podcrush to get started and claim your 50% off today. Don't miss out. Go to Rosettastone.com slash podcrush and start learning today. Dogma to me specifically seems like a movie that was created by somebody who had actually already reached some of the conclusions you're talking about. reaching sort of during and after you'd come to your conclusions sort of casting away the corruption and the and the strangeness of organized religion but sort of holding on to of all things faith but

then you're speaking now about in a way where it's like you kind of threw faith out with that and i and i and i guess i'm you know what i remembered of dogma was like you don't need to worry about the inconsistencies of of organized religion just believe in god and so you so so so So, you know, forgive me, but I guess I'm trying to understand if that's the message I got, you know, it's interesting that you didn't seem to be either giving or receiving that same message or I don't know. Are you saying that? Are you, are you, are you, are you, do you still have faith in something or? I think it's, I think it's a good case of, you know, do you trust the messenger? Like, is the message. what's more important the message or the messenger if you get something out of that movie that's you know powerful spiritual that makes sense to me because the person who wrote it and the person who directed it was that person like he was a salesman for his faith for what he

believed because every night i watch it on tour and i'm like oh look at this this is a child's prayer this is uh this is if you know your old testament this is king david dance in the fool in front of the Ark of the Covenant. This was my profession of faith. This was me going like, you know, I went to church my whole life, and it was always boring, and nobody seemed to celebrate their faith. They mourned it.

This was my idea of church just happens. I have a lot of anal jokes in it as well. So you're absolutely right. I'm not, as the person who put that all up there. And it's not so much the movie, and honestly, it wasn't George Carlin. And again, I'm an adult and I make my own decisions. But a podcast that I did from 2007 for like 12 years

was a smodcast with scott mozier so scott was you know agnostic leaning toward atheists our our whole relationship and if you listen to smodcast you know by the time we get to episode 200 he's not trying to disabuse me of my faith but scott is the guy who's like you know i'm like what do you mean you don't believe in heaven like you know that's a ridiculous We have to go somewhere. And he's like, no, we don't. And I was like, yeah, I was like, what about everything I've learned and all that information and all my experience?

He's gone, oh, he's gone, see, that's the thing. That's the difference between us. He's going, your arrogance makes you believe that this all has to go on for you. He's going, but like, I don't feel that way. I don't, I think the world will keep turning without me. And I was like, well, what about everything you learn, all your experiences? And he's like, they go right in the ground with me. I was like, it's impossible.

It has to move on. He goes, why? He goes, look at your laptop. He's going, think about all the information on there. He goes, what happens to your laptop? One day, it just spins down. But all that information, he goes, doesn't matter. It was there and now it's not.

Actually, now it goes on the cloud, so he's wrong. Well, actually, you know, I don't know enough about it to say this intelligently, but I just read something that quantum physics now believes that consciousness continues after the body dies in a new realm. And I was like, what is this? And I started to read about it and I couldn't understand it. But so quantum physics might now be on the side of some kind of an afterlife, even though it wouldn't use like Christian terms or Islamic terms or.

Look, I, you know, I don't believe in this traditional structure or the idea of heaven that I was given as a kid, which is like wonderful. But I do believe, man, that and I don't think this is anything that hasn't been said before that energy is neither created nor destroyed. So it's always around us and people die. Yes, that happens. But nobody's ever truly gone because they just dissipate and then that energy is out there. And I feel like when you talk about the dead, you're an antenna, you bring that energy.

It's not even my cosmology is based on Pixar's Coco, of course. So if you've seen that movie, kids, that's what I believe now. That's what happens when we die, guys. Honestly, honestly, it's. is way better than the one I was given as a kid. I was like, I like this. And plus, they got a killer song. That remember me shit?

That'll break up even a robot for heaven to say. That's so good. When I almost died from the heart attack seven years ago, you know, I get wheeled into the ER and the doctor, Dr. Layton and I'm a guy who saved my life, he's like, you're having a widow maker heart attack right now. That's kind of heart attack you're having. I said, what's that mean?

And he goes, seriously? I have to explain it. He goes, fine. He goes, you have 100% blockage across the front of your heart. in 80% of the cases, the patient always dies. But you're going to be in the 20% because I'm good at my job. And he disappeared into my crotch and made magic. That's how to get to your heart.

They go through ephemeral artery. So while he was doing that, you know, I'm looking up at the ceiling and looking around the room. And I was like, this might be it. This is the moment you've been terrified of your whole life. This could be the last room you ever see. This might be the last ceiling you ever see. And, you know, so here it is. you've been waiting your whole life for this moment, start the movie, you know, start, see, let's

let your life go flash for your eyes. And before I could do that, I was like, well, wait a second, is there a chance I get out of this? Like he said 20% that's pretty low. I was like, maybe prayer would help that. And then I figured like, if I started praying, God might be like, uh-huh, you may dogma, fuck you. And I didn't want to presume upon that relationship at the desperate hour. But I feel like as I get older, I will reembrace my faith totally one day. But it just feels cheap that it's going to be like when I'm old and I'm desperate and I need it. Kevin, we have, I'm going to pre-Pen, I've never done this before, but I'm going to preview you three questions. I feel like you're such a good storyteller. You'll weave them all together. But we have three

classic questions that we ask every guess. So you'll tell us the story that brings them all together. So one is your first love and first heartbreak. Another is like an important. embarrassing, cringy memory from when you were 1213. And then the final question we ask everyone is what advice would they give or what would they say to their 12-year-old selves if they could spend a little time with them. So if you can kind of bring those three together. I think you can do it. And I think that's brilliant.

I think you're right. I can. And it's so weird that you talk about it because I'm here in the right place. So here we are in Atlantic Highlands, New Jersey at what is now Smodcastle Cinemas, but used to be the Atlantic Highlands twin cinema is what it was called. For most of my life, it was one single screen. And then right around the time Scarface came out, they took one of the rows of seats away, built a hallway, and added a second theater, which was everything in our world. They're like, oh, my God, there's a second candy counter in Atlantic and shit.

It was all the news. So my first love is Kim Lockron, my high school girlfriend, who is in a lot of the movies I made. She's in clerks and whatnot. And she grew up here in Atlantic. So she was the reason I spent a lot of my childhood here in Atlantic. When I wasn't going to this movie theater with my father, I was usually going with Kim Lockren. The last movie I made came out last year. It was called The 430 movie.

It was about like our first date at this movie theater. So we retroed it back to what it looked like when we were kids and whatnot. I kind of told that story. So in the theater here, I got hanging up on the wall behind me. Something I found looks like. everything and shit. And this, let's see if I can get it on there. You might not see as a reflection, but it says, Kevin, Dirty Dancing is downtown, the Atlantic Twin Cinema. Please take your skirt sporting loving girlfriend to see it. I love you, Kim. That is the theater that

we're talking about, like right here and shit. So I found that note and I fucking hung it up because this is the theater that like built my ideas of role. Romance, right? Like, this is not just like me actually dating somebody, but this is where I saw Valley Girl, man, fucking Martha Coolidge really set the tone for me for the rest of my life where I was like, all right, this is what romance is and stuff. So, Kim was my absolute first love and whatnot, and we still in each other's lives and we've known each other for years and whatnot. But we broke up in high school and then got back together kind of after high school, but eventually, broke up for good um because and this is so like weird um now to think about she was in college at this point when we broke up and she was like you just don't have any ambition anymore she's like you know used to do all the plays in high school you wanted to

write for saturday night live when you were young and and now you don't do anything you just hang out with your friends brian and walter and j muse and you know you stop showing any sort of ambition. And she was, you know, in an ambitious world. She was going to college. She knew people who were doing things. When we were dating and I was bringing her here and we were hanging out and whatnot, I was, you know,

interesting because like I was one of a kind in our little small town. But when Kim went to college, she met a lot of Kevin Smiths from all over the world, man, who were just as interesting, if not far more so and shit. And so, you know, realizing that like, oh my God, My shtick doesn't work anymore because there are others out there like me. I have to, for lack of a better term, up my game.

And the desire to be interesting to Kim again is what built all of this. Like me going to make clerks and all of that was just like, well, I got to show ambition and stuff. And then ironically in the process, we just kind of on our separate ways. Again, friends still, and we know each other very well. You know, the person who set me on the path didn't get to take the journey, you know, with me, even though they were the one that was just like, you really need to be you. Like, she reminded me, kicked me in the pants. So, you know, the movie theater here is trapped in time. The seats in theater one are the exact same seats I sat.

And when I went, you know, on my first movie date with Kim Lankron, where I sat with my father. where I sat with my father when I was a kid. They're uncomfortable as fuck. That's why nobody comes here. They go to the Carmikey down the street because they got those layback seats and shit like that. I love that you're advertising it. I know.

Don't go to the Carmichie kids. But it is a nostalgia palace. You know, if you look around the walls, it's all fucking old posters from Kevin Smith movies and shit. And the wall across from me right here is a mural of all famous people that came from Jersey and whatnot. I spend a lot of time looking backwards.

Do you also have the Mission Impossible, the new Mission Impossible poster behind you, too? Yeah, that's what's coming next. It's coming this week and stuff. So you still, you play current movies there too. Oh, yeah. We're not just an art house. We got five screens.

So basically all the time, it's new movies. And this dogma thing we're doing, like I've been on tour with the movie. And they were all of AMC theaters, but I was like, I got to do them at my own theater as well. And they were like, go ahead. And we sold out like five shows. So I'm here for two days doing shows. And that's generally what I do. I come back from Los Angeles all the time

once a month and we do like shows like one of the next shows we got coming up is clerks open all night where you come here at 11 o'clock we locked the doors at midnight and from midnight till 6th of the morning you watch clerks, clerks two, clerks three and the sixth morning we eat a breakfast catered from quick stop and shit. So we like to

do stuff like that. That way we can upcharge man because nobody comes to the movies anymore. I don't know if anybody told you, but film exhibitions in the fucking toilet. Yeah, he's pretty tough. So you've got to figure out ways to have people come and stuff. But yeah, we get new movies all the time in this place. Most people just come, like, you know, we have five sold-out

dog screen. So over the course of the five screenings, two last night and three today, there's a thousand people coming through this bitch. Wow. So, as a lot of popcorn, and that's how you fucking keep a movie theater open, selling popcorn, snacks, and stuff. But, yeah, we do new movies, kids. If you're looking for

a new movie, come to Smog Castle Cinema. Located, not near anything convenient. Hey, listen, maybe your numbers are going to finally skyrocket. Now that you can be in. This could be my moment, man. So we'll go to our final question. Wait, wait, wait, embarrassing story. No, that's what I was going to say.

Through the embarrassing story. I would love to hear an embarrassing story from this time. And then, oh, my God. When I had to go through the file cabinet, this is the only thing in the filing cabinet, in the folder of my cringe moments where I still, to this day, it gives me high. So there was a girl in our town. She lived one street over from my, Her name is Paige Newman.

And the young Kevin Smith referred to as a tough girl. She was a bully. She wasn't really, but she was just more harsh than most people I dealt with at that age and stuff. So Paige Newman, like whenever I was walking by her house, if she was outside, I crossed the street to walk past her house and stuff like that. Just didn't want to get called out by her, especially around in front of people. So one day I'm at our Catholic school OLPH our lady

of perpetual help And you know We wore uniforms So fucking slacks on the boys White shirts green ties green sweaters And the girls wore jumpers You know green checkered white And green checkered jumpers

So I'm on the playground And this is my world right This is where I go to school I know everybody I got it wired Our class sizes are very small and shit like that No more than like 20 per class So I know everybody at OLPH even though I'm in at this point,

fourth grade of nine years old. Once again, a terrible thing happened when I was not. I round the corner on the parking lot where all the kids like played during lunch. And Paige Newman is standing there wearing a jumper. Like she's part of OLPH. So the person that lives by my house and for years, I wouldn't go so far as calling my bully,

but I was fucking scared of her for years. stuff is standing right in front of me and she's entered my world and she's going to be there on a regular basis based on the fact that she's probably just fucking jumper and my first reaction is this i go you're in our school you're in our school you're in our school and i start dancing and fucking clapping and going you're in our school and get away from there still to this day fucking gives me cringed thinking about that was the best i could fucking do you're in our school Oh, my gosh. What, as the kids would say today, a cuck, which for my money is not necessarily a bad thing.

But, oh, my God, what a soft boy. Yeah. You're in our soft boy. The amazing thing is, if you're just listening, Kevin has turned to bright red and it's so endearing. It's still thinking about it. It's like, true, yeah. This will be the next thing I discuss with my therapist, kids. Yeah.

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I love young Kev Smith, because he made some weird decision that old Kev Smith never would make. I don't know why he believed in himself so much, why he thought like he could make a movie, never having done that before and shit. But that kid who was so fucking like run of the mill and shit, never finished anything with the exception of high school,

and had given up, you know, according to his high school girlfriend, lost his ambition. For some reason, and now we know partly, mostly to impress Kim, for some reason felt he could fucking pull it off and went for it. And because he did, I have lived like this, me personally, who is separate from that kid,

have lived like a dream existence. I walked into like a table that he set for me and sat down. And as the kids say, I ate, you know what I'm saying? For the last like 30 fucking years. So I would tell 12-year-old Kevin Smith, like, shit's going to happen. And some of it's going to break your heart. And you're always going to feel this weird emptiness. always going to bug you if your friends do a thing and don't call you. And how you work all of that

out is you event. I can't tell you what happens, but it all adds up to what you become. And if I tell you what we become, you'd be so happy about it. I just don't want to tell you how the sausage is made. You need to see that yourself. And then I got, I'll be holding on to the mantle for you. I can't wait to give it back to you when you get there. That's, that's, that's So well said. I love that. You're also such a filmmaker because you don't want to spoil it for little Kevin. Yeah, yeah, it's great. I do. I'm like, oh, my God, there's such an adventure. The twist. I'm really good. I'm not going to ruin it for you. The third act, ooh. The thing, I always tell kids when I go, like, I'm out there talking, because the older you get,

it's easier to, like, pass on what you've learned and, you know, people take it more seriously than when you were a kid. And most of the time, whenever I get to talk to folks, I'm always telling I'm like, you know, I hate to be this. I don't want to be Tony Robbins, but like you literally, mind is the creator, for heaven's sakes, and you kind of get to set the tone, and it doesn't mean you get to write your own ticket in the world, and you never get what you want on the schedule you want it. Like, you're lucky, and you do get it, but it's never at the time you want it. But at the end of the day, why not try?

Why not, like, die on the cross of originality of doing the thing that you dream about rather than waiting. And like I got this kid, right, like Harley. She's 26, she about to turn 26. And for years, man, even when she was a little kid, she would watch I Carly. And I was the kind of dad. I was like, well, you can watch I Carly or you can write an Icarly. One of them is more fun, you know, and I've always been kind of pushing her.

And she became an actor and she like goes out like every actor, hat and hand, you know, doing auditions and self-tapes trying to get you out. And I'm always like, why are you going out there and asking somebody else to, like, give you your future? Like, write your own ticket, man. Like, you don't, don't wait for somebody to give you permission to make your dream come true. You could go do it. Like, you're people making movies all the time. And I know a guy that just balls you used to live in who did the very same thing. So, like, don't wait to be picked, kids.

No help is ever coming. Pick yourselves, man, and drive that train. Get in and start driving. Don't wait for assistance. Sadly, there may be none, but you find some why not people, man, I always tell cats like, you know, the world is full of why. You tell people, I want to do a thing. First thing, you're not greeted with the Ozana chorus. You're greeted with a big floppy dick of why in the face. Like, why do you think you could do that? Why are you saying this all of a sudden? Why do you feel that way? And I don't. Why are you acting this way? Like, people are suspect because the world's a crap. And if you climb out of it, there are a thousand legs to pull you back down. Because God forbid, you went somewhere and reminded people that they could do the same thing but just didn't and stuff. So you try to get something done. You surround yourself with why not people. So if you're like, I want to try this thing.

I'll step outside my box. Do a thing I'm not known for doing. You want to help and they'll be like, yeah, why not? That sounds cool. Why not? I wasn't going to do anything anyway. So jerk off. Why not?

Let's do that. That's better. You surround yourself with why not individuals. You don't need much more than that, kids. Like you just find yourself a little congregation and you build yourself a church, a very small chapel. and then slowly over a lifetime you turn it into your own fucking cathedral

man and as it breaks the sky you're going to hear from people who have all sorts of criticisms about how you're building your cathedral wrong ignore them go for the sky he says in front of a poster of himself that was fun oh my god I enjoyed the fuck out of that question yeah man thank you thank you so much it's such a pleasure you're such an epic storyteller

obviously but really even just on the podcast already one of my favorite guests You can watch dogmine theaters now, and you can keep up with Kevin Smith online at that Kevin Smith. Podcrushed is hosted by Penn Badgley, Navacavalin, and Sophie Ansari. Our senior producer is David Ansari, and our editing is done by Clips Agency. Special thanks to the folks at Lemonada. And as always, you can listen to Podcrush ad-free on Amazon music with your prime membership. Okay, that's all. Bye.

You know what they told me when I was in the nut house, man? it was really useful. They said, you know, we get trapped by our thoughts, but they're like, your thoughts aren't your own. You like to think that your thoughts are your own. You generate them, but you don't. You generate a very small percentage of your actual thoughts. They said, think about it as standing under a showerhead.

They're like, all those drops, like, are different thoughts, and that's happening constantly, and some of them come from people you'll never meet. You're having thoughts that were started by people in your DNA chain, your genetic chain that have nothing to do with you, man. So it's important to, you know, we need to think, but it's important to stay out of it.

Sometimes you've got to step out of the shower. You know what I'm saying? And how we do that, art. Like listening to the podcast, I'm sure you've got a bunch of people out there you're making healthy with this alone, making movies, writing books, hell, crocheting,

making a cupcake that somebody loves. Make stuff, kids, two paths in this life, creation, destruction, be a creator. That's so true. That's nice. I love that for a final line. Thank you.