The Joe Rogan Experience - #134 - Kevin Smith (Part 3)

Episode Date: September 1, 2011

Joe sits down with Kevin Smith.

I went up to Canada where we sold the movie, and I worked for somebody else. So when I went up to Canada, I traveled with the movie as an emissary, same way I would in the past, whereas in the States this time around, every dime we made or wasn't spent was coming out of our pockets. So we played it. It was ours. Above, it was theirs.

And it was weird. I did Bristle once or twice just being, I won't call it owned, but like I had to do it their way, not my way. Like we had utter freedom with this flick, doing it our way down here. And it proved smart, financially sensible, inspiring, you know, created more value for something that might not have had that same value coming out the gate without any undue attention or different attention. So for us, I don't know, it was kind of exciting. Well, it's such a bold move because it really is the right time, but someone has to jump in and say this is the right time.

Someone has to jump in and say I have such a connection with social media and essentially a gigantic amount of my supporters and fans can find me. They know what I'm doing and they're aware. They're tuned into it on a regular basis. So you can just say, hey, boom, here's my movie. I had a theory, man. I had a theory because I could put asses in seats for just me standing there

talking. You do a lot of that, right? I do a lot of it. It is backdoor comedy. I never call it stand-up. You were saying, before this show started, Kevin was saying that he could never be a comedian because of the rejection. I'm like, you're crazy. I think you are a comedian.

I think you just came about it in a different way. Yeah, but I didn't earn it the way comics who fucking slug it out their everyday rink rats of comedy, if you will. I didn't do that. I fucking carpet-bagged in off of something else.

But that doesn't matter. As someone who did come up dirty, I came up as dirty as you can, dude. I hosted Jack and Jill strip clubs in Woonsocket, Rhode Island, where half the people in the audience spoke Portuguese. They didn't know what the fuck I was saying. To say I bombed would be ridiculous,

because to bomb, you have to at least get a sympathy laugh or a clap. I got just straight silence, and that was just one gig. And someone who came up doing bachelor parties with no microphones, it doesn't matter. You're still a comic, because you're funny. Because whatever you did, you didn't have to do the stupid shit that we did to do it.