The Big Picture: The Fall of Kevin Smith

[Darth_Payn]

An honest and amusing explanation for what Bob first liked about Kevin Smith. Nice work, bob. I saw and enjoyed Clerks, Mallrats, Dogma, and Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back. Cop Out was alright, just not up there with his best work. I totally forgot he made Zach & Miri Make A Porno, because it didn't really "feel" like a Smith movie.

Hipster? Really? The language alone tells me how out of touch with the generation you're talking about here, and the roots from which Smith himself came. It's painted all over this. You have these ideas of things so colored by the now, that if you ever had sight on that period in time, or that generation, you've lost it. Wholly. Completely.

You do understand that hipster was actually a word at the time and his use of the term is appropriate to the culture he was describing, right? It's sort of like you heard the word "hipster" and tuned out.

I admit, I giggled at that screen shot of those '90's hipsters. Bob set aside all of March 2013 for his issues with that decade. Maybe he'll clear up more of it next week, since that was the decade Smith and Tarantino were on top of their game.

 

[PhiMed]

I was thinking nearly the same thing. MovieBob was what, twelve when Clerks came out?

I can't find his actual Date of birth, I'm sure someone can but well clerks came out in 1994, being a Gen X'er, the youngest bob could have been at the time is 20 (Gen X being 1960 to early 1980's) if he was 12 he'd be a Gen Y or Millennial.

Harvard defines Generation X as people born between 1965 and 1984, so the youngest he could've been when it came out is 10.

 

[MB202]

I wasn't confused/angered by Bob's remarks on Kevin Smith in last week's Escape to the Movies, since I follow Bob's blog and thus I've heard his reasonings on why he doesn't like Kevin Smith, at least not anymore. So it didn't bother me at all, though it's handy to have this video to help explain himself.

 

[Soulrender95]

I was thinking nearly the same thing. MovieBob was what, twelve when Clerks came out?

I can't find his actual Date of birth, I'm sure someone can but well clerks came out in 1994, being a Gen X'er, the youngest bob could have been at the time is 20 (Gen X being 1960 to early 1980's) if he was 12 he'd be a Gen Y or Millennial.

Harvard defines Generation X as people born between 1965 and 1984, so the youngest he could've been when it came out is 10.

I was also kinda unspeakingly taking into account that he has said grew up as a nes player in the 80's, if it was 84 then he'd not have grown up on the nes but rather the Snes, so 1980/82 is around the last point that he could have been born that would give him time to have been an active nes player in the 80's.

I think I've inadvertently started an investigation into finding out how old Mr.Chipman really is.

No hints people we shall do this by solid detective work!

Edit: oh dear me, I just realised my bad maths , serves me right for trying to post quickly... Still I think sometime in the 1970's seems the most reasonable, probably around the midpoint, 1975/6.

 

[Aardvaarkman]

The Fall of Kevin Smith

Bob explains his feelings on director Kevin Smith.

Very misleading episode summary there, Bob. You didn't get around to explaining your feelings at all. A better summary would be "Kevin Smith is a filmmaker who made Clerks."

 

[Stilkon]

I saw Clerks for the first time last year and, given that I'm not of Moviebob's generation, the context wasn't there for me. What really sold me, though, was the characters; Dante and Randall were really fascinating, and surprisingly philosophical for their age. As said in the video, the acting and framing weren't all that great, but damn if I didn't care about them.

 

[Aardvaarkman]

I was thinking nearly the same thing. MovieBob was what, twelve when Clerks came out?

I can't find his actual Date of birth, I'm sure someone can but well clerks came out in 1994, being a Gen X'er, the youngest bob could have been at the time is 20 (Gen X being 1960 to early 1980's) if he was 12 he'd be a Gen Y or Millennial.

Movie Bob was born in the early 80's he's 30 something, so very late Gen X.

Indeed. The definition of "Gen X" has really been stretched. Originally the cut-off was around 1975. But for some reason that got extended to 1980... and now people are including the early 80s in Gen X??

I call BS. If you were born after 1980, you're most definitely Generation Y. Even being born between 1975 and 1980 is borderline X/Y.

 

[The Grim Ace]

I was preparing for college when that came out. When my teenaged nephew saw me listening to this, he said he'd never seen the movie. I was about to fix that blasphemous oversight when I realized he was only 13. It's going on the To Do list when he graduates. It also reminded me I was getting old. I'm not old! *shakes cane at modem* Get off my non-existent lawn! I'm not old until they have Nine Inch Nails on the Oldies station.

On the oldies station near my house they not only have Nine Inch Nails on the oldies, they even have the Smashing Pumpkins. I never felt so old as I did when the song changed from Comfortably numb to 1979.

 

[walsfeo]

I never liked Clerks, it just wasn't interesting to me. Probably for the same reason I don't like watching sports.

However I always like SilentBob as a character. Though I've never worshiped Kevin Smith I've found him more interesting in the years since Clerks as geek celeb like Wil Wheaton.

 

[Aardvaarkman]

Harvard defines Generation X as people born between 1965 and 1984, so the youngest he could've been when it came out is 10.

Yeah, well the Harvard Center is out of line in that one - very few other researchers use that definition. And the Harvard Center chose those dates to artificially force the "generations" into equal 20-year spans. So, BS, basically. The majority of researchers appear to use 1981 as a cut-off.

 

[Seracen]

I will agree with some of he posts here and on FB. While I find I rarely agree with Bob on things nowadays, I totally respect his opinions, and I appreciate his research and breakdown of pop-culture. I may grumble sometimes, but overall I enjoy his content!

That being said, I never really connected with Kevin Smith as much as Bob seems to have, the only movie of his that I really liked was Dogma...and I can't say as I watch that with any regularity. So while I get where he is coming from, I still consider it a tad over-reactive...though I imagine a few more episodes will clarify that confusion for me.

Incidentally, there seems to have been some great "defend Micheal Bay" movement in the cinema sphere as of late. I always appreciated his action scenes, but I still detest what he does to franchises...much like Brett Ratner. Rush Hour was fun schlock...but the moment he touched XMen...he became reviled.

It isn't as if I hate these directors as human beings...and I will admit that I still enjoy the mindless action in Transformers and Xmen...but I wouldn't say I look forward to re-watching any of those films...and might attest that they did as much damage to the franchise, as good.

 

[Stabby Joe]

You say "fall" of Kevin Smith? Fall from what exactly? He seems to be very much happy with his current approach to creative media.

Nonetheless, it's good we are finally going to get what the deal is with Bob on Smith since this actually stems long before your last review mentioned in this video, I'd argue it became something of a running gag at times...

...and because of it can I also say now, this better not develop into one of those "this is my opinion but you are still wrong and I am right" platforms of thought. Regardless of one's own personal feelings on the matter, like it or not Smith still has a sizable fan base that enjoys his current output, something I can see not being brought up in these coming episodes...

...Red State anyone?

 

[Piorn]

So... it's "good", not because it's good but because it was the best thing we had at the time?
I don't get it.
Looks like Nostalgia goggles to me.

 

[Darth Sea Bass]

I didn't hate Red State. I remember quite liking it even if I wouldn't go out and buy the DVD I won't be switching channels if I came across it on TV either.

 

[Hutzpah Chicken]

Heh, I know and understand most of what Bob likes to discuss in this show, but I've never heard of Kevin Smith until this episode. How Bob speaks about him makes it evident that knowing who he is now is rather redundant.

 

[Seldon2639]

The problem with frame of reference is that you're either there with it, or you're not. I remember being twenty-one when I had to watch Ghost World for a college class. It didn't appeal to me, it was pretentious, stilted, and very much in the "if you're 18 and think you're smarter than everyone, this is the movie for you." And the thing is, I could look at it and say "my 18-year-old self would have eaten this up."

Kevin Smith's movies have always been "can you find yourself inside the proper frame of reference for this." If you have that frame of reference (disaffected gen-xer, love for nerd culture ephemera, some amount of social awkwardness/distance) you could really fall in love with his earlier works. But where Tarantino's interests continued to be over-the-top violence and revenge fantasies, and Rodriguez's interests remained (excluding the Spy Kids movies) basically the same "what if John Ford had loved violence and been born in the 1970s" mold, Smith's interests changed.

He probably could have made a decent career out of sticking to those same kinds of pop culture references and "life as gen-Xers know it", but he didn't. The reference point for his movies changed, and many people were no longer on the same wavelength. The biggest "bad" movie he's accused of making is Red State. And I personally didn't like it, I wasn't in the right frame of reference for it. But saying "he stopped making movies that catered to my point of reference" is equivalent to him losing touch is just silly.

His interests became political, or at least social, commentary. That might be less fun to watch for someone who isn't interested (or disagrees with him), but treating that as a failure is like saying that because someone who grew up on Leave it to Beaver wouldn't like Django Unchained, Django is "bad." Or that someone who doesn't like giant robots not liking Pacific Rim makes it a bad movie.

This entire argument by Bob smacks of "he was supposed to make movies that catered to my likes and resonated with me, and then went and made movies that catered to other likes and resonated with other people but not me."

 

[Atmos Duality]

For the longest time, to avoid needless drama, I had to bite my tongue on the subject of Kevin Smith, especially around people my own age. He was a huge Sacred Cow, especially while I was in high school and community college.

I've seen Mallrats, Clerks 2, and Dogma; the latter literally over 30 fucking times (my community college would play it; Every. Single. Friday. At the student center. I was a video tech at the time).

Dude was HUGE, and I never really "got" why. To be frank, most of the people I met who revered him at the time were also lazy nerdy stoners, and while that describes a great number of folks out of that generation (at least, around here in Chicagoland), I never thought of him as a "Stoner Flick" guy.

Every time I thought I got Kevin Smith's audience figured out, someone else would disprove it, and he really frustrates me as a creator.

Even to this day, I have only ever been mildly amused by Smith's films, at best. They aren't "great" in my eyes, and they don't "speak" to me in a way that I connect with, and I grew up in a similar geeky culture; I understand the jokes and the references.

But frankly, Kevin Smith's work largely annoys me and to this date I cannot figure out why. (though I admittedly really like what Smith does with Silent Bob...most of the time)

Seeing this from the perspective of a jilted believer will hopefully be enlightening, or at least interesting.

Harvard defines Generation X as people born between 1965 and 1984, so the youngest he could've been when it came out is 10.

Yeah, well the Harvard Center is out of line in that one - very few other researchers use that definition. And the Harvard Center chose those dates to artificially force the "generations" into equal 20-year spans. So, BS, basically. The majority of researchers appear to use 1981 as a cut-off.

Not trying to be snarky, because I'm curious about this since I was born in 84'.
Over the years, I've seen all manner of dates offered but nothing definitive.

But there's no other way to say this so...*sigh*

*citations needed*

 

[Ticklefist]

Kevin Smith movies were a photograph of us and how we perceived the world in our early adulthoods. It's an embarrassing thing to look at in hindsight but we weren't wrong about those movies, they were great. That is until Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back. That was the point it all kinda became silly and stopped trying to be relevant. I would say Dogma but that would be dishonest. Everyone loved Dogma at the time. It's only now that we think it sucks.

And before you do it Bob, don't do it, Bob. Mallrats was the best one!

 

[Pescetarian]

You didn't call it "Revenge of the Smith"?

DUUUUUUUDE.

Also, I think I gave Dogma way too much credit because it's the closest we've ever gotten to a "Good Omens" movie.

 

[The Hungry Samurai]

There are two types of Kevin Smith Movies. Good Kevin Smith movies, and the movies Kevin Smith makes to pay for good Kevin Smith movies. Cop Out, Mallrats, Jay and Sient Bob Strike Back, Jersey Girl.... are not good Kevin Smith movies.