Writer-director Kevin Smith first introduced Jay and Silent Bob to audiences in his debut indie feature “Clerks” in 1994. Played by real life friends Jason Mewes and Smith respectively, the characters became a regular feature in many of Smith’s films. Twenty-five years since their debut, the duo are back in “Jay and Silent Bob Reboot.”
The movie was partly inspired by Mewes becoming a father in real life. “He’s the last person in the world you’d hand a Fabergé egg to, let alone a child,” said Smith. “But Jay is the best father I’ve seen in my life. This guy is a super dad and it was so ironic because he’s Captain Irresponsibility. So I said, ‘Man, that’s a funny movie: What if Jay wound up being a dad?’ So it started like that.
“And then I had a heart attack and almost died.” That was in February 2018. “And then the movie took on this completely different dimension.
“I sat there thinking, it was a great life. I have no complaints. But then I thought, wait a second, if I do die tonight, the last movie I will have made is ‘Yoga Hosers,’ oh no! Like, I can’t go out like that. So I was struggling to live through the heart attack and I told the doctor, ‘Save me bro, I gotta make one more movie.’
"So ‘Jay and Silent Bob Reboot’ is meant to be the movie that not just encapsulates my entire career, but my entire life; the movie’s got my wife in it, my mom’s in it, my brother, my sister, my kid, Jay’s wife, Jay’s kid. It talks about all the movies we made. It talks about all the podcasts we do. Kevin Smith is all over it when he’s not playing Silent Bob, he’s playing himself in the movie — they’re two different human beings in the film, but they cross paths.”
Smith, along with Mewes, will be at screenings of the movie at the Music Box Monday. When asked to share a worst moment from his career, Smith talked about the time he was kicked off a flight.
The story made news at the time because Smith tweeted about it as it was happening, but most people don’t know about the aftermath. Ironically enough, the experience led to the making of “Jay and Silent Bob Reboot.”
My worst moment …
“Once upon a time many years ago, I got thrown off an airplane for being too large. And it was hands down the most embarrassing-slash-worst moment of my life. I tweeted about it because when something bad happens to me — good or bad — I broadcast it to the high heavens.
“Years ago, I was in the Bay Area (for a couple of professional events) ... and when I got to the airport to fly home to LA, there was a flight leaving earlier. So I went to the counter and said, ‘Can I get on this flight?’ And they said, ‘Yeah, it’s pretty packed but there’s one seat left.’
“This is Southwest, so there’s no first class, it’s all the same. And there were two women sitting in the front row with an empty seat between them. The armrests between the seats are up and I don’t put them down. Now, are we comfy in these seats? We’re all touching each other, but not in an overly gross way.
“So we’re in our seats. And a person comes up the jetway — the lady who had given me my ticket — and she’s looking right at me. And for some reason the first thought I had was, ‘Oh my God, my mother has died and somebody is coming to tell me.’ So the lady comes right up to me and kneels down and she goes, ‘You have to get off the plane, sir.’ And I said, ‘Why? What happened? Is everything OK?’
“And she said, ‘Yeah. You’re just going to have to come with me.’ And I was like, ‘But why?’ And she goes, ‘Um, it’s a weight thing.’
“And I’m heavy at this point — maybe 280, 290? And my eyes go wide and I look at her. And I said, ‘There’s no weight problem. Look, I can put the armrests down, they were just up when I got here.’ And she goes, ‘Yeah, I’m sorry, you’re just going to have to come with me.’ And I’m like, ‘Honestly, I don’t see a problem here.’
“And the flight attendant is like, ‘I’m sorry, you’ve gotta come.’ And I said, ‘Ma’am, when I sat down, I made eye contact with people who know who I am and know what I do for a living. If you make me get off this plane, it’s going to be really embarrassing for me.’ And she was like, ‘I’m sorry, you have to come with me.’
“Now, if that’s all that had happened, very few people would have known about it. But I was worried in that moment that a bunch of cats would be like, ‘I saw Kevin Smith pulled off of this flight because he’s too heavy.’ So what do I do? I start tweeting about it. This is the early days of Twitter, in 2010, and I start putting up tweet after tweet about the incident, about me being thrown off for being too fat to fly.
“I’m waiting for my regular flight at this point — I’m incredibly hurt and embarrassed, so of course I’m lashing out on Twitter — and somebody from Southwest Airlines comes booking through the terminal, races past me, then doubles back when they see me and they go, ‘Oh Mr. Smith, please stop tweeting!’ (Laughs) And I was like, ‘I will. But we have an issue.’ And they’re like, ‘We know. And we’re going to make it right and make sure you get on the next flight.’
“So I get on the next flight and there was a woman who was sitting in my row and she was heavyset like me. Then all of a sudden one of the flight attendants comes over to her and asks her to speak to them in the galley. She’s gone for five or 10 minutes, then she comes back and she’s crying. And I was like, ‘Are you OK?’ And she was like, ‘Yeah, they were trying to tell me that I was too heavy to be on the flight.’ And I was like, ‘This (crap) just happened to me!’ And she was like, ‘I fly Southwest all the time, I don’t know why they suddenly said it.’ And I honestly feel like they did that to that poor girl just to be like: Look, we do it everybody.
“Because I engaged on social media to be like, ‘Can you believe that happened?’ a lot of people were commiserating — but I also learned bias pretty quickly. And I learned I’ve been above bias for quite some time because of my job. When I was young, people would call me fat all the time. That’s where my sense of humor came from, because you get taunted constantly. But once ‘Clerks’ happened to me, nobody ever called me fat again. It was always big buy: ‘Hey, big guy!’ But because of my job, that insulated me. Oh, you’re famous, you made a movie — and suddenly they don’t go at you.
“But after this, a bunch of people started fat-shaming me. They came out of the woodwork to be like, ‘I hate flying with fat people. I’m glad they threw you off. I hate it when somebody’s flab is touching me.’
“Southwest’s media relations reached out and I thought I was going to get a little bit of justice, but instead all they did was cover their (rear) and then throw out untruths in their story. Like, it was really disconcerting. But it was a reminder that this is how people feel — underneath it all, there’s this enmity for what you look like — they just haven’t told you to your face because you make movies sometimes. And again, it wasn’t everybody. There was a lot of support. But I found a lot of people were just at angry at me for being fat."
If Smith was considered too heavy to fly, how did the airline get him on another flight?
“What a great question, because that’s what befuddled me.
“And then months later somebody told me that all airplanes are weighed. And I was literally the last person on the plane. So they weren’t going, ‘You personally, you’re too fat to fly.’ I guess whoever was in charge was like, the last person who got on the plane put it over the weight limit, you gotta pull somebody off.
“It was a learning moment. I was too close to it to see that it wasn’t necessarily as personal as I took it. But I grew up fat and I was used to taking it personally. So it all just fed that moment and I came up with a take that probably wasn’t the most accurate.
“But I didn’t even know there were things like that. And I’m sure the person pulling me off the flight wasn’t incredibly well-informed in the first place. And they don’t train these cats to be like, in the instance that you have to deal with somebody who is sensitive about their weight, these are some ways to go about this. ”
What was it like in the days afterwards?
“It was pretty bad. And I remember sitting in my house for three days and I couldn’t do anything. I was crippled with fear, panic and anxiety because it was at the top of Google news for three days straight. Every day I’d wake up and there it was, more stories about me and the airline. I was so scared because I had never been at the epicenter of the Eye of Sauron like that. It was pretty horrendous. I didn’t think my life would ever be the same. It was as if for years I had been hiding as a fat person and then suddenly the truth was out, everybody knew. So it was three days of hell, sitting in my house.
“And then, Tiger Woods cheated on his wife and that became the top news story and suddenly everyone forgot that I was fat and everybody was talking about Tiger Woods and his wife instead. Now, I’m not a sports guy and I don’t watch golf, but Tiger Woods is one of my favorite athletes on the planet because he changed the conversation, and people stopped talking about how fat I was and whether or not I should be allowed on a plane.
“And then suddenly it was over and life slowly went back to normal.
“Way bigger things have happened since. I had a heart attack and went vegan and dropped a bunch of weight, so now I’m down to 195-200. I’m at my high school weight.
“About seven days after the Southwest incident was the premiere of ‘Cop Out’ in New York, and I remember reading that the paparazzi were saying a photo of me in an airport would go for 10 thousand bucks. I wish I had been smart enough to Peter Parker that and take a picture of myself and sell it. But instead I was so scared that I would be hunted at the airport. And if I was sitting in a little chair eating a sandwich before a flight? Even worse. So I told Warner Bros. that I couldn’t go to the press junket — I wasn’t getting on a plane after all that — so they let me use the Warner Bros. corporate jet for me and my family. And then I didn’t get on a commercial airliner for close to a year after that. I refused to fly anywhere. I didn’t want to go near an airport.
"I spend a lot of time on the road — over half of my year is spent doing gigs on the road — so I called this bus rental company and was like, ‘Hey man, I’m looking to rent a bus to go out on tour.’ And the guy asked, ‘How many people in your band?’ And I said, ‘It’s just me, one person.’ And he’s like, ‘There’s only gonna be one person on the bus?’ And there’s a long pause and then the guy goes, ‘Are you Kevin Smith?’ And I go, ‘Yeah! How’d you know?’ And he goes, ‘I heard you got thrown off a plane. We expected you to call.’ (Laughs)
“So I rented the bus and loved it, so then I bought a bus and for the next two years anyplace I went outside of Los Angeles was on a bus. And because I had the bus I was like, hey man, it should be more than me on the bus. So I started bringing my friends on the bus. I used to do shows just by myself on stage, but then I started bringing Jason Mewes and we started doing (the podcast) ‘Jay & Silent Bob Get Old.’
“So because of Southwest, I bought a bus. And because of the bus, we built this touring business and we do Jay and Silent Bob tours across the country. We’ve been doing it the better part of 10 years. We know that we can sell out the Music Box because people will sit there and watch us talk about the old movies. So I was like, ‘Hey, let’s make a new movie and bring it out on the road.’
“So this new movie, ‘Jay and Silent Bob Reboot’ — and how we’re touring it — I can draw a direct line back to the worst day of my life and Southwest Airlines.
"Ultimately when you talk about the worst thing that ever happened to you, it’s all a matter of perspective. Because in the moment, nothing was worse than that. But as I stand here years later I can tell you, oh, because of that all my dreams came true. Go figure.”
When Smith and Mewes come to Chicago, will it be by bus?
“(Laughs) No! Oh, no. Years ago I stopped taking the bus and went back to airlines. And I have since flown Southwest Airlines.”
The takeaway …
“Keep your mouth shut, Kev.
“Nobody would have known about that incident if it were not for me — I was the inciting party. Even if one person had tweeted, ‘I think I saw Kevin Smith got thrown off an airplane,’ they wouldn’t have said it was for being too fat because they didn’t announce that. Nobody knew that. And then I told the world: They threw me off the plane for being fat.
"Growing up a fat kid, you always try to make fun of yourself first. You gotta steal their thunder. And I’ve been stealing thunder my whole life, always being the first to say, ‘I’m a fat guy.’ And I did it in this instance and it was absolutely wrong. If I hadn’t done it, nobody would have heard about it.
“That being said, if it didn’t happen, would I be touring right now?”
