Kevin Smith On The Heart Attack That Saved His Life & The Art Of Prolific Creativity

About 610,000 people die of heart disease in the United States every year. In other words, America's number one killer claims 1 out of every 4 deaths. Not all heart attacks are fatal. But when your heart's left anterior descending artery becomes 100% blocked, the result is a massive heart attack known as The Widowmaker. Few survive its fatal clutch. Kevin Smith is the rare exception that proves the rule. The arch villain in his own personal superhero comic book narrative, Kevin's Widowmaker nemesis failed in it's dastardly quest to claim his young life. Instead, like Spiderman in the aftermath of that fateful bite, it made our protagonist hero stronger — more convicted about his life, purpose, family and art. One might even say it gave him superpowers — a new life animated by an urgent productivity. An emboldened creativity. And, more than anything, a spirit ennobled. This week's guest beat the odds. But this should come as no surprise for those well versed in the Kevin Smith canon. Because Kevin has always been an outlier — a fiercely independent voice who has been successfully cutting against the grain for as long as he can remember. Today this charismatic master storyteller shares his most amazing tale to date — the story of Kevin Smith. For the few unfamiliar among us, Kevin is a filmmaker, actor, comedian, comic book writer, author and early podcast pioneer. In 1994 he burst into prominence with his hyper low-budget comedy Clerks, a film he wrote, directed, co-produced, and filmed in the convenience store where he worked. Premiering at Sundance, it was feted with the festival's highest award before going on to become an indie cult classic. In addition to countless appearances in both movies and television, Kevin has created a litany of films, including Mallrats, Chasing Amy, Dogma, Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, Cop Out, Jersey Girl, Red State, Tusk, Yoga Hosers and Clerks 2. Just last week he wrapped production on Jay and Silent Bob Reboot. An iconic and beloved character amongst indie film fans and comic book nerds, Kevin is immediately recognizable and famous for his hockey jerseys, backwards hat and well, his weight. But in February of 2018, between sets of one his stand-up shows, Kevin suffered his aforementioned heart attack. A lifestyle change was needed. Desperately. Harley Quinn Smith (a vegan herself) suggested Kevin adopt a plant-based diet. Kevin obliged. For the first time in ages, he began exercising. In short shrift, he lost 50 pounds. His blood work normalized. And the rest is history. Today we unpack all of it. How maxing out his credit cards spawned an entire career. His perspective on podcasting as one of the very first to embrace the medium. And of course the amazing transformation that compelled me to seek him out. Heart disease is ubiquitous. But as Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn is so fond of saying, it's a toothless paper tiger that need not exist. So if you feel stuck in lifestyle habits that are leading to your own fateful confrontation with that villainous Widowmaker, my greatest hope is that this conversation catalyzes the required changes well within your grasp to master — because inside all of us is a latent superhero waiting to unleash its fury on the unnecessary evil that is heart disease. As a long time fan of Kevin, it was an absolute delight and honor to spend a few hours with him. I love everything about this exchange. I hope you do too. Final note: I conducted this interview at Kevin's house, so no video version of this episode. Enjoy! Rich Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Rich Roll?

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• 0:44Rich Roll?

  It's kind of an amazing thing. For listeners of the show, all you special people, we're offering an exclusive $20 off an annual subscription right now. To get it, go to meals.richroll.com, take your quick personalization quiz, and enter promo code RICHROLL20 at checkout.

• 1:05Kevin Smith?

  Like, I realize it's way more interesting if you're the art project. If, like, don't identify as an artist, be the art. Just spin as many plates as possible. Do all the shit you dream about. You grow a layer, you know, of skin, thicker skin, but also you just learn what it is. You learn to take it all in stride. You can't believe the people that say, like, "You're a genius," and you can't believe the people who say, "You're an idiot." You just do you. There's no fucking help coming. I'll be honest with you, no one's coming to help you make your dreams come true. That's up to you.

• 1:38Rich Roll?

  That's Kevin Smith, and this is the Rich Roll Podcast. The Rich Roll Podcast. Hey everybody. How you guys doing? What's happening? My name is Rich Roll. I am your host. This is my podcast. Welcome or welcome back. Good to be with you guys today. Today, very excited to share an amazing conversation with filmmaker, actor, comedian, comic book writer, author, and host of 8 Billion Podcast, the one and only Kevin Smith. You know this guy, right?

• 2:22Rich Roll?

  The darling of the emergent indie film movement in the 1990s. He's the guy behind Clerks, Mallrats, Chasing Amy, Dogma, a whole battery of movies. In fact, right now, he's shooting another Jay and Silent Bob movie. It's called Jay and Silent Bob Reboot. I think it's coming out in October. And I've been a fan of Kevin's for as far back as I can remember. I've spent countless hours enjoying his movies, probably more hours enjoying his many, many podcast conversations. And of course, today, we explore his remarkable career. But that's not really the impetus behind why I wanted to sit down with Kevin.

• 3:03Rich Roll?

  The true motivation behind it was to explore this episode that occurred in his life in February of 2018, when he suffered and survived a massive heart attack. Kevin had a 100% blockage of his anterior descending artery, most commonly known as the widowmaker. And this is the type of heart attack that most people do not survive to see another day. Kevin was lucky enough to survive it. And I wanted to explore this experience with him. Of course, what it was like, what happened. And more importantly, the lifestyle changes that he has adopted in the aftermath of this experience, an experience that is visited upon many.

• 3:48Rich Roll?

  As I've said many times on this podcast, heart disease is America's number one killer. One out of every three people suffer a heart attack in their life. And again, most people do not survive a widowmaker heart attack. Kevin did. He's here today to share that story with us. We're going to unpack all of it in a couple of few, but first...

• 4:13Rich Roll?

  All right, Kevin Smith. So of course, we talk about the genesis of his filmmaking career, the story behind Clerks, his rise to fame from this little, tiny, single indie film that he made by maxing out his credit cards that ultimately spawns this amazing career. We talk about his journey as an early adopter to the podcast medium and the podcast network that he now owns and runs. But mostly, this is an exploration of Kevin's remarkable transformation in the wake and the aftermath of his heart attack. We talk about his adoption

• 4:49Rich Roll?

  of a vegan diet, losing 50 pounds, and how this experience has shaped his sense of himself. Kevin is nothing if not entertaining. He's incredibly charismatic, super honest. I really enjoyed this conversation and excited to share it with you today. So without further ado, this is me and Kevin Smith. Super nice to meet you.

• 5:18Kevin Smith?

  Nice to meet you, sir. How are you?

• 5:19Rich Roll?

  I'm doing good. Thanks for taking the time to do this.

• 5:21Kevin Smith?

  Oh, my God. No worries, man. Any chance to talk about health?

• 5:25Rich Roll?

  We're gonna talk about all kinds of stuff.

• 5:27Kevin Smith?

  Something I never talked about prior to my health episode, but yeah.

• 5:30Rich Roll?

  Are you getting tired of sharing the story?

• 5:32Kevin Smith?

  Mm-mm.

• 5:33Rich Roll?

  No? It's incredibly empowering and inspirational. I mean, heart disease is America's number one killer.

• 5:40Kevin Smith?

  That's what they say.

• 5:41Rich Roll?

  It's something that impacts almost every family in one way or the other, either directly or indirectly.

• 5:48Kevin Smith?

  My old man was, well, he had heart problems. He had a lot of problems. He was diabetic. And that was the bullet we were mostly trying to dodge in my family growing up. My father and his entire side of the family were diabetics. My mother, we didn't know what her side of the family was because she was adopted. So, you know, we knew what her adopted family had, but genetically or whatever, we didn't know where she was coming from. She still don't know where she came from. And as she's gotten older, she's found a host of problems that like, oh, I guess that's what came from her biological parents. But the old man, yeah, he was all sorts unhealthy most of his life. When I was on the operating table...

• 6:30Kevin Smith?

  The doctor goes, uh, I'm gonna put a stent in you. Do you know what that is? I said, yeah, man, my mom's got a stent in, in her heart. And he goes, oh, does your family have a history of heart problems? I said, no, man, my mother just has a stent in her heart. And my father died of a massive heart attack, age sixty seven. So he's like, we gotta move fast. So, uh, yeah, it's, it was weird. You would think because of my father and because of my mother, that I would have kept an eye toward heart health. But, you know, when I was a kid, I was a cigarette smoker. So obviously I didn't, I wasn't thinking then. Uh, and then, you know, even the night I had the heart attack, I wasn't thinking, this is a heart attack.

• 7:11Kevin Smith?

  So much so that, you know, I, when the doctor told me in the ER, you're having a massive heart attack. My first thought was like, this guy's a fucking quack. Like, there's no way, this is not what a heart attack feels like. I'm not even in pain. I just can't.

• 7:23Rich Roll?

  Yeah, our idea of what a heart attack is, is clutching your chest and, you know.

• 7:27Kevin Smith?

  It's Fred Sanford and Sanford and Son. You scream out Elizabeth and you grab your chest. And there's so many other symptoms that they don't teach you about, and which are very easy to look at. I guess they, maybe they don't impart them because it would make everybody panic. The moment you felt nauseated, you would think, oh, my God, am I having a heart attack? Cause nausea is part of it.

• 7:43Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 7:44Kevin Smith?

  Heavy sweats, which I sweat when I fucking breathe. So like, that is a symptom. Who knew and stuff. And breathing, respiratory, like that's what I had mistook it for respiratory issue. Cause I couldn't quite catch my breath.

• 7:57Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 7:57Kevin Smith?

  And what we found out was later on, the, the, uh, LAD, the artery goes across the front of your heart, was a hundred percent occluded, which I mean is blocked, I guess, with a, you know, a fuck ton of, uh, of, uh, cholesterol. And so, uh, that, that, uh, blockage right then and there, that's what my man had to get through with his stent in order to open that up. And then.

• 8:21Rich Roll?

  The widow maker.

• 8:22Kevin Smith?

  The widow maker, the dreaded widow maker, which sounds so metal. Sounds also painful.

• 8:27Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 8:27Kevin Smith?

  And that's the thing that I would love to impart to people is like, I was never in pain. Couldn't quite catch my breath. And because of that blocked. L A D, they told me later on, think of like a garden hose when you fold it over and the pressure builds up and it gets fat on one end. That was pushing down on my heart, which in turn was pushing down on my lungs. And that's why I was identifying it as respiratory. And that's why people drop dead of these heart attacks left and right, because you don't, like, I would not have ever called an ambulance. Like, I felt uncomfortable, but I was never like, oh, this hurts, please get me help. Like, it was just like, oh, I don't feel so good. And then I would have fucking dropped dead if they hadn't called the ambulance and stuff. That's how those heart attacks happen.

• 9:11Kevin Smith?

  I was always so surprised going up every time you read about a relative, like, just dropped dead. It's like, how's that fucking possible? You gotta know a heart attack's coming. You gotta, you gotta be able to feel it, and you do. They just don't really tell you what to look for. Now I know what to look for.

• 9:25Rich Roll?

  But leading up to that, had you had spells or incidents where you hadn't had, there was no sort of outward, you know?

• 9:31Kevin Smith?

  I mean, I was always heavyset.

• 9:34Rich Roll?

  Being overweight.

• 9:35Kevin Smith?

  Overweight, right? And there was one now in retrospect, like, after the heart attack, because the doctor, my cardiologist, Dr. Leydenheim, was like, do you ever remember feeling the way that you felt that day? He goes, that's an important feeling to remember. You're gonna need to, if you sense that in any way, shape, or form, get to a hospital.

• 9:54Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 9:55Kevin Smith?

  I said, he said, do you remember? I said, yeah. I said, now that I think about it, it actually felt like, I felt it once before. And he goes, when? I said, I was in Florida, down in Sarasota, and it was around this time last year, it was around December, January, or something. And we were shooting this little horror movie called The Kilroy Was Here. And at one point, my kid was down there, she was in the scenes, and at one point, like, I went and laid down the trailer, because I was like, oh, man, I feel like, it wasn't indigestion, but I felt like I was blocked, like, in my esophagus. Like, yeah, I'm no doctor, so here I am, trying to, you know, give my prognosis. But it felt like I was, like, like I had too much phlegm in my esophageal pass. That's what I thought it was.

• 10:40Kevin Smith?

  And I was like, oh, my God, I've clearly smoked too much weed, created way too much mucus for myself, and so now it's uncomfortable. And I would be like, I just gotta eat hard food. Like, give me some crackers, man, that'll wash it down. Like, in my head, it was just like, oh, this is in your esophagus, and in your throat, on the way down to the stomach and shit. So I was like, I'm gonna lay down for a minute, man, this feels irritating. That was the exact same feeling I'd had night of a heart attack. One other time, I was playing this video game.

• 11:13Kevin Smith?

  Raven, the Redwoods, this game that is part of this video game series.

• 11:22Kevin Smith?

  Call of Duty. So they've got a mini zombie game within the game. And so I was a character in the game. They scanned me in and Kevin Smith was a character. So me and the game creator went to Twitch and streamed like us playing the game for an hour. So right at the end of the hour of playing the game, we're playing in a big TV and stuff. It's a first person shooter. So you're moving around real fast and whatnot. He is. I'm not good at that kind of shit. So as I'm sitting there playing a game, like three, four minutes left in the entire thing, the hour long livestream. Suddenly I feel like really nauseated and I was like, hey, man, where's the nearest bathroom? He goes, oh, we're almost done. And I was like, I know, I just, I gotta go like right now. And he goes, it's out the door across the hallway.

• 12:06Kevin Smith?

  Jumped off camera, got outside the door, which was like from here to that door, only about like five, six feet away. Got into the hallway, felt like I was about to vomit and pass out at the same time. Went into the bathroom, immediately went down on the floor, like on purpose by choice. And laid down, trying to get like some of my bearings under me. Like I just felt a way that I'd never felt in my life.

• 12:31Rich Roll?

  And how long before the heart attack was that?

• 12:33Kevin Smith?

  That was months, a couple of months before. So when I got up, like I threw up a little. Nothing like chunky, chunky, but it was just bile fluid. And after I threw up, it felt a little better. So when I got out of the bathroom, they're like, are you okay? And I was like, yeah, man, that was fucked up. Like I was on the bathroom floor and stuff. And then I threw up and now I feel better. And the folks there were like, oh, well. You don't play games very often, do you? I said, no, they're like, you have motion sickness. And I was like, oh, is that right? They're like, yeah, motion sickness manifests itself as the body thinking it's being poisoned. So you threw up. So I think, you know, if you don't play games, that can happen a lot, man. You know, we were moving pretty fast and it all made sense. I was like, oh, my God, that's of course.

• 13:17Kevin Smith?

  And they play video games for a living, so they would know this and this is plausible. Now, in retrospect, I was probably at ninety, ninety-eight percent occlusion. And I was going through a heart attack like episode or whatever they call them, the fucking tremors in advance of a heart attack.

• 13:32Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 13:32Kevin Smith?

  So then when I had the heart attack, that was, that was big. Now I can associate what that was going, oh, that's what it felt like. And now knowing what's going on in my body, thanks to a medical professional, I could kind of extrapolate and go like, all right, if I was at a hundred percent blockage, then I had my heart attack. Maybe I was at ninety-eight percent blockage that night. And maybe I was at like ninety-five percent blockage the other point. And that was my body trying to say like, bitch, something bad is going on here. But I wasn't smart enough to put it together, which is in turn really stupid because I come from two heart.

• 14:08Rich Roll?

  But you don't associate nausea with that. That's not the traditional idea of.

• 14:12Kevin Smith?

  True.

• 14:13Rich Roll?

  And you were given a perfectly legitimate explanation.

• 14:16Kevin Smith?

  It seemed pretty good. Like, I was like, well, that makes sense. But like now, I, I should have been, I'm blaming nobody. I'm not saying like this is their fault. They gave me bad info. I should have been more alert to the idea that like you could drop at any fucking moment. Your father did, like, you know, sixty-seven. Um, and your mom's got heart problems up the ass, which is mixed bad metaphor. But like, she's, you know, that's in your family. It's in your face, but in my head, I was like, well, if anything happens, I'm sure it's not going to happen until I'm in my sixties. Like never occurred to me in a million years.

• 14:52Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 14:53Kevin Smith?

  It could happen to me in my forties, which is why when it was happening, I was like, no, no. And the doctor's like, you're having a massive heart attack. I'm like, oh, this guy's an idiot. He's a quack, but. I was, he was right, I was wrong.

• 15:03Rich Roll?

  So walk me, walk me through the day, you were taping your special.

• 15:07Kevin Smith?

  Yeah, I was doing a evening, well, it was called Silent But Deadly, the evening with Kevin Smith's show, where essentially, normally I go do Q and A, but we're shooting it for Comedy Dynamics, and with an eye toward, you know, Showtime special. So the idea in those, I guess, is that you shoot two shows in a night.

• 15:24Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 15:24Kevin Smith?

  Two, like, one at seven, one at nine, and then you combine the two shows, make the special. So you look the same in both episodes, the audience is different.

• 15:33Kevin Smith?

  And if they're good at their jobs, you know, the audience never really notices, the home viewing audience never really notices that, oh, this is cut from two shows. I only say that because I only shot one show that night. It's a low-key way of bragging about how my entire comedy special was only shot, cut from one show. So in any event, we shot the first show. That day, I smoked a bunch, didn't do anything really strenuous or anything like that. I was a huge milk drinker in those days, so I drank a lot of milk. I used to drink about two gallons of milk a day, probably why I had a heart attack. Probably had a lot to do with it. That is an awful lot of cow. So, I remember I talked to my wife, and she was like, um, do you want me to go? Because it was in Glendale. And I was like, no, I mean, you know, you've seen me talk at fucking Zillion times, only if you want to go.

• 16:18Kevin Smith?

  And she was like, oh, I'll still hang out here. So drove into the, to Glendale, you know, I'd smoked a bunch. When I got there, I smoked more.

• 16:30Kevin Smith?

  Then we did the show, everything went off without a hitch. Then I got offstage, and I chit chatted with like, some people over there, the lady from Showtime. Talked to Brian, who was directing it and stuff. He was like, that's great. He's going, we could almost cut the whole thing from that one, too bad we gotta do a second show. I was like, no, I got a whole two hours worth of different shit, I'm ready to go. So I went into the green room, and I, there's milk there, in a glass bottle. In ice. So I cracked it open, took a big thing of milk, big drig. And then I was suddenly fairly nauseated. My first thought was like, ew, somebody fucking pissed in the milk or something like the milk's been fucked with.

• 17:13Kevin Smith?

  Like, you know, it's gotta be bad milk. I think I've just had some bad milk. So I felt weird and I asked Jordan, who runs our company and Emily, who does my hair makeup. I was like, hey, man, can I have the room? Like, cause when I'm sick, I don't want to be around people. I just want to go off and fucking die like an animal. So I was like, can I have the room? I don't feel that well. And they were like, yeah, totally. And they stepped out and I laid down on the floor. Always key sign kids. If you're laying down on the floor in public, get a doctor. So there I am. I'm laying down on the floor, feel nauseated, feel hot. And I throw up, bile, and then I feel a little better. Then Emily comes in and she's like, are you okay? And I was like, yeah, can you

• 17:58Kevin Smith?

  turn on the hair dryer and just dry me off like I'm sweating profusely and stuff? So she's like, yeah, totally. So she sits me in the chair, puts the hair dryer on me. And as she's drying my hair, you know, she feels my neck and she goes, you know, this is gonna sound creepy, but I feel your neck all the time for while I'm doing your hair. Never felt this before. You're freezing cold on your neck. Like, you sure you maybe something we should look into? And I was like, yeah, I don't feel great. I was like, I'm gonna, I want, I need a couch. Somebody find a couch. This is at the theater, the Alex Theater in Glendale. So Jordan found a couch and I was like, all right, I'm just gonna lay down here for a while, man, which is like, you know, now again, knowing what happened, like, that's how fucking people die. You know, I'm like, I'm just gonna lay down. I don't feel good. I'm gonna lay down. And, you know, meanwhile, my heart was

• 18:44Kevin Smith?

  fucking attacking me. Or, you know, fair enough, I had attacked it most of my life with all the shit I ate. So the heart was like turned abouts fair play. So I'm laying on this couch and I can't get comfortable. Flip around and stuff, which is weird because I could fall asleep with the drop of a hat. So then there's a chair there. So I went to the chair and sat in it and I put my arms above my head to facilitate breathing. Cause I couldn't quite catch my breath. I was like,

• 19:10Rich Roll?

  But no like tightness in your chest or anything like that?

• 19:13Kevin Smith?

  No arm, no, you know, they tell you like your left arm, your right arm goes numb. It's gonna feel like an elephant sitting on your chest. None of that shit. Just couldn't quite like catch my breath. This is a normal breath up to the top. Then I could only go.

• 19:29Kevin Smith?

  And I couldn't ring the bell. I couldn't. Like get it all the way up to the top. So I put my hands above my head. I was raising them up like this, like, you know, like a, like a football referee. Try facilitate breathing. And so I'm sitting in the chair and Jordan kind of creeps in around the corner. She goes, you all right? I was like, I feel really fucked up. I've never felt like this before in my life. I was like, maybe I should see a doctor.

• 19:56Kevin Smith?

  She's like, well, we canceled the second show. And I was like, why would you cancel the second show? And she was like, I've never seen you be sick before. This is really weird. So called off the second show. I was like, all right, well, if the show's called off. And I felt okay because Brian said he could cut everything out of one. So I was like, all right, we're covered there. I was like, if the show's called called off, maybe I should go see a doctor right now. And she goes, it's Sunday night. There are no doctors open. So I called an ambulance and I was like, why the fuck would you call an ambulance, man? Oh, my God, this is embarrassing. Like, they're gonna show up. They're gonna tell me I smoked way too much weed and stuff like, don't. Why would you do that? She's like, better safe than sorry. I didn't know what to do. So I'm sitting there in the chair with my arms up and all of a sudden, like, and when you call the ambulance, fire department comes as well. So six brawny ass fire firefighters come in the room.

• 20:41Kevin Smith?

  And there I am, sitting there in the chair with my arms up. And one of them, young enough to like, be like, oh, I fucking know who this guy is. And he looking at me like, why is Silent Bob celebrating a touchdown? And I was like, hey. And they were like, you all right? I said, yeah, I just, I can't quite catch my breath. Two paramedics come in, guy and a girl, Bobsey twins. And the guy goes, hi, what's your name? I said, Kevin Smith. He goes, Mr. Smith, how are you feeling? I said, Mr. Smith's my father. And he goes, oh, I've heard that joke before. He goes, uh, what's going on? I said, I can't quite catch my breath. He goes, all right, let's see what's going on here. I'm gonna get a blood pressure cuff on you. Put a cuff on me. Starts pumping it. And then the lady's got this, what looks like a fishing tackle box. And she opens it up. It's got leads and wires in it and stuff.

• 21:22Kevin Smith?

  All of a sudden she grabs my fucking hockey jersey, yanks it up and every one of my titties and guts falls out. And I'm like, whoa. And she's like, what, what's the matter? I yank it right back down. I said, don't do that. There's a bunch of people around here. She's like, I gotta get these wires on you. And I was like, well, I'll hold my shirt out. You just reach under it and use my nipples as guideposts, like, but don't lift my shirt up. And she looks at the other guy. She's like, we ain't got time for this. And the guy goes, uh, uh, Mr. Smith, I need you to do me a favor. Open your mouth. And I opened my mouth. He's like, lift your tongue. I did. And he's gonna put something in it. So, okay. And he sprayed something under my tongue. And they said, close your mouth. And I did. And I remember thinking like, this is so fucking weird. Your whole life, your parents train you. Like if a stranger says to you, open your mouth and put something in it, you fucking say no.

• 22:04Kevin Smith?

  But because dude's wearing a uniform, I was like, ah, just totally let him do whatever he wanted. So the guy goes, uh, he looks at ladies fishing tackle box, which is now wires attached to my chest. And I didn't think anything of it, right? Like they're moving fast, they're paramedics and stuff. I'd seen paramedics work before, but I'd never been at the receiving end of them. So the guy goes, you know what? We're gonna take you for a ride to the hospital. And I was like, oh my God, please don't do that. This is embarrassing. I honestly just smoked way too much weed today. He goes, yeah, that could be the case. He's going, but we're so close, better safe than sorry, man. We're gonna take you to the hospital. You ever been to the hospital before? I was like, no. He goes, oh, you're gonna love it. I said, really? He goes, yeah, man, we're gonna take you in an ambulance. You ever been in an ambulance? I said, no. He goes, we'll even ring the siren.

• 22:48Kevin Smith?

  I was like, all right, let's fucking do it. So they put me in this chair that becomes a bed, that becomes a gurney, right? It's like a transformer. But in order to get me there, that's where the firemen come into it. So I go to get up and like, whoa, you stay right there. And they bring the six firemen over and they're like, all right, pick them up. The dudes put their hands under me and six fucking brawny ass firemen lift me to the ground. It was the most fun I had, like in the last year. Cause nobody ever tries to pick my ass up. Like it was fun. I was like, whee. They put me in the chair and shit, got me upstairs as I was being wheeled out. There's a bunch of people lined up for the next show. And I guess they'd been informed that I was not having a second show because I was suffering from food poisoning. Somebody had heard that I threw up.

• 23:32Kevin Smith?

  So they're like, oh, it must be food poisoning. So that's what they told everybody. He can't do a second show, he's got food poisoning. And as I'm leaving, there's somebody, you know, a bunch of people outside, they're all clapping, like way to go, Kev. And then there was one guy who was making the universal face for sticking his finger down his throat, you know, the vomiting face. But I didn't know that they were told that I'd puked and I wasn't honestly thinking about that. I was so like, what the fuck, I'm in an ambulance now? I saw a dude pointing his finger in his mouth and I was like, is this fucking man telling me to suck his dick as I'm being put in an ambulance? Like, where's the decency and shit like that?

• 24:05Rich Roll?

  You're being wheeled out in front of all your fans.

• 24:08Kevin Smith?

  Totally. And I was like waving to him and stuff like the queen. They put me in an ambulance. I go to Glendale Adventist, and that wasn't the name of the hospital on the call sheet since we were shooting, we were in production. There's a call sheet for every production. Call sheet has a bunch of useful information on it, including where to go in case of a medical emergency. This is the hospital we've designated as the production hospital. The ambulance didn't take me there. They take me to Glendale Adventist, which is a little further away. But because the medics knew what was happening and they knew that Glendale Adventist was a fantastic cardiac hospital. So I get there, they bring me into the ER. That's where I meet Dr. Leydenheim, Mark Leydenheim, guy who saved my life, comes in, he's like, hi, how you doing? I said, I'm good, I just can't catch my breath.

• 24:53Kevin Smith?

  He goes, well, how's your pain? You know, on a level of zero to 10, what kind of pain you in? I was like, negative three. And he goes, oh, well, then you're doing this all wrong. I said, what do you mean? He goes, if you're having a massive heart attack, you're supposed to be in pain. I said, I'm having a massive heart attack? He goes, you sure are right now. You don't know that? And I was like, no, nobody said anything.

• 25:09Rich Roll?

  That was the first.

• 25:10Kevin Smith?

  First time he was communicated to me in the emergency room where I was like, what the? And he goes, so we're gonna move fast, cause it's what I think it is, we gotta get there as quickly as possible. So I'll see you upstairs. And he leaves and another guy comes in with a bucket, a razor, and he goes, okay, in order for the doctor to get up to your heart, we gotta go through your groin. So I'm gonna need to shave your groin. So can you take off your shorts? And so I take off my jean shorts and then I leave my underwear on, cause I'm like, I ain't taking my underwear off in the emergency room, dick out in the emergency room. Like, I'm seeing, I've been in the emergency room before with other people. And it's a mess, man. Once you're done looking at the person you're there with, once they're stabilized or whatever the fuck, once you look around, you're like, oh my God, people in various states of undress and whatnot. Can't help it, it's an emergency room.

• 25:55Kevin Smith?

  So I'm sitting there going, I ain't fucking taking my underwear off. Like, forget it. Like, all I need is one person with a fucking cell phone camera to be like, it's on the Bob's dick, and I'm ruined for life. So I, the guy goes, you gotta take your underwear off. And I was like, ah, why? And he goes, because I gotta shave your groin. And I said, well, what's the groin to you? And he goes, it's where your leg meets your body. What are you talking about? I was like, all right, well, if that's the case, I'll pull my underwear to the side and you just get in there and do virgin smoothie or landing strip.

• 26:22Rich Roll?

  You're tearing on death and you're negotiating over like.

• 26:26Kevin Smith?

  Because I was ashamed of my dick. Like I was got by, he goes, what are you doing? What are you talking? And I said, look, man, I got a small dick. I got body shame issues and shit, obviously. And that man just told me I had a heart attack. And if you make me take off my underwear in front of all these people, I will have a second heart attack. And that's going to be on you, man. So let's do this. And he goes, fine, just pull him over. So pull my underwear over and he shaves both sides of the groin.

• 26:49Rich Roll?

  You won that battle.

• 26:50Kevin Smith?

  I, it was, I, I think they were just like, how amusing. Well, he's gonna die anyway, let's go. So they got me upstairs. And the first thing, uh, Dr. Layden, I'm said when they brought me in, he goes, why is he still wearing his underwear? And the guy who pushed me in goes, he's got a story. He's got body shame issues. And I said, yeah, doc, my dick is real small. And the doctor goes, we ain't got time for this. And he yanks my fucking underwear off my body like I'm heroin in a seventies porn movie and stuff. So I was trying to fight to keep my hockey jersey on. Cause hockey jersey is like a mu mu and it covers everything and stuff. So I was like, if I can keep my jersey, I'll cover my dick at least, even if he's going up my groin, he don't need to see my dick. None of these people need to see my dick. So I'm like, uh, he's like, take that shirt off him. And I go, no, I need that, man. This is my lucky hockey jersey.

• 27:34Kevin Smith?

  Like, you know, even though I'm drugged, I didn't know this. I was drugged at this point. Uh, they started feeding me fentanyl. They have to because they're gonna fucking puncture your body and your groin and cut a hole into you. And then feed a fucking tube up your femoral artery. So naturally, they don't want you feeling anything. So the moment they start this shit, I'd be like, fuck you. So they drug you with fentanyl. I didn't know this. So I think I'm being keen and clever and shit, like coming up with a lie about having to wear my fucking hockey jersey and shit. Cause it's my lucky hockey jersey. And really I was drugged and I didn't know that till after I was coming out of the operating room. My wife is just like, are you okay? And I said, you know what? If that's a heart attack, man, I'll take fucking five more. That was easy, man. And she goes, you must be on drugs. I was like, no, they didn't give me any drugs whatsoever.

• 28:16Kevin Smith?

  I was sober that whole time. And she said, the doctor was behind me and he goes, he's on a lot of fentanyl, like right now. So they're pumping me full of fentanyl. And even though I was drugged, I was like, I gotta keep this jersey on. It's my lucky hockey jersey. And the doctor's like, if it's so lucky, why are you having a heart attack? Get that off. And they took off all my clothes and I was laying there. I was like, you have your will of me. That was the thing. That was I was more scared of than the heart attack was being completely naked.

• 28:41Rich Roll?

  Yeah, that vulnerability.

• 28:43Kevin Smith?

  Oh, my God.

• 28:44Rich Roll?

  Your image issue is so strong that literally on the operating table.

• 28:47Kevin Smith?

  I'm willing to die for it at that point. And these cats like are looking at me like, what are you fucking dumb or something? And I don't, obviously don't understand how in jeopardy I truly was. I now have long since, like I've met many, of course, Dr. Mark explained it later on, but like, I went to get a, a checkup for the movie we're about to make. We're gonna make Jane, Silent Bob reboot this year. And so before you make a movie, since I'm the writer and I'm one of the stars and the director and shit like that, I'm a key man. They make you go in and get top to bottom.

• 29:21Rich Roll?

  You gotta be insured.

• 29:21Kevin Smith?

  Fucking looked at. They got insured a movie and you're the one they're insuring. So I went in and saw Dr. Paula, who I see for like every movie and stuff like that. And, uh, you know, she was on me as well. She's like, is, what's all this? I heard about the heart. I said, yeah, a widow maker a couple of months back, but it worked out. I lost a bunch of weight and stuff. And she goes, you don't know how lucky you are. I said, I, I know. I've heard it. Very, very lucky. She goes, no, you have no idea how lucky you are. She's like, when I was an internist, I was in surgery with another doctors in his 40s. We had three other doctors in the room working on this patient. It's going, so we're in a hospital room, lots of doctors. Lead surgeon drops to the ground, has a massive widow maker heart attack, just like you.

• 30:01Rich Roll?

  Wow.

• 30:01Kevin Smith?

  And I was like, man, whoa. And she goes, well, if you're gonna have a heart attack. Best place to have it is in an operating room surrounded by doctors. I was like, that's right. So you saved him. She goes, nope, couldn't. It's going that widow maker. She's going, there's just no telling. She's like, it's not even 50 50. As you heard, she's like, it's 80 20. Most people just go, and if you're male in your 40s, you're very susceptible to this. She's going, so we couldn't save that guy. The fact that you walked away from this, you have no idea and stuff. I was like, well, you know, they gave me the stent. And she goes, it goes beyond that. It's beyond just like the occluded like L A D and the stent. She's going like, for some reason, we don't know why, but male heart becomes susceptible to this particular type of heart attack throughout the whole corridor of your 40s.

• 30:44Kevin Smith?

  She's like, you almost got out, you know, because I was 47. And she's going, but it happens. You gotta look out for it.

• 30:50Rich Roll?

  Well, maybe.

• 30:51Kevin Smith?

  Nobody tells us that.

• 30:52Rich Roll?

  Yeah, there, maybe there's something to that hockey jersey.

• 30:55Kevin Smith?

  You know what I'm saying? It was lucky. Who knew? So he went up, he was sitting there, he punctured into my groin, fed the tube up. He was chit chatting with me the whole time. I was singing the whole time because I was like fucking hyped, hopped up on fentanyl. I had no idea. So I was singing the theme song to Degrassi Junior High, which is whatever it takes, I know I can make it through. Degrassi, the next generation, very hopeful song. So he goes, all right, I'm there. And yes, it's what I think it is. He goes, you got 100% occlusion or L A D. I said, what is that? He goes, you're the big artery goes right around the front of your heart. Biggest important artery is all blocked with cholesterol. Can't get any blood through, man. So we're gonna have to put a stent in there.

• 31:36Kevin Smith?

  So he fucking said like, you know, do you know, he goes, you're a comic book guy? I said, yeah. And he goes, they call this heart attack, the widow maker. And I said, oh, really? And he goes, yeah, this is all while, right before he heads back into my surgery. He goes, yeah, man, because in 80% of the cases of 100% occlusion, like you got now, the patient always dies. But you're gonna be in the 20% because I'm great at my job. And they disappeared into my crotch and like made magic and stuff. So I sat there thinking about like, oh shit, this is it. This is the closest I've ever come as far as I know. Maybe I come closer, but I never knew. Nobody ever said like, fucking, you got 8, 20% chance of living right now. So those are the lowest odds I ever had. And I was like, hey, man, this could be it.

• 32:20Kevin Smith?

  This is just, if this dude isn't good at his job, you're gonna shuffle loose the mortal coil. So start thinking. You spent your whole life analyzing yourself with your head up your own ass, wondering about you, trying to figure out who you are and who you are. Like, what do you think now? Like, here it is. This is the big moment. The moment you've been terrified your whole fucking life. What do you, what's going through your mind? So I was raised Catholic and I was an altar boy and stuff. And I said, well, maybe I should pray. And then I was like, you know what? That ain't gonna work, because I'm sure I'd pray and then the Lord would be like, you made dogma. Go fuck yourself. And so I wouldn't get any help there. So I didn't.

• 32:56Rich Roll?

  Not from that God.

• 32:57Kevin Smith?

  Yes. I didn't scoff law. I wasn't some scoff law turning to God as a last resort. I said, why would I presume upon the wonderful fictional friendship like that? So I just started thinking about my life in general and I thought about my parents and what an amazing job they did raising me as a kid. Like, you know, I was the third in the line. They didn't know what they were fucking doing. They had no money whatsoever. And somehow it worked out, like, and they put me on this weird journey that resulted in me like having a very cool job for many, many years and like,

• 33:27Kevin Smith?

  finding a wife and getting married, having a kid of my own, like having a family and stuff, like thought about my friends, my brothers and sister, my brother and sister, all my friends, Jason, you know, everybody that like, put me where I am or helped me get there or is part of my life and stuff. And I was, I don't know, there was this odd sense of calm instead of being like, oh God, I'm gonna miss this, or I'm fucking mad at the world for dying and shit. My big takeaway was, this is okay. It felt like graduation day, honestly. For me, it felt like.

• 33:59Rich Roll?

  An amazing life.

• 34:00Kevin Smith?

  I don't even know if it was that.

• 34:02Rich Roll?

  So many things.

• 34:04Kevin Smith?

  There's definitely a sense of like, ah, satisfaction. Like, all right, I've done, I've checked a lot of boxes or whatever. And I'm sure this story would be different if I was like, so there I was getting eaten by a fucking shark or, you know, there I was getting,

• 34:18Kevin Smith?

  corn and draw, drawn and quartered by an angry mob. I'm sure I would have a different perspective of death story. But there I was, hopped up on fentanyl in an operating table. And I was filled with a sense of calm. I was filled with like, well, this is, this makes sense. Like, it felt like high school. Like, when I graduated high school, I was like, well, this is sad because now this part of your life is over, but this is the journey. Like, this makes sense. This is an ending and now you'd start something else. So I wasn't scared or, or nervous or, you know, like, yeah, save me, Doc. I did say to him at one point, Doc, if you can save my life. He goes, I'll try. But I was never like,

• 35:03Kevin Smith?

  Panicky and I thought I chalked that up to being like stoned on weed because I was like smoked so much weed that day.

• 35:08Rich Roll?

  Well, the fentanyl too.

• 35:09Kevin Smith?

  That really helped. That really kept me calm and took the fear edge off. I was like, nah, this is fine. I'll just hang here in the mither world. Um, it was, it was weird. A weird sense of completion. Like, oh yeah, this is what you're supposed to do. Like, you know, we spend so much of our lives terrified of that moment of like letting go of like this, it all ends and we don't know what happens over there. And you know, what if it's a yowling fucking chasm of fucking bodyless souls that just eat you and tear you apart in the darkness? Or what if it's heaven? Like, nobody knows. So as I sat there, all of a sudden I was filled with a sense of calm of like, no, this makes sense. This was supposed to happen. Like, I thought about, there's a Public Enemy song, He Got Game from like 1998. And at the end,

• 35:53Kevin Smith?

  Flavor Flav is doing what Flavor Flav does and he talks through the end of the song and stuff. And he says, uh, one of the lines is fairly profound. Uh, he says, uh, look inside yourself for peace. Give thanks, live life and release. And it felt like, oh, that makes sense now. This is the release point. Like, holding on to it, maybe it's not gonna help. Just let it go. You're done. And yeah, it's early. Forty-seven is young, but like, fuck, you've done a lot. So if this is the end of the party, don't be the asshole who's like, you know, hey, man, let's go out for pizza at 4:00 AM and shit. Just fucking go home like you did it.

• 36:37Rich Roll?

  But in fairness, you've lived a life of fewer regrets compared to the average human. Like, you've turned over a lot of stones. You've lived a life that you've wanted to live and...

• 36:46Kevin Smith?

  Well, turning over of stones doesn't always lead to satisfaction. Leads to a lot of regret as well. So, you know, it's, it's, I don't ultimately have regret about the things that I do or, you know, or the path that I've taken because it always leads you to the next thing and whatnot. But there's definitely moments of like, I thought I wanted this so bad. And then life shows you that maybe you didn't want this at all. But in moments like that, I try to honor... The kid that started the journey like, cause it's never me who's paying the price or receiving the accolades, right? Like it's, it's me, it's this current version of me, not the heroic kid who was like, I'm gonna try to do something that I've never done before.

• 37:29Kevin Smith?

  I'm gonna try to make a movie. I'm living on that kid's coattails rest of my fucking life. I personally have never had to do anything. That kid fucking kicked open the doors and started me rolling. So I always try to honor that kid, even as far removed as I am from that kid at this moment in time. And so I always ask myself or say to myself, two things after every triumph or failure, but normally you need to say this more in times of quote unquote, failure. And to be honest, I don't believe it's real failure. Failure is not doing the thing. But in moments where it's like, this didn't succeed the way I wanted to, the two things I say to myself are just like, well, you wanted this. Like, oh my God, did you want this? You changed everything to make this happen. You made people uncomfortable.

• 38:11Kevin Smith?

  Like they were comfortable in their own lives and you had them leave and come join you in another place to fucking make pretend and stuff. You changed the fucking universe to make this happen. You went out and found a fucking ungodly amount of money to make pretend. And now you're gonna sit here and say that like, maybe you didn't, oh, you fucking wanted this. You better fucking enjoy it, motherfucker. Enjoy it and never sell out on it. And then the other thing I always tell myself is like, what was the alternative? Like seriously, it seems like right now, like you're regretting this, but what was the alternative? If you didn't do this, you would sick, you'd sit there and it would eat you up inside like a fucking cancer. You'd be sick over the fact that like, I wonder if I should have. I wonder if I could have. I wanna do that thing and shit like that. And then to not honor it when you've got the ability to follow through and you've

• 38:55Kevin Smith?

  got the means to do so, like you know how to make your dreams come true. And once you, once you see that, you can't ever be like, no, that's impossible. You know how to do the impossible. So fuck you. Like there was no alternative.

• 39:08Rich Roll?

  Right. So the regrets, the regrets aren't from not taking advantage of the opportunities that came your way.

• 39:16Kevin Smith?

  That was one of the only-

• 39:17Rich Roll?

  Not making them better or something?

• 39:19Kevin Smith?

  Exactly. Like when I sat there on the table, I was, I had no regrets about passing out of this world. I was like, you know what? Fucking, you did it. Like you're getting out of here, man. And fucking you're graduating. Well done and shit. But the one kind of regret that I had was I was laying there going like, Man, if I die tonight, the last movie I made was Yoga Hosers. And I took a lot of shit for that movie. So I was like, if I could just make it to one more movie, if I can make Jane's Island Bob reboot, you know, then at least that would make sense to end on that movie.

• 39:48Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 39:48Kevin Smith?

  So that's why I'm like, I gotta get to that movie as quickly as possible.

• 39:52Rich Roll?

  But did it shuffle the deck on your sense of priorities at all? Or did you feel like I got that in check?

• 39:57Kevin Smith?

  You would think that it was like, now my eyes are open. There was no Bill Murray at the end of Scrooge type moment because I think I lived my life like Bill Murray at the end of Scrooged. Like, you know, I'm constantly in a state of revelation and constantly sharing that revelation with the world. Some people like me in media, podcasts, making movies, whatever the fuck. It's not enough for us to experience something like most people. Most people live their lives and experience it and they're fucking happy doing that. Happy having those experiences. Maybe they share them with some friends and shit like that. But then there's assholes like me that were like, oh, I have to tell you the experience that I have. The world needs to know because we think the world gives a fuck what we say or blah, blah, blah.

• 40:41Kevin Smith?

  So I've always kind of lived that guy's life, like the life of like, let me tell you what I learned and shit like that. And because of that, there's really no like sense of like, you know, Scrooge on Christmas morning going, go get me a goose, boy. Like I've seen three ghosts and now I get it. I always got it. And not that like I get it and others don't. I've always gotten what I wanted to get out of life. So being that close to death, it wasn't like, fuck, man, now you gotta change everything. If anything, it just made me go like, thank God I did as much shit as I did because apparently I'm not going to live a very long life. So now if anything, it just makes me go like, all right, we gotta do is more. We gotta do even more. And I've always done as much as humanly fucking possible. Used to be just the movies, like I'm gonna make movies, I'm a filmmaker.

• 41:25Kevin Smith?

  And then I got kind of not boring, but just like. It happens every two years. Like, what do I do with all this fucking downtime? And that's where like, everything else came in, like the comic books, or standing on stage and talking, or the podcasts, or later on, the TV show. Always an effort to like, fill that time, because I realized early on, like, this is it. The Great and Secret Show ends, and then you fucking die. Do as much as you can before the fucking curtain falls. So when I was laying on that table and thinking like, this is it, I was filled with a sense of like, well, I'm done. I've finished. I've done a lot of stuff. Live, you know, give thanks, live life, and release. And then when I was spared, and suddenly I'm here, I'm like, alright, let's just triple the output. Because I get it now. It was what I always suspected. No good way out of this life.

• 42:08Kevin Smith?

  And I was at the door of probably the best way out of this life. I was hopped up on fucking fentanyl, singing to Grassy, with no fucking regrets in my life. You know, if I had gone out, fuck, that would have been wonderful. But I didn't. So now I just want to triple the output, because I realized there's, we're just the smartest fucking bears on the planet. That's it. You know, at the end of the day, it's like, this is, we look around at other species and like, you know, we feel like we are fucking in control, like we are the masters, and we are certainly heads and shoulders above all these other animals. Like, you know, I was raised in the Catholic Church, and there was never any sort of like,

• 42:50Kevin Smith?

  well, yeah, we love all life, but we eat lambs. And even though there's a picture of Jesus holding the lamb, he probably ate it later on, because we've got a very complicated relationship with animals and shit like that. And really, what I realized was, we're just, we're just the clever ones. We're the only, and the only difference between us and the animal kingdom is we know how to tell a story. And, worse than that, we know how to buy into a story. Case in point, you got a dog, try to explain the concept of a $20 bill to my doctrine, Shecky. You know, maybe she'll try to bite at it and shit like that, but like, that's a story we agree on. Here's money, I'm gonna give you this piece of paper, and that says that I have wealth, and that some of that wealth is now yours, and I'm exchanging it for goods and services.

• 43:32Kevin Smith?

  It's a fucking story, like a very delicate story that like, you know, currently the reality we live in, we're seeing the, the, the very threads of that reality tugged at and tested.

• 43:43Rich Roll?

  Yeah, but the, the foundations of civilization are built on these agreed upon myths. We live in a social contract. Yeah, it's fundamentally an illusion.

• 43:52Kevin Smith?

  And that's, that's what I got out of all this. I was like, well, it's all fundamentally illusion and there's really no sense to it. And it's only through luck and evolution and timing that your species wound up fucking on top with the ability to be like Romeo, Romeo, wherefore out thou Romeo? Just lean in, like make pretend for your entire fucking life. You know, it occurs to me every once in a while, like, should I be a more serious person? And should I understand politics? Should I look into government? Should I, you know, just anything that like my serious peers and people that I went to school with or, you know, people who are now adults and like pursuing careers, they went after like the noble work and the real work and shit like that. The shit you read about in books when you were in school. This one's a doctor. This one's a lawyer. This one's this and

• 44:36Kevin Smith?

  shit. And I chose the thing that, you know, was like the grasshopper and the ant story. I chose grasshopper. I'm like, oh my God, I'm a fucking fitter away all my days and shit. Here's my fiddle. I'm gonna go nuts. I'm gonna try to entertain you and myself and shit. And when I was faced with my ultimate demise and like my mortality, I didn't walk away from that going, well now, now I understand. Like it just made it more clear. Like keep playing right till the end. There's no, there's no, there's, as far as I know, it's just us and that's it. And this story that we keep telling ourselves and the story gets more and more complicated as centuries go on and stuff, but so far, so good. We're the biggest scam artists on the planet, the human race.

• 45:20Rich Roll?

  That's a cynical way to look at it.

• 45:22Kevin Smith?

  It's a positive way.

• 45:23Rich Roll?

  Has it injected in you any kind of sense of greater, you know, spiritual awareness or anything like that?

• 45:29Kevin Smith?

  None whatsoever. No, in fact, it probably not even I, I would never say that. Oh my God, I'm insanely hopeful. I'm a very positive person. I hope that comes across.

• 45:37Rich Roll?

  We're here, we're doing our thing.

• 45:38Kevin Smith?

  Well, I mean, I was raised on a pack of lies, unfortunately, and so. So that fucks you up for childhood throughout your adulthood as well. Like, and I'm not blaming Catholic Church, I'm blaming my parents, but you gotta understand how twisted my insides are. For years, I was told there was a Santa Claus and I was like, yeah, of course that makes sense. A stranger will bring us presents. He's a friend of God's, because I was also Catholic. And then one day my parents were like, Santa's not real. We've just been saying that to you for years because that's what you do with kids. And I'm sorry, we're part of that, but yeah. It's time to let that go. What about God? Well, God's very real.

• 46:10Rich Roll?

  Was that traumatic for you?

• 46:11Kevin Smith?

  No, no, it wasn't. It wasn't like I'm losing Santa, but it was confusing for me because I got to keep God. Lost Santa. They were like, Santa's not real. Don't be ridiculous. God? No, that's real. And you know, you sit there going like, well, I have zero proof of God, just like I have zero proof of Santa Claus. Like, in fact, there are more renderings of Santa Claus. If you want to look for an image, there's a bunch out there and stuff. But I was expected to hold on to God and I did up until the time I made Dogman. Then I was like, you know, I met George Carlin and George Carlin was like, you believe all this stuff? And I was like, of course. You were raised Catholic, don't you? And he goes, no, I'm smarter than that. And that's when I started thinking.

• 46:47Rich Roll?

  So it was Carlin that turned you?

• 46:49Kevin Smith?

  Carlin and Scott Moser, and not turned me, but just kind of taught me to use a different organ, you know? Use my brain differently. Scott Moser too, years of doing Smodcast and knowing him, he's the guy that produced all my movies and stuff. He just made the Grinch movie that's in theaters now.

• 47:06Rich Roll?

  Huge.

• 47:07Kevin Smith?

  Scott was always so baffled by my blind faith in, you know, there's something after this. Of course there is. And he was like, why do you think that? And I was like, because like, what would we, why would we bother doing all this? Like what was, but there must, I must be going somewhere after this. There must be some reward, good or bad. There's no point in living all this life and then just fucking dying and sitting in the earth like you think. And he goes, why? He goes, that's what we are. He's going like, yeah, I understand you believe in something, but I think we're computers and I think once a computer spins down, that's it. No computer lasts forever, man. Eventually it just dies. And all that information that's on that laptop just fucking dies with it unless you download it somewhere. He's going, the trick is we should learn to download our,

• 47:50Kevin Smith?

  our, you know, intelligence so that that way you could live on. He's going, but like, you know, turn of life? I don't buy that. And he was never shitty about it, never going like, you're an idiot for believing this. But Scott, one of the smartest people I've ever met in my life. And if Scott couldn't really make the leap of faith, I was sitting there going, maybe there's no leap to make. So, you know, I started thinking about it more and more and. Arrived at my own conclusions about, oh, you know, maybe dogma was you trying to work out the last bit of something that just can't possibly make sense in, in the light of day and something that like as an, as a grown up, you can't really put your head around in the same way.

• 48:27Rich Roll?

  I wonder.

• 48:28Kevin Smith?

  That's the Lord calling right now going like.

• 48:30Rich Roll?

  He's gonna ring you up.

• 48:31Kevin Smith?

  Yeah.

• 48:32Rich Roll?

  Correct you a little bit. I wonder if there's a relationship between.

• 48:35Kevin Smith?

  And also, sorry, before we go further, I don't want anyone to think that I'm taking their faith away from them. I just want you to know, I wish I was still you. I wish I could still have the faith that I had as a kid or even up into my mid twenties and stuff. When I meet people of faith, I'm always way into it. Like, oh my God, good for you. I just, I wish, I wish I had still had that. And I'm not saying I just saw something you people didn't and stuff. Unfortunately, I just arrived at a different conclusion.

• 49:04Rich Roll?

  I look at it a little bit differently. I mean, I think the more that we learn about science and the crazier it gets, the more I think there's opportunity for, for faith in something that we can't understand. In the same way that Shecky can't understand that $20 bill.

• 49:19Kevin Smith?

  Right.

• 49:19Rich Roll?

  Why do we think we are so smart? Like you said, Scott's, you know, smart, one of the smartest guys you know.

• 49:24Kevin Smith?

  Totally.

• 49:25Rich Roll?

  But maybe our brains just aren't big enough to comprehend what's actually right in front of us. And do you have?

• 49:31Kevin Smith?

  What would that be though? Just out of curiosity?

• 49:33Rich Roll?

  Well, something beyond our ability to comprehend.

• 49:36Kevin Smith?

  Oh, I'm, but I'm, I'm all for that, but that's not what the Catholic Church asks me to say.

• 49:40Rich Roll?

  No, I'm not talking about Catholicism.

• 49:42Kevin Smith?

  And that's not what any faith asks me to say. Oh, look, I'm, I'm a, I'm hopeful and I'm into the beyond.

• 49:48Rich Roll?

  In an undefined spiritual faith.

• 49:51Kevin Smith?

  Look, if someone, if someone has information that I don't, and they're like, look, here's what you're missing, I'm more than happy to listen to it. And if what their truth is, is like, none of these people understand it because here's the real truth. Like Grant Morrison was on the podcast once and told me what he saw when he like. Dropped acid or whatever it was and kind of went to the top of a ziggurat and like had his consciousness kind of exploded.

• 50:16Rich Roll?

  Uh huh.

• 50:16Kevin Smith?

  And I was like, that sounds awesome. If that's, nobody ever presented that as a possibility, like you got your Catholicism, you got your Judaism, you got your Hinduism, and then you have this fucking crazy shit where somebody tells you that you're just a small cog in the universe of higher consciousness. I'm all for that, but that was the first time that was ever presented to me. So if you're ready to present me with like, here's another option, I'm so open minded to that. But the moment you start talking about God is this man in the sky.

• 50:44Rich Roll?

  What it looks like, no, I'm not saying that at all.

• 50:46Kevin Smith?

  Right.

• 50:46Rich Roll?

  I'm saying there's an opportunity for awe and wonder out there.

• 50:50Kevin Smith?

  Oh, I believe you. I'm, I live this, I think you, you don't need faith to live in awe and wonder. And I say that from a guy who's lived both sides of the coin. Um, I, there's awe and wonder in everything you look at in nature. You don't need God in your life to see that.

• 51:04Rich Roll?

  Do you feel like post-heart attack, you have a greater sense or appreciation of that?

• 51:10Kevin Smith?

  No.

• 51:10Rich Roll?

  No. Yeah, you've kind of gone on record and said, look, I didn't have a huge epiphany. I mean, you've made giant changes in, in how you live.

• 51:17Kevin Smith?

  That was the big epiphany was like, you're being an asshole living this way.

• 51:20Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 51:21Kevin Smith?

  Um, but spiritually, I've always been pretty, pretty like fulfilled and, and living it all out and examining it. My head and my heart, not my physical heart, my spiritual heart, I, I spent a lot of time on in this life.

• 51:34Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 51:34Kevin Smith?

  My body, not so much.

• 51:36Rich Roll?

  No.

• 51:36Kevin Smith?

  And that was the real wake up call.

• 51:38Rich Roll?

  Cool, we're going to talk about that in a minute. But first, I, I wonder whether there's a relationship or a connection between your experience in the, you know, growing up Catholic and your like love for and appreciation for the myths that you find in pop culture.

• 51:54Kevin Smith?

  Oh, God, yeah.

• 51:55Rich Roll?

  Comic books and, you know, those, those archetypal figures and stories that just connect with us so deeply as humans.

• 52:02Kevin Smith?

  I, like everybody else, love a morality tale. And the Bible is chock a block full of some of the greatest morality tales ever written. And if you're remotely religious, you've heard of all these great paradigms of faith and stuff like that. Um, However, you know, the older I got, then I was introduced to comic books and you know, I was drawn to those stories and of course, they're colorful and they're programmed for kids, you know, they're written for you in that era. So naturally it makes sense, but it wasn't until I got a little older that I realized there's a correlation between these two, there's a parallel. I love a good morality story. It just so happens that Marvel and DC told way more entertaining versions in their funny books than the Bible did in its.

• 52:43Kevin Smith?

  So I have nothing but respect for anybody that can weave a tale about how doing the right thing is the better choice, especially in a world where doing the wrong thing is the easier choice, or in the case of the comic books, the more colorful, powerful choice. So yeah, those things are definitely combined, definitely related in my mind.

• 53:04Rich Roll?

  It's interesting how your career has sort of blossomed like hand in hand, like on a parallel track with culture at large embracing, you know, this format. Like your career starting at that very special moment where independent film was blowing up, you happened to take a chance and be there at the right opportunity for that and just being true to who you are and preaching your love for this, you know, kind of pop culture to have culture then embrace that in a way that fit you like a glove and allowed you to like be who you are.

• 53:42Kevin Smith?

  I'm like everybody on the internet, essentially. That's what it is. Like I got to be that guy first. And then if people had waited two minutes, the internet was going to happen and there would be a generation of me, of people who are like,

• 54:00Rich Roll?

  But you jumped on it from the get go. I mean, I remember, I mean, I have to thank you for inspiring me to, you know, even go on this journey because I was a super early adopter of podcasts and I'd seen your movies and I was an entertainment lawyer, I was at Sundance, like I've been at Sundance a million times, like I followed your clerk story from the get go. I worked with Ed Burns on Looking for Kitty, like I'm part of that independent world and I appreciate, you know, what you were able to create and craft out of that.

• 54:29Kevin Smith?

  Thank you.

• 54:30Rich Roll?

  But then I had my own like kind of personal transformation and I started training for these crazy ultra endurance races and I would spend like eight hours training by myself like out on a bike. And I'm like, I can't listen to music or I need something to entertain me.

• 54:44Kevin Smith?

  Podcasts.

• 54:45Rich Roll?

  And I got into podcasts 2007, like right at the beginning.

• 54:48Kevin Smith?

  Those were me and Moser started.

• 54:49Rich Roll?

  Yeah, you guys were from the get go, the OGs.

• 54:53Kevin Smith?

  February 2007, the people who were there before us, just for context, Leo Laporte.

• 54:59Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 55:00Kevin Smith?

  Did This Week in Tech.

• 55:03Kevin Smith?

  I mean, Bill Maher had a.

• 55:05Rich Roll?

  When did.

• 55:05Kevin Smith?

  Real time podcast.

• 55:06Rich Roll?

  Corolla started shortly after you.

• 55:08Kevin Smith?

  Yeah, Corolla was on the radio. Adam had a radio show.

• 55:11Rich Roll?

  Got canceled.

• 55:12Kevin Smith?

  And then it got canceled and then like the next day.

• 55:14Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 55:15Kevin Smith?

  Or the week after, they started the Adam Corolla podcast. So we were already podcasting.

• 55:19Rich Roll?

  You, Corolla and a handful, like it was a little bit longer before Rogan started. It was like hobbyists.

• 55:26Kevin Smith?

  Yeah.

• 55:26Rich Roll?

  In these little niches.

• 55:28Kevin Smith?

  Hardwick was another one. They were doing Nerdist.

• 55:30Rich Roll?

  That's right. That's right.

• 55:31Kevin Smith?

  But that was, but those guys came, I mean, this is not fucking bragging, but like, like I remember those dudes joining and being like, oh, they have a podcast.

• 55:40Rich Roll?

  To do it.

• 55:40Kevin Smith?

  Yeah. Well, I mean, unless you count like the father, the pod father himself is Adam Curry, oddly enough.

• 55:47Rich Roll?

  That's right.

• 55:47Kevin Smith?

  The guy from MTV.

• 55:49Rich Roll?

  I totally forgot about that.

• 55:50Kevin Smith?

  Who did it before anybody else and stuff, but like.

• 55:52Rich Roll?

  But it was, it was, I mean, you had to be committed to be a listener because you had to download it on your desktop. You had to bounce it to an iPod. Like it was a whole thing.

• 56:02Kevin Smith?

  Yeah.

• 56:02Rich Roll?

  Right? So you had to get your, okay, here are the ones I want to listen to. I'm going to be on the bike for however many hours. I'm going to need this much.

• 56:08Kevin Smith?

  Right.

• 56:09Rich Roll?

  Listening time. And I'd be like, I got, you know, I got Smog Cat. I got four episodes of Smog Cat, whatever, you know? And so I was listening from the very, very beginning.

• 56:16Kevin Smith?

  Thank you.

• 56:17Rich Roll?

  And I thought, like, I knew you from the movies, but I didn't know you outside of that. And I fell in love with your voice and your authenticity and your honesty and just being who you are. And I found that to be very inspiring. And it would be many years later until I started this thing, but I took a lot of inspiration and spent many hours listening to you.

• 56:36Kevin Smith?

  That means the world, man. Thank you.

• 56:38Rich Roll?

  And you're incredibly, you're an incredibly gifted, talented artist, but.

• 56:44Rich Roll?

  As a personality, just you being you is my favorite Kevin Smith.

• 56:48Kevin Smith?

  Mine too. My, my, I thank you for that. Yeah, mine too. That was the, I didn't realize that was the aim. In the beginning, I was like, I want to be a filmmaker. I want to make films and stuff. That seemed to be the aim. And once that happened, I was like, right on, happily ever after. And I was young and stuff, but then over time, and it took a while, like 10 years or something, like I realized it's way more interesting if like you're the art project. If like, if you take your life, like, don't identify as an artist, be the art. Like now you're doing this, now you're doing that.

• 57:27Kevin Smith?

  Like just spin as many plates as possible. Do all the shit you dream about. Like if somebody is doing something that interests you, try it, even if like, you know, you've never done it before, especially considering I'd never made a film before. We did, and we just got lucky, luck and timing. It worked out and shit. So when podcasting came along, I was actually better suited for that, like to just sit around and talk. So I was like, oh my God, this is like a commentary track on a LaserDisc, but there's no movie. Let's do this. This is fantastic. So I found myself through podcasting and, and really got to put the voice out there. Like, you know, the evening with Kevin Smith

• 58:09Kevin Smith?

  specials were, were one way to kind of be like, hi, this is who I am beyond the work. But the podcast allowed me to like go deep and, and also like share my friends. That was the bigger thing.

• 58:22Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 58:22Kevin Smith?

  Like I got to put, shine a light on people that I thought were impressive. Like, you know, you've heard from me for years now. We hear from fucking Jason Muse himself, not the character Jay, but him, or Scott Moser, or Ralph Carmen, and Mark Bernard, and Andy McElphish. Like being able to highlight people who I'm like, I think these people are smart and funny.

• 58:41Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 58:42Kevin Smith?

  That was part of what I loved about podcasting. You know, and you know, you got to remember, part of it too came from. At that point, I was doing a lot of Q and As by myself. And that's how you do Q and A. And you go up there and just answer questions. So I do that all over the country, always by myself. And there was a part of me that was like, not lonely, but I'm like, man, I wish I had like, you know, I wish I was the Smothers Brothers. Like, I wish I had, there was someone else. I'm always looking for like a best friend or a partner in crime. And so suddenly the idea of doing podcasts were like, oh, I can go on stage with somebody and have a conversation. Like, this could be fun, too. So that allows you to show even more of who you are. You know, and if you listen to the podcast, it's like weird.

• 59:27Kevin Smith?

  You get a bunch of different versions of me. This podcast is probably where you get the most authentic version of me or unfiltered. Jane and Bob Get Old, I'm kind of his guide. I'm the guy keeping it on rails and stuff, but that's definitely more about Jason. Hollywood Babylon, I play the idiot second banana.

• 59:46Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 59:46Kevin Smith?

  To Ralph. So like, I instantly go into the, the kind of submissive role.

• 59:50Rich Roll?

  How many shows do you have now?

• 59:52Kevin Smith?

  Fat Man Beyond with Mark Bernardin. And that one is like, that, that's actually pretty close to real Kevin Smith, too, because that's just me fanning out on things. I like that podcast because it's like, same reason I like Hollywood Babylon. I get to talk about anything but me. And so that's still, even though you're not talking about you, reveals a lot about who you are. Like, because of the Fat Man, Fat Man on Batman, which became Fat Man Beyond Podcast, like, I got, I, I was able to embrace how fucking, you know, weepy and emotional I am. Like, you know, because now I just, you know, I am a guy. So you're expected to be stoic and shit, or at least I was. And then I started like just crying over comic books and comic book movies

• 1:00:36Kevin Smith?

  and like putting that out there in the world. You'd hear me on the podcast and shit. And sometimes I like shot myself watching Flash and crying, which led to me getting a job on Flash as well. So like, I learned to wear my emotions on my sleeve because the audience was okay with that. Like, anytime I pushed the edge a little bit outside the movies and a podcast and let them know a little bit more about who I was, they didn't judge me. They weren't shitty. Like, don't fucking cry over Flash. They didn't fucking tune in to listen to this bitch shit or whatever, fuck. People being like, I know how you feel, man. That shit makes me fucking emotional too. And suddenly you get to be you even more publicly. So I I'm with you. I I of all the Kevin Smiths,

• 1:01:17Kevin Smith?

  I like Kevin Smith the best, like the the one that's like, oh, that's who he is.

• 1:01:23Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's cool. And I think it's allowed you, I mean, being somebody who was just there from the very beginning. Um, you were at the vanguard, like the forefront of developing your own audience. Like, at what point did you realize like, hey, I don't have to, you know, make huge movies that appeal to everybody. Like, I've got these people. They love me. I'm gonna take care of them. And like, I'm good.

• 1:01:45Kevin Smith?

  It never occurred to me to make huge movies at all. So it never occurred to me that I didn't have to make.

• 1:01:49Rich Roll?

  Well, you had that cop out experience.

• 1:01:51Kevin Smith?

  Yeah, there's that. Oh, heavens. And that was also a worthy experience.

• 1:01:54Rich Roll?

  Podcasts where you talked about that.

• 1:01:56Kevin Smith?

  Leading up to it and when it was happening. Did it sound like a car wreck, slowly evolving car wreck?

• 1:02:02Rich Roll?

  A little bit, but you know, there was definitely tension between you and Bruce Willis. I mean, that's all I remember vaguely. Wasn't the original name for that movie like?

• 1:02:10Kevin Smith?

  A couple of dicks.

• 1:02:10Rich Roll?

  Yeah, right.

• 1:02:11Kevin Smith?

  It was a great title.

• 1:02:13Rich Roll?

  And the only only movie you did that you didn't write?

• 1:02:15Kevin Smith?

  Uh, yeah, of all the flicks I've done. Yeah, that was the only one I didn't write. And it was, uh, I mean, now I do that with Supergirl and Flash episodes. But that was like, you know, oh, my gosh, I'd never done it before. I'd done it once prior to Cop Out. I directed a pilot for a TV show called Reaper. But I wound up doing so much like, say this, say this, that that felt more like me. Cop Out was definitely like somebody else's script. And you go, let me see if I could Steven Soderbergh this shit and direct somebody else's script.

• 1:02:42Rich Roll?

  You know?

• 1:02:43Kevin Smith?

  I did. It depends who you ask. Some people like, oh, that movie fucking blows. And then some people like.

• 1:02:47Rich Roll?

  I liked it.

• 1:02:48Kevin Smith?

  Honestly, we were always trying to make like a TNT, a movie that could play on TNT and TBS over and over again. Like the TNT classics at the time we were making the movie. I remember we were like, hopefully one day this will be a TNT classic. And now it does play on TV. So I feel kind of like, all right, well, it's where it needs to be.

• 1:03:04Rich Roll?

  But this idea of like, developing your own audience and just being loyal to the people that love you. I mean, that's like what the internet is all about now.

• 1:03:11Kevin Smith?

  And it did happen.

• 1:03:12Rich Roll?

  Your audience, develop your audience. But like, you were really the first one, the first filmmaker. I would say Ed Burns did the same thing. He's done a great job of like, just making movies that he likes to make on micro budgets.

• 1:03:24Kevin Smith?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:24Rich Roll?

  They don't have to be huge deals, but he's got his audience and they love him. And you've got the same thing.

• 1:03:29Kevin Smith?

  Mine was accidental. Mine was, I just wanted to talk to anybody who had an interest in this bullshit. Like, you know, I, I couldn't believe anyone gave a fuck about Clerks. And so when they did, it was easy to engage with them. Like, hi, I can answer anything you want about this fucking thing. Like, I spent my year of my life doing this. This is the biggest thing I've ever done in my life.

• 1:03:50Rich Roll?

  What was the expectation when you're on set doing Clerks?

• 1:03:53Kevin Smith?

  None. Zero. This is my hope. My hope was, I read an article, it was an article, it is in a frame right behind that door, uh, that, uh, in the Village Voice about Richard Linklater when he took Slacker to the IFFM. So I was like, alright, we gotta make a movie and bring it to this IFFM. That was my only goal. So the whole time we were making, and I didn't even, like, I went to visit the IFFM that year before. And just to see what it was like. I'd never been to a film festival in my life. This is not technically a film festival. It's a, it's a film marketplace more than anything else. So I looked in at it. I'd heard about it, uh, through that article, um, and, and that Amy Taubman wrote about Richard Linklater.

• 1:04:34Kevin Smith?

  And then there was also this like TV special that had aired on CBS called Made in New York, and Ron Silver hosted it. And it just looked at like, some movies that were being shot on the streets of New York. And then it looked at indie films that were like, it was like them going, and now, you know, there's a whole new wave of filmmakers who make these little movies, and this must have happened in 1991. I saw this on TV.

• 1:04:58Rich Roll?

  Like Hal Hart, the Hal Hartleys.

• 1:05:00Kevin Smith?

  Hal Hartley, Jim Jarmusch, Spike Lee, but they were talking specifically about the IFFM marketplace. Like, look at all these kids, make movies and they try to sell, they're hustling their movies at the marketplace. So I had a visual for what it looked like, and then I went up one day to look at it myself. And, uh, I was like, alright, this is what we're going for. We make this movie, and then we take it to this IFFM, and then people see it, and like in the case of Slacker, Sony Pictures Classic bought it as a work in progress. So, you know, we'll go one better. We'll do a finished film, and then hopefully someone will buy it. Like, I, I wasn't educated enough to know that, like, that's not what really happens at the marketplace. I was confusing it with like a film festival, and to be fair, that, at that point, didn't even happen in film festivals.

• 1:05:42Kevin Smith?

  The year we went to Sundance was the first year that any film had been bought at the film festival. Generally speaking, they were bought prior to the film festival, or after the film festival ended. But that whole like, heat of the moment, like, we gotta buy this. That happened our year. We weren't the first. The first movie to be bought at Sundance was Go Fish. Also represented by John Pearson, the guy who represented our film, also a black and white movie. Ours was the boys' black and white movie. Theirs was the girls' black and white movie is about lesbians. So that movie sold first, we sold after. Um, like four days later, John Pearson sold our movie to Miramax. Um, they sold, I think to Goldwyn, Samuel Goldwyn Company. So we had no expectations of like, we'll go to Sundance and this movie will sell.

• 1:06:26Kevin Smith?

  I just thought we have to go to the IFFM, the Independent Feature Film Market, because that's what Richard did. And someone will see it and then the journey begins. Like that article in the Village Voice was like roadmap, treasure map. I was like, we just have to follow this.

• 1:06:38Rich Roll?

  But even taking a step back to see Slacker, it was impactful, right?

• 1:06:43Kevin Smith?

  Yeah, that's the movie that made me want to be a filmmaker.

• 1:06:45Rich Roll?

  You see that movie, there's no other movie like it. There hasn't been any movie like it since.

• 1:06:50Kevin Smith?

  Absolutely agreed. And, and that's not to say like, you know, oh my God, it'll blow you away. Some people see it and they're like, this is the movie that made you want to be a filmmaker? Like, and yes, because number one, it was smart. Number two, it looked doable. Like, that's the thing. It was smart and doable. Like, it was clever. I was engaged with it. I was like, this guy's smart. He just made a movie in his hometown and it's not even like the main character, there's no main character. You just follow one person to another, to another, and you're looking at life, day in the life of his community. This is smart. And then the second thing was like, my God, this is doable. Like, this doesn't look expensive at all. Like, you know, we had no internet, so I couldn't go online and be like, how much did it cost? But I read in an interview later on that it was not very expensive at all. And I was like, my God, like,

• 1:07:33Kevin Smith?

  that's what got me into indie film. You can make one of these movies inexpensively. Like, if you got a really great location, you know, I'd heard Robert Rodriguez interviewed on the Howard Stern Show. And he said, you know, for Al Mariani, he goes, I had a guitar case, a bus, and a turtle, and I wrote them all into the movie. So he's like, write what you got. He's like, some people, first time filmmakers write the movie in space. They don't have space. He's going, but I wrote what I had access to. And I was listening to that interview and I was sitting in Quick Stop Convenience Store where I was working. And I looked around and I was like, what do I have access to? What could I write a movie about? What do I have that's different? And I looked at the store and I was like, you know? I've never seen anybody make a convenience store movie.

• 1:08:14Kevin Smith?

  I've seen movies that end in convenience stores, like fucking Fast Times at Ridgemont High ends in a convenience store. But I'd never seen a movie set in a convenience store. Like, maybe that's what I got going for me. And it turns out that's what it was, man. It was the great equalizer. You know, people, whether you lived in a convenience store, like I did as an employee, whether you interacted with the convenience store regularly, like, you know, people who lived in town went there every day for milk and shit and cigarettes. Or whether every once in a while, you just fucking walked into a convenience store. Everyone has a working fundamental knowledge of a convenience store worldwide. And I never put that together. I was never like strategic about it. All I did was look around and be like, well, this place, like, I got a set. This is a set. Like, you know, if you're gonna make a movie, do it someplace interesting. All the shelves are full.

• 1:08:59Kevin Smith?

  I don't have to build this. Like, the toppers will let me do it here because I'm here all the time anyway. And they're never here, so I'll just ask them, can I shoot a movie here? And I did, and they said, go ahead. All seemed doable based on seeing Slack, right?

• 1:09:18Rich Roll?

  Yeah, and then it blows up.

• 1:09:20Kevin Smith?

  Slagger or Clerks?

• 1:09:22Rich Roll?

  Clerks.

• 1:09:23Kevin Smith?

  We, yeah, we got very lucky. I mean, but to, here, for those that are like, you know, oh, the blow up part, that'll never happen to me. Let me just make clear, Clerks never played on more than 50 screens in its entire theatrical life. It was a true arthouse release and stuff. So it wasn't like, you know, we were on a fucking thousand screens and shit. It was never 50 at once. It was like 50 max and prints got shuffled around from place to place. And 50 was as wide as it ever went. Generally, it played on, like, played in all the big cities. That was it.

• 1:09:55Rich Roll?

  But the story around it was big.

• 1:09:57Kevin Smith?

  That fucking traveled. That traveled and captured people's imaginations. Like, where people were like, hey, this kid, he worked in this convenience store. He made a movie there. And I never imagined that that would connect. Like, for my money, Robert Rodriguez had the be all, end all fucking backstory. I donated my body to medical science to make a $7,000 movie. So I didn't think, like, us going, like, we made a movie set in a A convenience store for twenty seven thousand five hundred and seventy five dollars would be news at all. I thought people would be like, why'd you waste so much money? This guy fucking did it for seven grand. Where'd your other twenty go on coke and horse? So I never thought that anyone would be like, ooh, the backstory is interesting. But we were up at Sundance and by the second fucking screening, that's what the media start writing about.

• 1:10:42Kevin Smith?

  People in print were like, this is adorable. This guy, he works at this store in New Jersey. He made this movie about shooting a convenience store while working at that store. He brought it up here to Sundance. And then when he goes home, he's going back to working that convenience store. Right. Like, can you believe it? And then, you know, they were like, hey, do you want to talk? And I love to talk. So I was like, oh, yeah, absolutely. And because I've been a fan of stand up comedy my whole life. And anytime I saw someone with a microphone in their hand, they were trying to be entertaining. I didn't go the route of erudition. I wasn't there to teach people how to be a filmmaker. I barely knew how to do it myself, as people could see from Clerks. I decided to try to be funny. Like, you know, look, people are looking at you. You got a mic in your hand and they're asking you questions about your movie. You can't answer it like a true filmmaker, being that you've only done it once.

• 1:11:28Kevin Smith?

  So tell them funny stories about how you got to get the cat to shit on cue. Or, you know, how you got the film for real cheap and shit like that. Make it entertaining. And that would be extending the movie. So the movie ends and people had a good time. And instead of standing up there dryly being like, you know, well, the art of film is to capture a human truth. I just sat up there and be like, let me tell you a story about how we got the cat to shit on cue. So they're like, as relatable as the movie is, the guy who made the movie was talking about it afterwards. He's pretty relatable too, man. And slowly over the course of like, you know, what, five, six years? Uh, after of doing Q and A's after movies, you get comfortable up there. And suddenly I realized, oh, I have another usable skill. I could just go up and talk about the movies.

• 1:12:10Kevin Smith?

  Like, it's fun to make the movies and stuff, but now I can go up and talk about the movies. And that can be its own unique thing.

• 1:12:16Rich Roll?

  What do you think about the kind of explosion of podcasting in the last, I mean, even in the last like year or two, where now everybody's got a podcast and it's blown up. It's somebody who was there for day one.

• 1:12:28Kevin Smith?

  I'm out, look, I'm happy for it. And I've been out there for years telling people like, record a podcast. Like, I would end most of my shows with like, everybody should be recording a podcast at this point, because you never know, it could turn into something, blah, blah, blah. I'm all for it. I'm all for the democratization of conversation. Like, let everybody have a chance at bat. Let everybody step up to the mic. Let everybody have their own fucking show. We all know how to do it. We've all listened to media, watched media our entire lives. And when you do that, you're always like, man, if I was in charge, I'd do it differently. Well, here's your fucking chance.

• 1:12:58Rich Roll?

  Right. There's no barrier to entry.

• 1:13:00Kevin Smith?

  None whatsoever. And nobody could tell you, no. There's no like, gatekeeper who's like, well, your art is not good enough, hence you're not going to be a part of this. You sit down with a microphone and maybe there's somebody interesting.

• 1:13:11Rich Roll?

  You just, you can just use your phone. And now they have apps where you can literally publish from your phone.

• 1:13:17Kevin Smith?

  Smart, very smart. But yeah, it's crazy how easy it is now. And I'm all for it. I think everybody should have a show. Now, with that many people doing shows, everybody can't expect to have an audience. That's the only problem. Like, when we started, we started in February 2007, it was easy to find an audience, because there was plenty of audience and not a lot of shows.

• 1:13:38Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:13:38Kevin Smith?

  Now, shows get created all the fucking time. Like, when we started, all of the shows that I've started, like, you know, we used to take pictures of the charts and shit like that on iTunes.

• 1:13:48Rich Roll?

  The screenshots?

• 1:13:49Kevin Smith?

  Yes. Like, launching at number one and being like, oh, my God. Like, even my, my friend Malcolm Ingram had a podcast called, uh, Blow Hard. And when we, when we launched that, we launched that at fucking number one. Like, it was so easy back in the day. Now, I doubt I could launch a podcast at number one. It'd be hard. It's crowded marketplace. And now, the dominant podcast seems to be the political podcast.

• 1:14:14Rich Roll?

  Political podcasts and true crime.

• 1:14:16Kevin Smith?

  Oh, yeah. People love fucking true crime.

• 1:14:18Rich Roll?

  Highly produced storytelling.

• 1:14:20Kevin Smith?

  Which, to me, is like, I mean, that's fine. You want to distribute it through a podcast, by all means, do whatever you want. But that, that's like, you know, those podcasts are like NPR level great, coming from NPR talent in some cases, like, trained professionals. I ain't taking anything away from anybody. All are welcome. I'm like the lady in Poltergeist. Rush over, children, all are welcome. That being said,

• 1:14:46Kevin Smith?

  You know, I think of podcasting as kind of like ham radio, like a bunch of enthusiasts who are like, oh, I could never get play in that community. I can, nobody's ever gonna hire me for the radio, um, or to give me a TV show. So this is mine. I get to do it here. So when, you know, folks who can get jobs, like, jump into it, folks like me, you know, as a filmmaker, and I could stand on stage and talk, but I love the idea of the medium. Like, what? I get to have my own show? Fuck it. I'm gonna do it. You know, it's just, it's, it's, it's a lot of big fish swamping the pond, jumping in and going like, oh shit, like I just saw Conan O'Brien is down.

• 1:15:25Rich Roll?

  Conan started one.

• 1:15:27Kevin Smith?

  Where you're like, hey, fucking boy, your finger's on the pulse, buddy. Uh, but, but that being said, it's like, here comes another one. A big fish can jump in the pool, displace a lot of water, get a lot of guests and shit like that. And, you know, I'm, I'm not, good for him, but, you know, he figured it out a little late, but he figured out what I figured out, which is like, uh, you can pivot to this, this is something else to do. That's why I jumped into it.

• 1:15:50Rich Roll?

  And you can control it and own it. And there's nobody there telling you.

• 1:15:53Kevin Smith?

  He controls and owns his own show.

• 1:15:54Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah, that's true.

• 1:15:55Kevin Smith?

  But who knows for how much longer? And maybe that's why the podcasting thing's started.

• 1:15:59Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:15:59Kevin Smith?

  But I, but I don't begrudge anybody why they do it, man. Uh, it's just when big names get into it, you know, it's kind of like, here, I'll liken it to, and again, I'm not condemning anybody because I was a quasi big name when I got into it. Um, it's like indie film movement. Remember when the indie film movement started? It was cats who'd never done it before, who were like, I'm gonna pick up a camera and I'm gonna try this. And they have no access, but like, fuck, they got passion and talent and spirit and stuff like that. And then, all of a sudden, everybody wanted to make an indie movie, you know, like fucking DreamWorks made an indie movie, uh, with, uh, American Beauty. It wins a fucking Oscar and stuff like that. And all these big names like Miramax, they're

• 1:16:41Kevin Smith?

  responsible, like, for putting huge fucking faces into indie films. And yet Miramax is responsible for my career as well by buying clerks. They put me on the fucking map. But suddenly the indie field is diluted by famous people, people that could go get jobs in real studio movies or working for real studios are like, oh, I'm gonna slum it, make an indie movie and stuff. And that's fine. All are welcome. But at the same time.

• 1:17:03Rich Roll?

  Spring break.

• 1:17:04Kevin Smith?

  Yeah. And also it's just like, what started as like, hey, man, now the little people can make something. Gets taken over by the big people because if you're an investor, do you want to invest in some fucking shitty movie about a guy who works in a convenience store? Or do you want to invest in Emma? You know, a retelling of the classic story with a movie star or a couple of fucking movie stars in it. It's going to shoot over in England and stuff and we'll ameliorate your costs because it'll run on BBC over there. And over here, you're just putting it out in theaters and stuff. You know, it's like suddenly a business person is like, well, that way it makes a lot more sense. We can make a lot more money. And so the average person, you know, who didn't really have access, the outsider, if you will,

• 1:17:43Kevin Smith?

  suddenly kind of got squeezed to the, to the far ends, you know, until they get tired and create a movement and Mumblecore. You know, like fucking suddenly Mumblecore was a bunch of people trying to take back.

• 1:17:54Rich Roll?

  Like a new, you know, where's the next place where those people.

• 1:17:58Kevin Smith?

  Podcasting is that moment now, though. It's like there are so many fucking people doing it. It's way crowded and it's only going to get more crowded because now people are waking up to like, oh, wait, I could do this for my house. And hey, you're a name. People know who you are. So like they'll, they'll stop and listen to your podcast because they've seen you on TV or something like that. So everyone jumps in and again, I ain't against that. The more, the merrier. But that's, I've now seen firsthand two industries change. Like since the moment I got into them and the first one I got into, let's be fair, that industry had been around for a long time. But the podcasting one was interesting because I always felt like, wow, we're here for something new. We're watching something get built and then slowly as it went on, I would have these moments of dawning realization of like Battlestar Galactica.

• 1:18:42Kevin Smith?

  This is all happening before it will all happen again. Like when we got an advertiser, the only reason we got an advertiser on our podcast was because I was like, hey, podcasting is free. It don't cost nothing. And one day my accountant was, it costs you. I was like, what do you mean? It's like more people listen to this fucking podcast of yours, the more we have to pay server costs.

• 1:18:58Rich Roll?

  Right. You're paying like bandwidth.

• 1:19:00Kevin Smith?

  Yeah. I was like, what do you mean? I didn't know this shit. And she was like, you're eating up bandwidth. It's costing money and stuff. So there's no such thing as a free podcast, free to others, not to you. And I was like, fuck, well, I don't want to pay for this shit. Like I enjoyed doing it, but like, how much does this cost? And she told me, I was like, Jesus fucking Christ. So I was like, we gotta get it. We gotta do something. And so I didn't say.

• 1:19:18Rich Roll?

  SoundCloud.

• 1:19:19Kevin Smith?

  None of this existed like, and it wasn't me. It was my, my own personal server. So I wasn't like, let's, let's create a commercial like, cause that didn't happen nowadays. You'd be like, let's get advertisers. But like, there was nothing like that. So I said to Scott Moser, I was like, This is the primitive language. I was like, you know, we need to get something like a corporate sponsor. Remember, you know, that movie that Robert Redford did, the game show movie? And Quiz Show? He said, yeah. I was like, remember how in Quiz Show 21 was sponsored by Geritol? He was like, yeah. I was like, that's what we need, like a Geritol. Like, somebody who'll sponsor the whole fucking thing and they could put their name on it.

• 1:20:00Kevin Smith?

  And they're in exchange for us having their name on the podcast, they're getting like our listeners and like, and I was explaining it like this had never been done before. And really Scott goes, what do you mean, like commercials? And I was like, yeah, I guess what we need are commercials.

• 1:20:16Rich Roll?

  Quote unquote, like branded entertainment. That's what they would call it now.

• 1:20:20Kevin Smith?

  For me, it was because of Zachary Mary Make a Porno, we had a reference in the movie to the Fleshlight.

• 1:20:25Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:20:25Kevin Smith?

  And somebody had sent us a letter saying, hey, man, I heard the reference in the movie and we appreciated it. And if you ever want to make a Fleshlight with us, we'd love to do it. Sign the people of Fleshlight. So, you know, it was one of those things I filed in the drawer, like, what a funny letter. Like, to get a letter from the Fleshlight people, how cool. Then when we were doing this thing where I was like, I gotta find a fucking person to pay for this podcast. First person I thought of.

• 1:20:47Rich Roll?

  First is the Fleshlight.

• 1:20:48Kevin Smith?

  Was the Fleshlight. I was like, they said they wanted to do something with us. So I was like, should we reach out to Fleshlight? And Scott's like, well, it's not like you can reach out to Pampers and Wonder Bread. So you might as well reach out to Fleshlight. And so we did and we were like, we want to, we want to do like these cartoons. Can you sponsor them and put your name on the show and stuff? And so that was how we, and we'll, we'll sell.

• 1:21:09Rich Roll?

  Were they the first organization to ever sponsor a podcast?

• 1:21:13Kevin Smith?

  They were definitely the first organization to sponsor a podcast. I'm sure Leo Laporte on This Week in Tech had to have somebody doing something. But I would say we were the first ones to look outside the box.

• 1:21:26Kevin Smith?

  And go like, what is our audience familiar with?

• 1:21:28Rich Roll?

  I would have never heard of the Fleshlight had it not been for podcasts.

• 1:21:32Kevin Smith?

  That is, that was also how I got tight with Joe Rogan, because Joe reached out to me and he was like, is this Fleshlight for real? He's going, I got a podcast. Should I, should I use these Fleshlight people to advertise?

• 1:21:41Rich Roll?

  Is Aubrey Marcus the guy behind?

• 1:21:41Kevin Smith?

  He was the dude from Austin. I think his name was Aubrey.

• 1:21:43Rich Roll?

  Yeah. And then he's gone on to start on it.

• 1:21:46Kevin Smith?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:46Rich Roll?

  Fleshlight was his family business.

• 1:21:48Kevin Smith?

  Yes. Yeah. We met that dude and he kind of walked us through it and shit like that. It was, those were the wonder years. It was like, you know.

• 1:21:57Kevin Smith?

  Like the way people go to Sundance now and like there's all these corporate, you know, fucking stops where you can get a free pair of jeans and shit if you take pictures and blah, blah, blah. Like, you know, now podcasting is the same way. Like you said, there's an app specifically for recording a podcast that will help you upload it and shit like that. You could buy a podcasting kit. Um, you know, there, there's an entire economy now. That's based on ear balls, you know, something that we didn't know that term back, back when we began, but like, that's, that's the name of the game when you're podcasting and stuff. So now there are a lot of podcasts that exist. And again, I ain't crashing on them or shitting on them. I'm all for as many as possible. But a lot of them entered the space for profit.

• 1:22:38Kevin Smith?

  Where they're like, well, this is a business and we never did. We entered the space for the glory of like, somebody's gonna give, I can record my own radio show. Like fuck, oh my God, that's worth my time and effort and shit. And we never thought about monetizing it. Until somebody was like, hey, this costs you money. I'm like, oh, fuck, I can't let that happen. I gotta cover my costs. So I do, I don't have regret about it, but I wish that, and I don't even know if I wish. It would have been nice if it, if I never turned this into a business for myself.

• 1:23:08Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:23:08Kevin Smith?

  That it was still just the hobby it was. I still conducted like a hobby.

• 1:23:12Rich Roll?

  Needed, yeah, it, it never needed to be a business for you.

• 1:23:15Kevin Smith?

  No, but you know, but that's how a business person thinks. We were like, my, my goal in life was like, figure out what you love to do. And then figure out how to get paid for it. And the danger of that is that everything you love becomes your job. You run out of hobbies because all of a sudden you, you like something. You're like, now how do I fucking, how do I do this for a living? And I'm lucky. I'm breathing rarefied air. If I can figure out a way to sit down with a buddy and have a conversation we were gonna have for free, get paid for it, and that's my job. Then I feel very smart. That's, that's fantastic.

• 1:23:46Rich Roll?

  But it's also hard not to be romantic about the pure, you know, sort of origin story.

• 1:23:51Kevin Smith?

  Just doing it for the sake of fucking doing it of like, because my God, we can, because somebody created this weird technology where we can just sit here and talk to each other. And there'll be an audience for it online. So that's how, the audience was never the intention. Like, you know, I cannot be honest about that from the jump, even in making Clerks. I was never like, I must think of the audience. I think every real artist or, or I'm not saying I'm more real than others. I think every artist. Is working for themselves. It's masturbatory. You're trying to do your thing, tell your story. I want to show you what's in my head and heart and stuff like that. So you have to serve yourself first, and I think we're all built to think that way. For me, the audience always came second, and I treat the audience insanely well.

• 1:24:33Kevin Smith?

  I mean, as you've seen, they've been around me for nearly 20, 25 years of my career. It's this January, it's 25 years since Clerks. I built an audience and they've, a lot of them have stuck with me and new ones come all the time and stuff. So clearly I love the audience. I include them in everything. They're a huge part of what I do. But I had to be honest with myself over the course of my career. I'm like, let's be honest. You're the most selfish person I've ever met, the most, maybe not selfish. You're the most self-involved human being I've ever met in my life. This is all about you. This is all about getting your ideas out there, telling your fucking story and shit. If you were a child, you'd be sitting there going, my toys. Like I'm telling the story. You can have these. These are the ones I'm playing with. So if that's the case, just, just embrace that.

• 1:25:18Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:18Kevin Smith?

  Embrace it.

• 1:25:19Rich Roll?

  Yeah, to be an artist, you have to have a self-belief that your point of view.

• 1:25:23Kevin Smith?

  Matters.

• 1:25:24Rich Roll?

  You have to say is valid.

• 1:25:25Kevin Smith?

  So frustrating. It's so frustrating because periodically, like I spend most of my life going like, like, you know, I just saw Spider-verse, Into the Spider-verse. Well, they must know what I think. And, you know, and I don't, I don't tell them about negative things.

• 1:25:38Rich Roll?

  How can anybody navigate the world until they hear your take on this movie?

• 1:25:42Kevin Smith?

  And it's only fed by the people in my social media who are like, I ain't seeing this until you talk about it. I've been waiting to see you talk about, oh, thank God you finally said something. I've been waiting to find out. And suddenly you go like, they are waiting. They do need to know what I hear. It's, it's, and again, this is a story that we all tell each other.

• 1:25:59Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:25:59Kevin Smith?

  There's some agreed upon story that like Kevin Smith's opinion on this shit matters. One day it's going to fall apart, but right now I'm enjoying it.

• 1:26:05Rich Roll?

  And the heart attack didn't reset that.

• 1:26:07Kevin Smith?

  No, it made it stronger. Like the heart attack made people go like, we almost lost him this year. What does he think about Spider-Man?

• 1:26:15Rich Roll?

  Well, now it's almost, it is a, it is a superhero archetype because here you are, the phoenix raising from the ashes. I mean, you

• 1:26:21Kevin Smith?

  Until I die.

• 1:26:22Rich Roll?

  I mean, you basically like livestreamed this whole thing. I mean, you're in the hospital bed.

• 1:26:27Kevin Smith?

  I put up a Facebook Live where I was like, I'm alive. Here's what happened.

• 1:26:30Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:26:30Kevin Smith?

  Yeah, it's been interesting being me and, and part of it was definitely planned and as much as like, I want to make this movie Clerks, but everything that came after that has been gravy and figuring it out as you go along. Like, I didn't realize that my career would be me until like suddenly one day I was like, oh, I could just go out and talk about making the movie.

• 1:26:50Rich Roll?

  Yeah, you are the art project.

• 1:26:52Kevin Smith?

  That's, and that's, I think what every artist really dreams about doing ultimately and stuff. You present your art as a statement of who you are, but really ultimately it's a, it's once removed from you. If you could be the art project, I'm not talking about in a Lady Gaga, wear meat kind of way, but if that works for you, go ahead.

• 1:27:11Rich Roll?

  But in a performative way, like when you see, like when Banksy, when that auction happened and they shredded, you know, Banksy shredded the painting, like he's, he is the art installation.

• 1:27:22Kevin Smith?

  Banksy though, humble enough to, you never see him and you don't even know who he is.

• 1:27:26Rich Roll?

  That's part of the performance.

• 1:27:27Kevin Smith?

  My shtick is like, hi, I'm right in your face. Oh my God, you can't stalk me. I'm stalking you. That's because I don't want to go anywhere. I've been, I've been to the party and the party's wonderful. The party is, we're going to pay you to make pretend and say the things that are on your heart and mind. I don't want to leave that party until I die, until I leave this world physically and stuff. Cause I don't want to go back getting a real job. Like I had real jobs. They suck compared to this. So I don't want a real job again. I just want to stay in the show right till the end. And unlike other people who, you know, as children dream about doing something and grow up and get to do it like your average athlete, average athlete ages out of this shit. They have to give up their fucking childhood dream at one point. They get to do it for a while, but they

• 1:28:10Kevin Smith?

  gotta hang up those shoes or their skates or whatever fuck sooner or later because their body won't let them physically do it. My line of profession, my line of work. You know, I could conceivably, even from like an iron lung, be Kevin Smith. You know, I could still like Facebook Live and podcast.

• 1:28:27Rich Roll?

  How do you maintain fidelity to that when you're on the receiving end? I imagine of a lot of people saying, you should do this. Why aren't you doing this? You're doing this wrong. You should, if you really want the career, you know, you gotta do this movie.

• 1:28:41Kevin Smith?

  They gave up. Like, the beautiful thing is if you outlast them, yes, if you outlast them.

• 1:28:46Rich Roll?

  They're like, this is the guy that made Tusk. Obviously, he's not listening.

• 1:28:49Kevin Smith?

  That's it. Once you get to Tuscan yoga hoses, they're like, we're never getting through. Fuck him, he's lost. Let's pay attention to somebody else. And, and that's fine. Like, I get it. There's always gonna be like a, you know, armchair director telling you how to live your life. And I also, and I'm not saying that in a shitty way. I get why people in, at home, the home viewer, why some of them like get turned off to me. Because in some ways, I'm a bit of an avatar for them. Like, he's like me. He just watched all this shit and he knows all this shit. The only difference is he tried to make something and it worked out. Luck and timing, fucking, he got his foot in the fucking door. So some people go like, alright, he's us. Now, this is what I would do with my career.

• 1:29:30Kevin Smith?

  And then periodically, you don't do, or in my case, all the time, you don't do with your career what they would do with the career. And so some people get mad at you. Like, you wasted your opportunity. My fuck, you got all that and all you did was fucking Tusk? Fuck you. And they drop out. Or Jersey Girl. I lost a lot of people on Jersey Girl and shit because of something like that. So I, like, I get it. Cause, cause if you're investing in the kid from nowhere thing, you know, you're investing. And some people are like, I invested, you know, the same way they get, you know, heated about like an athlete that fucks up during the game. Like, hey, man, what the fuck? There's a sense of ownership. Like, I took you under my wing. You're my boy. I went out there in the world and said, you're the fucking guy and you're gonna drop the ball like that? They get mad at you and shit like that.

• 1:30:15Kevin Smith?

  So over the years, I've learned to have a relationship with it. In the beginning, you know, you gotta remember, I was there for the advent of the internet. I was there for the first time where people would jump online, a total fucking stranger, and tell you to drop dead and that your work is terrible. Like, now that's commonplace. Now, we all know how to deal with that. But that was at a time where I'm like, what? What do I do? Do we call the police? This person like told me to die. Like, do they really mean it and shit like that? So you grow a layer, you know, of skin, thicker skin. But also you just learn what it is. You learn to take it all in stride. You can't believe the people that say like, you're a genius and you can't believe the people who say, you're an idiot.

• 1:30:52Rich Roll?

  Uh huh.

• 1:30:52Kevin Smith?

  Um, you just do you. And then slowly, people just stop telling you what to do. There'll always be somebody, you know what you should do? And that's fine. Like, we're all entitled to that. But like, the people who seem most frustrated about, like, you know, why the fuck isn't he doing this? Seem to have, maybe they're just giving up. Maybe they're like, he's not a serious filmmaker and they've moved on. And that's, that's fine. With less scrutiny, I might function a little bit better.

• 1:31:15Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Well, the, the, the positive flip side of that, and what I think is your greatest gift, is you, uh, you allow a certain set of marginalized people to feel okay about loving what they love.

• 1:31:32Kevin Smith?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:33Rich Roll?

  Because you love it so much.

• 1:31:34Kevin Smith?

  As long as that's comics and pop culture and not Nazism?

• 1:31:38Rich Roll?

  No.

• 1:31:38Kevin Smith?

  Nationalism?

• 1:31:39Rich Roll?

  Yeah, like sort of nerd culture or whatever. I mean, now nerd culture is pop culture.

• 1:31:43Kevin Smith?

  And it's the dominant culture.

• 1:31:44Rich Roll?

  Right. But still, just having, you know, this, this level, just being so steeped in some of these things, um, that tend to isolate, you know, certain kid, kind of kid out there to provide community and say, hey, man, it's cool. Like, I like this stuff too. And I know everything about it, man. Let me sit down and tell you about it.

• 1:32:05Kevin Smith?

  Right. It's okay to love that kind of shit. There was a period where, like, when I was a kid, you know, you liked comics, you were stupid. But if you liked sports, you were fucking real. And it's like, what? Like, they're both fucking made up. Like, none, none of them are real. Like, yeah, people running around on a field and shit, but that's a game. Like, nothing's gonna come of this, except somebody's gonna arbitrarily decide who the fucking winner is. It's not gonna cure cancer. It's not gonna move society forward. It's just fucking fun. So is my shit. My shit's fun. And guess what? My shit's just like your shit. What is your shit? People get up on a field, wear masks and colorful costumes and fight each other? Guess what we do in my shit? People would unmask, wear colorful costumes, colorful costumes and they fight each other like it's no fucking different.

• 1:32:48Rich Roll?

  It's interesting. I never thought of it that way.

• 1:32:50Kevin Smith?

  It's true.

• 1:32:50Rich Roll?

  And we made a decision somewhere along the line that one was socially approved of.

• 1:32:54Kevin Smith?

  And this, and this is for kids. Like this one, you, this is for kids, cause you know, games are for children. But for some reason, this game, you could follow into your adulthood and that's mature. There's maturity to liking sports, even though it's a fucking game. And for some reason, when I was a kid, there was an immaturity if you carried comic books into adulthood, but now that, that line is erased. Like, let's be honest, we now live in a culture where pop culture and comic books and genre dominates, or at least stands shoulder to shoulder with sports. But I might go one step further and say it's the dominant culture now. More kids wanna fucking go to the movies and fucking play video games and read comic, well, maybe not read comics, but they should.

• 1:33:35Kevin Smith?

  Um, and watch TV and stuff like that and engage with other fans of the like-minded individuals of the same kind of stuff. Uh, than, than the other people, than the people who do it in sports. I mean, look, I mean, this is, this probably gonna be an unfair statistic, but. A lot of cable cord cutters, you know, ESPN audience is shrinking. We see that every day when the Disney kind of, uh, stock results and whatnot, and they're always kind of reporting, it's like, we've lost more people. And I'm not saying they're all coming over at comics, but you don't hear that shit about comics. You don't hear Marvel going like, we can't make any money with these comic book movies. Like, they just keep making more and more and more and more.

• 1:34:14Kevin Smith?

  Because sports are a fun story, don't get me wrong. And the audience is responsible for applying more story to a sporting event.

• 1:34:21Rich Roll?

  And the difference is, you really don't know what's gonna happen.

• 1:34:24Kevin Smith?

  You don't.

• 1:34:24Rich Roll?

  It's happening in real time.

• 1:34:25Kevin Smith?

  But there is no story there. It's literally like flip a coin and it's like, you know, you're moving a ball up a field and shit like that. But we assign, great sports writers assign stories, like this kid, hard scrabble kid came out of nowhere and learned how to handle a puck by himself. That's all the shit that you add. Only difference between sports, loving sports and loving comic books and movies and shit, is they give you, they spoon feed you the story in comics. You know, they don't have, you don't have to sit there and imagine, boy, it must be hard. I wonder how long that person had to train to be good with a bowling ball and shit. They'll show you in the movie. Like, his mother died at the hands of a villain and that's why he got good with a bowling ball. That's gripping story. So I could see where people are leaning more towards movies and, and, and comic book entertainment than, than sports, if I'm correct. And I'm sure somebody out there is like, you're wrong, Kevin, you're wrong.

• 1:35:09Rich Roll?

  It's our number one export.

• 1:35:11Kevin Smith?

  Which entertainment or sports?

• 1:35:12Rich Roll?

  Yeah, entertainment.

• 1:35:13Kevin Smith?

  Yeah, I guess sports is on that list, too.

• 1:35:15Rich Roll?

  I would imagine. Well, culture, you know, the culture that we export. But I think that that scale has tipped. I mean, we're in a Comic Con culture.

• 1:35:21Kevin Smith?

  Oh, I love it. I got lucky. Like, thank God, because if we were in a sports culture, I'd be fucked. My career would be over. But, oh, my God, I'd be done. But since I got hockey, I could talk hockey, that's it. But since, like, good news is, for me at least, is in 1995, when I made Mallrats, we made this movie where we were like, you know, we presupposed a world where everybody knew who Stan Lee was. And that wasn't the case when we made the movie. But the world grew up to be that.

• 1:35:47Rich Roll?

  Of course.

• 1:35:48Kevin Smith?

  And everyone did eventually know who Stan Lee was. So I was just in a good place. Because people are like, you've been talking about this shit for 20 years. What are your thoughts? And they stick a microphone in your mouth. And I'm happy to give my opinion at any given time.

• 1:35:59Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:35:59Kevin Smith?

  And generally, my opinion's positive. When I was a kid, I'd shit on things. As an adult, I don't really do that. I haven't really shit on anything in fucking over a decade. Because, and there are things I don't like, trust me. But you'll never hear about it, because why would I waste my breath telling you? Oh, I love to keep it positive. I love seeing the effect that has on people. Like, I love when people compliment me on that. Like, fuck somebody going like, oh, I love the movies. I love how they're like, man, I love that you're so positive. Like, it really fucking brings me up. That's what means something at the end of the day. Like, you know, eventually, people are going to stop talking about these movies. I won't, because they're my movies and stuff. But like, eventually, people are going to be like, oh, yeah, Clerks, I think I saw that like decades ago. But so many more important things have happened since then. So you can't always affect them with your work. And let's be honest, I lose some people with my work lately.

• 1:36:44Kevin Smith?

  Like, they don't give a fuck about the walrus movie and shit like that. But where you can still grab people, right by the seat of their pants, or in their face, or especially in their fucking heart, is by showing them something they never really see, which is positivity. It's a negative fucking world. I love the internet, but my God, it's built for fucking negativity, because there's nothing but anonymity there. You can hide behind a shield and shit all over the fucking world. I can't do that. I'm not anonymous. People know who I am. So I'm not going to stand there and fucking shit on the world. Everybody's doing that. There's two paths in this life, right? It's creation and destruction. And the destruction path is fucking crowded, because that's an easy lane to travel on, man. Oh, my God, anybody can fucking shit on something else and say it's bad. I try to go the creation lane. Wide open, lots of free mobility and shit. Because people don't want to try that. It's risky. You got to put something yourself out there,

• 1:37:28Kevin Smith?

  and people might judge you for it and shit like that. So I've taken it upon my self-conscious effort over the last 10, 15 years. To be the positive guy, to just be like, look, just kill them with kindness because it's just as real. You know what I'm saying? Like kindness and being positive, it's just as real as negative negativity and being shitty. It's a story that you tell yourself. So if you're gonna make up a fucking story anyway, why not let it be a positive story? Why not let it be a story where shit works out for everybody? So when I talk to people about their dreams, and you know, I talked to a lot of people who are like, I want to make films. I'm like, oh my God, you will. You're gonna do it because I did it and I'm a chimp and I know how lazy I am and it worked out for me, but I could see the fucking passion in you. These are the things that helped me. Let me tell you, I'll pass them on. Maybe

• 1:38:11Kevin Smith?

  that'll fucking help you and shit. Feed that beast. Feed any creative urge, so long as that creative urge isn't like, I want to creatively kill people. How about I bury people up to their necks and run over their heads with lawnmowers? Discourage that sort of thing. Discourage any creativity that involves hurting others. Creativity though, when people are like, I want to do, I want to make, I'm fucking right there for them, man. I can't give them the money. Some cats come at you like, well, then give me the money to do it. But I'm like, hey, you're talking to the guy who didn't have money given to him either. So I know wherever I speak, trust me, it's gonna mean more to you if you do it on your own. And more importantly, there's no fucking help coming. I'll be honest with you. No one's coming to help you make your dreams come true. That's up to you.

• 1:38:49Rich Roll?

  Right. It's like that speech that Mark DiPullo gave at, at South by Southwest.

• 1:38:53Kevin Smith?

  What'd he say?

• 1:38:53Rich Roll?

  He, he gave this keynote where he was like, the cavalry is not coming, man. Like, those days.

• 1:38:58Kevin Smith?

  When did he say this?

• 1:38:59Rich Roll?

  It was, he, he got up at, I think it was a year or two ago at South by Southwest and he basically was like, it's on you, man.

• 1:39:05Kevin Smith?

  I might have him beat by a decade. I got up at Sundance for Red State and said the same thing. I was like, it's on you. I didn't say the cavalry's not coming.

• 1:39:12Rich Roll?

  But your relatability and your optimism and your positivity and your encouragement and being this like, you know, example of like DIY success is empowering to people. So it's almost a responsibility for you to shoulder that and

• 1:39:25Kevin Smith?

  And as we all know, with great power comes great responsibilities. That's Stan taught us.

• 1:39:30Rich Roll?

  You have powers. I look around your museum of

• 1:39:33Kevin Smith?

  It's a museum. As you look around, it's just my face over and over again.

• 1:39:37Rich Roll?

  But I will say, my favorite thing was the Buckaroo Banzai poster in the bathroom.

• 1:39:40Kevin Smith?

  Thank you.

• 1:39:41Rich Roll?

  I had that poster. I love that.

• 1:39:42Kevin Smith?

  That, that movie shaped a great deal Of who I am today. Some movies, you know,

• 1:39:48Rich Roll?

  Incredible movie.

• 1:39:49Kevin Smith?

  It's a fantastic movie, but it's a movie that like, nobody knew. Like it was one of the first movies I discovered.

• 1:39:55Rich Roll?

  Discovering it. Yes.

• 1:39:56Kevin Smith?

  Yes.

• 1:39:57Rich Roll?

  I remember

• 1:39:58Kevin Smith?

  Passing it on to people.

• 1:39:59Rich Roll?

  Showing it to my dad. You have to see this. Didn't get it at all? But it was like that pride of like finding something.

• 1:40:05Kevin Smith?

  That's, that's what social media is predicated on. That same feeling of like, let me share something with you. That's the new currency. It's not so much wealth. It's information. It's being able to say like, I saw Spider-Verse already. Let me fucking tell you what you're in for. Or here's a picture of, uh, that we, a video we did of my husband coming home from the service and we hid him in a fucking Christmas box and told our son, this is for you. And then when he unwrapped the box, his dad fucking popped out.

• 1:40:32Rich Roll?

  I saw that. It's beautiful.

• 1:40:33Kevin Smith?

  Oh my God. It's profoundly beautiful and probably the best film I saw all year. And that counts. That's cinema and shit like that. But passing on that positivity, they remember you for that, bro. They don't, you know, I know it's easy to remember negative shit. Like, God, believe me, I can, I still quote you the negative review that I got from Kenny Turan in the LA Times for Mallrats. First sentence was, if Sundance or the AFI ever offers a curriculum on what not to do as a second feature, Mallrats should be at the heart of it. So I, it's easy to remember shitty things. Positive things make a deeper impact. Positive things can change a person's life. Sometimes a person just needs to be told they can do it. You can do it. And I'm the person to tell them because I am that person.

• 1:41:16Kevin Smith?

  And when they look at me saying it, they know it's not bunk. They know like, look, it may or may not happen, but he fucking believes it and he knows wherever he speaks because he did it. That's why I am a believer. Cause I did, well, I was a DIY guy and it did work out. And I'm always very clear about like, look, it may not work out like exactly like it worked out for me, but you're going to have something at the end of the day. If you bother to go on this journey and fucking make something, you're going to have something nobody else is going to have. That fucking thing, whatever it is that you make. And that thing is priceless. Like we're all looking at the end game because we hope somebody buys whatever it is we're working on and stuff like that. I was that guy too, when I made Clerks, man. I just wanted somebody to fucking buy this thing so I could be out of debt and shit. But the making of the thing, the having of the thing, I don't own Clerks anymore. I don't make any money off of that movie.

• 1:42:00Kevin Smith?

  And I never will for the rest of my life. But I have that movie. That's mine. I made that thing. And I may not own it. It may on paper belonged to somebody else. But without me, that fucking thing doesn't exist. And so it's affected people in a positive way. But fuck all that. It's affected me in a profoundly positive way. And as much as there's my statement, I'm gonna leave this world, and a bunch of people I never met are gonna know a little bit about me based on seeing my art.

• 1:42:24Rich Roll?

  And it's a lighthouse for other people. It's like this beacon that says.

• 1:42:28Kevin Smith?

  Says do it.

• 1:42:28Rich Roll?

  Possible.

• 1:42:29Kevin Smith?

  Yes, do it bitch. Try it.

• 1:42:31Rich Roll?

  And so when you look back on your career, what are the moments that stick out? Like, I think people think, oh, it must be, you know, when Clerks sold, or, you know, these kind of like highlight, you know, highlight reel things.

• 1:42:43Kevin Smith?

  I mean, honestly, Clerks selling was such an incredible high. The difference between, we're talking.

• 1:42:51Rich Roll?

  But when you sit with Moji, and you're like, you're talking about, like, your favorite, like, remember when that happened? Like, what are those things? It's the mundane, right?

• 1:43:00Kevin Smith?

  It is. Well, for Moji, like, Moji always remembers fondly, and it's so wild that he remembers it. Maybe it's because I have the picture, but like, he has a very vivid memory of us being at Cannes Film Festival, and we were part of this section called International Critics Week. And we didn't get in because of Miramax. There was a guy who was lobbying for us for the section. And, you know, Miramax could care less. They had movies with money in it that they were trying to take to the festival. We kind of got in last minute through this section back door, and Miramax was like, oh, oh, good for you guys and stuff. So, we went there with no expectation. And we were like, I can't believe we're going to Cannes with our first fucking movie. This is nuts. But you got to remember, we came off of Sundance, and that was even more nuts. And the fact that Miramax bought it, that was nuts, too.

• 1:43:43Kevin Smith?

  So the whole fucking ride was nuts. But we're in Cannes, and the lady, you know, who's taking care of us for Critics Week section, she's from Toronto. She was like, you guys have to go to this awards ceremony for Critics Week at the end of, you know, it's tonight, you guys got to go. And I'm like, I don't have any clothes. I didn't bring any dress clothes. And you're supposed to wear dress clothes. She goes, you know what? They're gonna make an exception. You have to go. And I was like, I don't want to go. Like, fucking, me and him just want to go see movies and shit. I don't want to go to no ceremony and shit and eat dinner. And finally, she's like, you have to go because you're probably gonna win an award. And I was like, what award? She's like, International Critics Week, the top award of the section. I was like, that's the award that Man Bites Dog won last year. We're never gonna fucking win that. If anything, we won an award for like being a black and white movie like that was, but we're not gonna win that award. We won that award. So we're sitting there in the audience and they announce it, like the winner.

• 1:44:28Kevin Smith?

  And the guy's got a thick German accent, cause it was like Mercedes Benz sponsored it and stuff. So we were half in and barely listening and stuff. We heard our names at one point, cause they listed the movies and they were, Klux! I was like, alright, and people applauded and shit. Then all of a sudden, they go, and the winner is Klux! And there's a photo of the moment. And it's Mosher's back and you could see my fucking face. And so Mosher was there when it happened, but I also suspect he's seen the photo many times, so it re, you know, reaffirms the image. My face has just this expression of utter fucking awe of like, are you, did we just win an award at the Cannes Film Festival with this fucking shit? Like, you could still see it on my face.

• 1:45:13Kevin Smith?

  So Mosher talks about that.

• 1:45:15Rich Roll?

  And is everybody in black tie and you're in your hockey jersey?

• 1:45:18Kevin Smith?

  Everyone's very well dressed and we're wearing, I was wearing a Cannes like souvenir t-shirt that I bought for three bucks under my jacket. The moment that, for Mosher, that's very vivid moment. For, for me, of course, the moment that like we go to the, the eating establishment, there's a restaurant at Park City and that's where we meet Harvey Weinstein and he buys our movie. But that memory, of course, is now since tainted because Harvey's at the center of it. But you can't take it away, like that moment changed my fucking life. But this, honestly, this is the moment that I'll take with me to the grave. And it happened before everything else happened, before anyone saw that movie at Sundance or anything like that. I was working a Quick Stop and the movie's set at Quick Stop.

• 1:46:01Kevin Smith?

  So I was literally just doing Dante, cause Dante's based on me. So I'm at the register and Bob Hawke, who is a guy who had saw our film at the IFFM, that independent feature film marketplace I was talking about, that I found through the Richard Linklater article that Amy Taubman had written in The Village Voice. So.

• 1:46:19Kevin Smith?

  Bob had saw Clerks at the IFFM. He was one of the only people at our screening who wasn't cast and crew. And he had told us, you guys should submit to Sundance. We looked at his badge, wearing a badge to identify him. And he didn't have a name on his badge that made you think like, this guy knows who he's talking about. Like, it wasn't Miramax or Fine Line or something like that. It just said ICI. So, you know, I didn't, we didn't think much of it. And then we found out the next day, because we got a bunch of phone calls, important phone calls, that this guy was a big figure in independent film. And he did know where if he spoke and stuff. And he loved Clerks. Fell in love with it. He's like, what a breath of fresh air and stuff. He's telling everybody, those people are getting in touch with us. Amy Talbott, who wrote that article, that Richard Linklater, that I used as a map,

• 1:47:04Kevin Smith?

  she called me the next day. And I was like, this can't be Amy Talbott. Somebody's playing practical joke. And she was like, who would ever pretend to be me? And I was like, I'm serious. Like, I just have, I have your article framed above my desk. Like, that's, that's what we used to make Clerks. She was like, this is gonna be the best interview I've ever given. So, she called Larry Kartish, who ran the New Directors for New Films program at the MoMA, which is the sister festival to the New York Film Festival. He called. Peter Broderick called, wanted to do an article for Filmmaker Magazine. I said, and none of them would tell me, like, who told them about Clerks? He's like, how'd you hear about it? Nobody was there. How would you have heard about our movie? And finally, Peter Broderick was like, there's a man named Bob Hawke who loves your movie. And everybody loves Bob. Bob's been deep in independent film for years.

• 1:47:48Kevin Smith?

  He worked on Times Harvey Milk, that won an Oscar and stuff. So, I gotta meet this man. He's the guy that turned it all around. He'd tell them people, when we met Bob Hawke, wonderful fucking dude who just fell in love with Clerks. Like, and the only reason he went, he's like, I saw the photo in the catalog and it looked so pathetic. He said, the picture looked so bad, like, nobody knew what the fuck they were doing. And he's like, that looks so sad, I gotta go watch it. And he fell in love with the movie. So, Bob Hawke is, tells us to submit to Sundance. We do. And Bob Hawke calls me at Quick Stop, where I'm working, on that same payphone that Dante uses in the movie. He calls me up, seven o'clock or something like that. He goes, hey, Kevin, it's Bob Hawke. And say, hey, man, how's it going?

• 1:48:32Kevin Smith?

  And Bob was involved with the Sundance Selection Committee that year, like, consulting. So, he goes, I just wanted to tell you. That you're in the top 20 right now. He's like, of all the films submitted, 450 movies submitted, Clerks is one of 20 films that's under consideration. I was like, wow, man, that's crazy for the dramatic competition. There's only gonna be, was it 14 or 16? 14. There's only gonna be 14 chosen. He's going, I don't know if you're gonna make the final cut. He's going, but I thought that this would make you happy. Like, hearing that you made it this far, your little movie, you never thought of even submitting to Sundance and stuff. And he's going, it's, it's really nice, you should be proud and stuff. And I was like, what's gonna keep us out?

• 1:49:16Kevin Smith?

  And he was like, some people love it, some people don't think it's a Sundance-worthy film. But right now, you are Sundance-worthy. And I was like, thanks, man. I hung up and stuff.

• 1:49:26Rich Roll?

  That's it, man.

• 1:49:27Kevin Smith?

  That wasn't the moment. Half hour later-

• 1:49:28Rich Roll?

  That's not the moment.

• 1:49:29Kevin Smith?

  No way. Half hour later, Bob calls up and he goes, it's official, it's in stone, you're in the Sundance Film Festival. That changed my life. That, that was, I'll never forget that. I'll never forget that guy telling me.

• 1:49:43Rich Roll?

  And you're on the Quick Stop phone.

• 1:49:45Kevin Smith?

  I was in the store, on the fucking same phone that Dante's in in the movie and stuff like that. And, you know, I had no plans about Sundance, my only plans were the IFM and nothing happened to it. So like, I was like, I'm dead in the water, I gotta pay this $27,000 back and shit like that? Like, so to suddenly have that guy be like, you're in, it just made it all worth it. Like, it made me go like, thank God, I wasn't stupid. Like, for a while, I was thinking like, who'd you think you were? Why'd you think you could pull this off? Why'd you think that you were fucking special? Why'd you think this would work, you asshole? You know, like, I was dread, I dreaded going, I went to film school in Canada at one point, and then I dropped out after four months and went back to work at Quick Stop at the convenience

• 1:50:30Kevin Smith?

  store. And I was really dreading that because, you know, our community was such that- They all knew I was leaving because I was like, I'm going to film school. I'm gonna learn to make a movie. And then suddenly I was gonna be back in four months. So I dreaded people being like, hey Hollywood. What happened Hollywood? I thought you were going out to make a movie Hollywood. What happened with the movie? And there was a bit of that when I came home, but I just kind of put my nose to the grindstone. Like when I got back from when I dropped out of school, I went to Mr. Topper, Mrs. Topper, who owned that store, Quick Stop. And I said, I want to make a movie here. I'm gonna come back to work here, but I want to make a movie here. And they didn't understand what that meant. They thought I'd be running around with a video camera and shit. They're, oh, go, go. Yes, of course you can. They just wanted me to work there because I was a pretty good worker. And that meant they can go stay in Staten Island. They didn't have to come into the store every day.

• 1:51:11Kevin Smith?

  But then, uh, so to be that guy who like, don't know why, I never, I was never proactive in high school. I was in, I was in sketches and the talent show and I love being in the plays, but like, I was not the planner. I was not like, fuck, I'm going to college. I never applied to college and shit like that. I didn't have big plans or big moves or dreams. Like I was, oh, I wish I could write for Saturday Night Live, but never did anything about it or anything like that. Was just hoping one day to be discovered. So for that call to come and that dude to be like, you're in, like you're one of the, you're one of the fucking 14 that are chosen. It, it meant that I wasn't wrong. Like maybe nothing would happen to Clerks, but hey, fuck, it went, it's going to the Sundance Film Festival.

• 1:51:52Kevin Smith?

  And, you know, I, I remember when I was watching the movie at the IFM for the first time. I hated it for the first 10, 15 minutes of the movie because there was nobody in the audience. And I'd never seen the movie projected large on a screen. I'd only seen it on the editing machine. So there it is, at the same theater where I saw Slacker, like two years prior.

• 1:52:11Rich Roll?

  Oh, at Angelica?

• 1:52:13Kevin Smith?

  At the Angelica Film Center. So I'm watching the movie and the first 10, 15 minutes of Clerks, I hate it. Cause I'm like, oh my God, it looks like shit. Like it looks like we shot this movie through a glass of milk. Why did I, why did I, why didn't we shoot in color? And then everyone kept cursing. I was like, why is everyone cursing in this movie? Everyone keeps cursing. It sounds so fucking horrible. I was like, why did I think I could do this? I am fucked. I'm like deeply in credit card debt and like, nobody's fucking here. All of this was for fucking nothing. Like I had a mini breakdown. And then within four minutes, I cognitively reframed it. So I heard some people in the audience, granted they were friends of mine, laugh at the movie. And I was like, oh, all right. I was like, all right, all right.

• 1:52:56Kevin Smith?

  I get it. Like, you know, you had no expectation that this should work out anyway. And so clearly it's not going to work out. So what you do is pay it off. It's just money on a credit card. If you have to get three jobs, you'll get a third job and shit like that. But make sure you pay it off and then do this one more time before you leave this world because you fucking loved who you were when you were doing this. For the first time in your life, you knew exactly who you were. This fucking fit.

• 1:53:20Rich Roll?

  That's the thing. The commitment to do it again, even if it wasn't gonna work.

• 1:53:25Kevin Smith?

  Which was never tested. You know what I'm saying? Like, I'm full of good ideas, but like.

• 1:53:28Rich Roll?

  Had you not gotten in.

• 1:53:29Kevin Smith?

  Who knows? What would have happened? Like, would I have done it a second time?

• 1:53:33Rich Roll?

  How's it going now?

• 1:53:34Kevin Smith?

  Yeah.

• 1:53:35Rich Roll?

  Twenty seven thousand dollars.

• 1:53:36Kevin Smith?

  Exactly. So I, my whole career has been like gravy, honestly. I, I had one thing I wanted to do. I was like, I just want to make this movie Clerks. And it wasn't even, I want to make it and I want these people to pick it up. And I want it to become like a cult classic or whatever. I just wanted to do that one fucking thing. So everything after that has been like fucking gravy. Lots and lots of gravy. Even when it's bad, it's still gravy. Cause it's like, you know, even in the midst of Cop Out and fucking Bruce Willis, I was like, well, this or digging graves in the graveyard, which I did one day. I worked for a landscaping company. We had to hand dig a fucking grave.

• 1:54:09Rich Roll?

  Actually dug a grave.

• 1:54:11Kevin Smith?

  Yeah. The backhoe went out and they were like, get in the hole. We gotta dig a grave. And I'm digging a fucking grave going like, I don't like this. This is backbreaking labor. Plus it's creepy. Like, I gotta do something else. I gotta make pretend for a living.

• 1:54:22Rich Roll?

  So, speaking of gravy, now it's all vegan gravy.

• 1:54:25Kevin Smith?

  Oh, it's all that mushroom gravy.

• 1:54:27Rich Roll?

  We've been going for two hours. The word vegan hasn't even come up once.

• 1:54:29Kevin Smith?

  Which is so weird because it's a big identifying factor of who I am now. It's one of the first things that comes out of my mouth in every conversation in a restaurant. I'm vegan, by the way. Um, yeah, I had, after the heart attack, um, uh, there was a nutritionist at the hospital who was like, uh, you know, you might want to think about a more plant-based diet because, you know, all that cholesterol in your LAD, like that's, that's from animal products. And I was like, oh, fucking, ooh, Twinkies. And then I remember we were too poor to afford Twinkies. So I was like, ooh, little Debbie Swiss delight. So the, the nutritionist said like, think about going plant-based. My kid's vegan. She was in the room and she was like, yes, do it. We have to.

• 1:55:05Rich Roll?

  Daughter's been vegan for a long time. Time, right?

• 1:55:06Kevin Smith?

  Three years ahead of me. And I remember watching her and being like, this seems so hard. Like, all your choices are really limited. Like, you can't eat it at any restaurants. Like, you know, they ain't got anything. And even the stuff they got is near the food that's not vegan. I was like, this poor kid. And then she was there in the room. So she was like, do it, Dad. Do it. One of us. And she was really profoundly affected by the heart attack. Our kids loved to let a relatively first world existence, you know, like, no bad's ever really happened to her and stuff. So she lost her grandfather, but that was years ago. She was a kid. She was a baby. Me having a heart attack was like the, you know, fucking welcome to the real world, motherfucker. And so it hit her hard. So she was staying in the hospital with me that night. She stayed overnight. So when the nutritionist was there, she was there as well.

• 1:55:50Kevin Smith?

  And her pushing me to go like, you go vegan, Dad. Like, I was like, you know what? Like, I put this kid through a scare. I've eaten the way I've wanted to eat for forty seven fucking years. Let me try eating the way she wants me to eat for one fucking year. I'll give this a year. And see how it goes.

• 1:56:03Rich Roll?

  So you were, you were, that was like a full on commitment from the get go?

• 1:56:08Kevin Smith?

  Yeah, after the heart attack, I was like, all right, I'll fucking, I'll do it. Last piece of meat I ate quasi meat was in the hospital. They like, when they gave me food, like the next day, one of them like was chicken nuggets and I, you know.

• 1:56:21Rich Roll?

  It's crazy that they serve food like that in the hospital. To somebody who's just had a

• 1:56:26Kevin Smith?

  Heart attack. My kid was furious. She was just like, he just had a heart attack. You're getting food, chicken, fried chicken and stuff. And I was like, calm down kiddo. But I took one bite of it and I was like, yeah, I don't need that. I'm done. So that was the last piece of animal product ate. And I thought it'd be a lot harder than it was. And I didn't, for those listening who are like, how do I fucking do it? I didn't, I didn't do, it's not like I suddenly one day was like, now I'm gonna eat Brussels sprouts and asparagus. I still don't eat any of the shit that I didn't eat back then. Slowly, I hope it'll work its way into my diet. I became the vegan where I'm like, all right, what can I eat? I like beans. I seem to like these chickpeas quite a bit.

• 1:57:10Kevin Smith?

  I like this. I like that. I found the things that I could exist on being a vegan. And went that way. That helped because of Ray Cronies.

• 1:57:17Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:57:17Kevin Smith?

  Ray.

• 1:57:18Rich Roll?

  Ray's a friend.

• 1:57:19Kevin Smith?

  Ray's, Ray's diet was what got me started.

• 1:57:22Rich Roll?

  So you started on like.

• 1:57:23Kevin Smith?

  And then terrified me because it went from potatoes to corn. Well, he's, he was fine, but it was the.

• 1:57:30Rich Roll?

  The Just Sides like potato, like super hardcore like.

• 1:57:33Kevin Smith?

  And that part was easy.

• 1:57:34Rich Roll?

  Heart attack dude.

• 1:57:35Kevin Smith?

  I was so happy to do it. Eating the potatoes was so fucking easy. Like that's why I, a friend of mine, Adam Rifkin had said.

• 1:57:41Rich Roll?

  I know Adam.

• 1:57:41Kevin Smith?

  Yeah, like Penn Gillette lost a hundred pounds, bro. Maybe you should, you talk to Penn. And so I emailed Penn. And he goes, look, if you're interested in doing what I did, read my book and then get back to me. So I, you know, I didn't read it. I listened to his book because I love his voice. And so I was like, I get it. I, I, I got it. I want to be a cronut. And so he was like, I'm going to introduce you to Ray.

• 1:58:02Rich Roll?

  Cray Ray or Ray Cray or something.

• 1:58:03Kevin Smith?

  Cray Ray. So I read the, you know, the, for those that have never read the book or unfamiliar with it. You know, Ray just asked like, you just, he told Penn, put me, put yourself in my hands. Just trust me. Do what I say to do. And no matter what people say, just keep doing it. It's gonna seem crazy, but fuck everybody else. In fact, don't even talk about what you're doing because it's too hard to explain and shit. So he started Penn on like this potato diet. It's two weeks. All Penn ate was potatoes. And you know, he writes about it eloquently in the book. Um, and entertainingly, but what I got out first and foremost was like, wait a second. Penn Gillette lost a bunch of weight eating fucking potatoes? I love potatoes. I can eat potatoes. Fucking, I could try this. So I hit him up. I was like, hit me up with Ray.

• 1:58:43Kevin Smith?

  Ray introduced me to it. He's like, first two weeks, yes, it's gonna be potatoes. Like, please don't call it a potato famine. People do that. I hate it. He's going, but yes, that's what it is. You're only gonna be eating potatoes. And I'm part of the Just Sides program. Like you could read a thing that he writes every day and whatnot. So for the first three days, I was like, oh my God, this is amazing. Now I fucking love potatoes and I can eat as many as I want. I'd sit there and eat three potatoes and shit like that. By the end of the day three, you're like, I fucking hate potatoes. I hate them so much. You realize you like milk and salt and butter. And all the shit that makes mashed potatoes good and shit. And left to your own devices just to eat a potato, which is just baked. People listening are like, well, how do you do it?

• 1:59:22Kevin Smith?

  Bake them, boil them, just, you can't use anything. No, no butter, no salt, no oil and shit. Just literally a fucking potato. Heat that shit, eat it. And you do that as often as you like.

• 1:59:32Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:59:32Kevin Smith?

  But what you learn very quickly is you don't want to eat.

• 1:59:35Rich Roll?

  I had a dude on my podcast, this dude, Andrew Taylor. He, he, he calls himself Spud Fit. He ate nothing but potatoes for an entire year.

• 1:59:43Kevin Smith?

  Right. I've, yes, I've seen that dude. I've never met him.

• 1:59:46Rich Roll?

  You know, he was really unfit and unhealthy.

• 1:59:49Kevin Smith?

  Did he do a dry too? No salt, no butter?

• 1:59:51Rich Roll?

  No, yeah, no salt, no butter. I think he. I think he would have like, there was some kind of like herbs that he allowed himself to put on or whatever. Yeah, but like nothing that had any, you know, sugar or fat in it or anything like that.

• 2:00:05Kevin Smith?

  Smart.

• 2:00:06Rich Roll?

  Yeah. So you went all potatoes for how long?

• 2:00:08Kevin Smith?

  Two weeks.

• 2:00:09Rich Roll?

  Two weeks.

• 2:00:09Kevin Smith?

  The two weeks. And it was, I mean, what I also learned to do, and you know, he teaches it fairly well in that program as well, is fasting.

• 2:00:17Kevin Smith?

  So like I, you know, I was a guy that was like, I'm hungry, I'm gonna eat. And now I'm not that person at all. Now I don't really, I don't eat breakfast. I find breakfast to be like hype and propaganda. Where it's like, you gotta eat a breakfast and they don't, or I don't, I've got a lot of stored energy. I'm gonna work off this for a while. I'm trying to make it as late in the day as possible. I learned that from Ray. So I generally don't eat till noon or after. And I kind of subsist off one really good meal a day. I just don't eat that much. Like, and so, and what I do eat, all plant-based.

• 2:00:46Rich Roll?

  Right. You've lost like 50 pounds or something like that?

• 2:00:49Kevin Smith?

  Came off. Yeah, it was pretty, I mean, easy considering that it wasn't like, I had to fucking, you know, pull one of them truck tires in a CrossFit studio. Like, literally, it was just giving up animal food products. And I had a cheerleader in as much as the kid. And I also live in a household where everyone was, the kid's vegan, but everyone else was vegetarian. So I was the last like holdout. And, you know, I, I was like, oh, I'm gonna miss turkey and fucking mash, because I love that and shit, but I, I don't, I don't miss it. Like, I don't miss anything. I don't miss milk, which I used to drink a lot of and stuff. There's no-

• 2:01:25Rich Roll?

  That's the thing that people have a hard time wrapping their heads around. They think you're lying when you say that you're not, you don't crave those things.

• 2:01:30Kevin Smith?

  You just find shit, you find new shit to like. Think about it. You probably don't eat the same exact shit you ate as a kid. Like, your taste buds mature and you find something else, you stick with that for a while. So for me, like, I was never a big burger guy, but like, in this world, if you really want one, you can get a Beyond Burger, you can get a, you know, Incredible Burger and stuff like that. It's, it's not, a lot of people think about, what am I gonna have to give up? But you gotta think about what you're gonna gain. And, you know, I'm pretty sure, unless I get hit by a bus, or fucking struck by lightning, or home invaded and fucking slaughtered, I'm probably gonna live longer based on the choices that I'm making now.

• 2:02:05Rich Roll?

  So when you go in, I'm, I assume you're going in for regular checkups with your cardiologist?

• 2:02:10Kevin Smith?

  I haven't, yeah. The last time I went in with Dr. Leidenheim was- Come uh four months ago, he's like, I don't need to see you until February. I was like, what? He's like, yeah, next time I see you is February. I was like, that's the one year anniversary of the heart attack. He goes, that's when I'm gonna see you on the same day. Um, he was looking at, when I started with Ray, he was like, I don't like the sound of this. This sounds weird. And I was like, well, I'm doing it, man. And so I kept seeing Dr. Ladenheim like twice a week. And he was doing my vitals and my tests and my labs and stuff like that. And he's like, you know what? Keep going. This is great. Whatever you're doing is working. He's like, your cholesterol levels coming way down. It's like your nutrition levels are high. Potato's got everything you need, almost.

• 2:02:48Rich Roll?

  Yeah, that's what, that's what people don't realize. Like, it's actually pretty nutritious.

• 2:02:51Kevin Smith?

  Yeah.

• 2:02:52Rich Roll?

  Food.

• 2:02:53Kevin Smith?

  They think everyone's got that protein tip. They're like, where are you gonna get your protein, man? And it's like, well, it's a plant. And if I mix this with something else, it'll turn into a protein. But like, it's got a lot of good stuff right here. So, yeah, it, it, it has not been difficult. Um, I, I, I hope anyone out there that's like, I've been thinking about going plant-based, or I wonder if plant-based is the way for me. You know, what you give up in like, I'm eating a hamburger and I like the way this tastes, or I'm eating some turkey, or I'm drinking some milk. You get back in like, oh, my God, I'm fucking as thin as I was in high school. Like, you know, I didn't do this by working out. I literally just did it by

• 2:03:32Rich Roll?

  It's been a year, you've kept it off.

• 2:03:33Kevin Smith?

  Coming up on that year. And so it's doable, kids. Like, you know, and, and I, I think the heart attack has given me a nice, like, I've always had the platform, but it's given me a chance to tell people useful shit, not just like, ooh, I love this movie and it'll make you feel good, too. Now I can impart shit like, hey, man, this is what worked for me. I ain't telling you to go vegan, but like, if you like the way I look and saying like, wow, you lost a lot of weight. There it is. There's an easy way for you to do it, man. I'm gonna show you the path. And you just have to give up a little, but you get back so fucking much. And, you know, that's not, for me, I was going by the path of like, I gotta save my life. My kid is vegan because she's like, I want to save the lives of others. So she's a compassionate vegan. She's

• 2:04:13Kevin Smith?

  all about the animals and stuff. Um, selfishly, I was all about me. But now with enough distance, of course, now it's like, you know,

• 2:04:20Rich Roll?

  Start to open up to that.

• 2:04:21Kevin Smith?

  Oh, my God, like, I feel so fucking silly for being programmed from such a young age. But what else are they gonna tell us? Like, yes, you sat there as a kid and be like, but wait a second, we love the dog, why do we eat the cow? And they're like, well, that's because God made it that way. You know, they just, they throw that shit on God and then you just kind of move on. But now, I'm, you know, 48 and a vegan and, you know, Maybe not as, as uh, uh, uh, God fearing as I was as a kid. It's kinda easy to see that like, there's a, there's a, and I don't wanna, gotta be so careful because you don't wanna trigger people. People get triggered and be like, fuck you vegans and shit like that. It's not about that, but like, I see no difference between me and the dog.

• 2:05:04Kevin Smith?

  I see no difference between me and the cow, other than the fact that I could tell a very good story. That's what makes me feel like a scam artist. That's what makes humanity feel like a scam. Like, we just have this one fucking thing, we're fast talkers. And because of that, we don't get eaten. It seems so fucking unfair. You know what I'm saying? Like, look into the eyes of a cow, look into the eyes of a fucking lamb, of a turkey, for Christ sakes. Living, breathing individual with a soul. Un- inarguably, there's a soul at work there. But because we tell stories and they can't, and I'm not just talking about literally telling stories like, once upon a time, and I'm not talking about just literally using your voice because animals can do that too. But we've, you know, all bought into this story of like, you know, these animals are friends and some of these animals are meant to be eaten and that's, that's why they're here.

• 2:05:48Rich Roll?

  That's the way it is. We have to do it because that's what we have to do to live. It's a little bit of like a blue pill, red pill, matrix moment.

• 2:05:55Kevin Smith?

  Yes.

• 2:05:55Rich Roll?

  Because once you make the switch and what you've experienced, and I certainly experienced, is you get to the other side of it and you're like, wait, I was told like, I kinda had to do all that stuff. Yeah, it sucks, nobody wants to see animals suffer, but like, that's what you gotta do to live and I'm here to survive.

• 2:06:11Kevin Smith?

  And you don't.

• 2:06:12Rich Roll?

  And then you're like, I actually feel better. I weigh what I weighed in high school, I feel good, all my blood markers, everything's better.

• 2:06:19Kevin Smith?

  Yes.

• 2:06:19Rich Roll?

  Like, wait, what are we doing? What is that story we've been telling?

• 2:06:23Kevin Smith?

  That's what you feel like.

• 2:06:24Rich Roll?

  Let's reevaluate that story.

• 2:06:25Kevin Smith?

  You hope by example, people are gonna like, be like, oh, alright. Like, cuz that's it. It's never gonna come through altruism, or compassion, or empathy. Mine didn't. Mine came from self-service. Like, hey, I wanna save my life. That's how you get people. And if, you know, if there are people at death's door, it's very easy to get them. Like, hey man, go vegan and shit. But you don't wanna wait that long. So what you do is live by example. So, you know, when people are like, fuck man, you look good, what happened? You're like, I went vegan. Like, get the fuck outta here. Like, yeah, yeah, yeah, vegan man, I just dropped all the animal products. I didn't have to do anything, it just kinda fell off of me and shit like that. People are kind of, they want the easiest solution, the quickest, easiest solution to all their problems. And that is the quickest, easiest solution to all of your health problems.

• 2:07:09Kevin Smith?

  Go vegan. It's that simple. Just go green, go plant-based. I swear to you, it will fix so many things, if not everything. That's no dodge, that's no hustle, that's the flat-out, straight-up, plain fucking truth, right? So if you could pass that on to people, like, you know, in my work early on, realized that an audience, and I realized some of that audience weren't very enlightened. They were like I was, like I was a kid. Ew, like guy kissing, gay people, ew, shit like that. I was lucky I had a gay brother, man, so I got to kind of face all that stuff early on, right? So when I'm making art now, and I realize I got this audience that's like, ew, gay people, suddenly I'm like, I could whip a little fucking wisdom in there, a little enlightenment.

• 2:07:51Kevin Smith?

  Like George Carlin always said, best time to reach people is when they're laughing. That's when they're most open to suggestion. That's when you can implant a new idea, because they'll trust you, because they release. He's like, most people are always tight in life. When they're laughing, that's when you see a true individual, who they really fucking are. Because they're no longer putting up their guard, they're just like, ah, ah, ah. That's the best time to hit them with a new idea. So in my work, I started making jokes about like, fucking my main character's wanting to suck dick. Just make people comfortable with like gay references and stuff like that. And that was, that wasn't even altruistic, that was because my brother is gay. And I was like, well, I hope, I don't want him to sit through these breeder movies and be bored. I gotta throw a little content in for him and stuff. But then you realize, you're in a position to enlighten some cats. And if they like

• 2:08:33Kevin Smith?

  your shit, they're gonna take your ideas a little more seriously and stuff. So I honestly believe that I got a wake of bodies behind me who are smarter than before we met, or at least a little more enlightened, based on the work I've done. And granted, that's crazy, because you look at the work I've done, and like, hey, man, didn't your movie have a rubber shit monster in it? But you can still backdoor enlighten people, which sounds way more sexy than I meant it, while making people laugh and stuff like that. So same thing with this shit. Same thing with veganism. Like Jane's Silent Bob Reboot, I had to do a new draft of the script, because the old draft was all fat jokes. And now I'm like, well, I can't tell those, because it ain't gonna make sense. So now they're all fucking vegan jokes. And I'm putting it into work, man. Like, now, I'll hit some people. And I know this by experience, by what I've put in the work before, and I've watched the trickle-down

• 2:09:18Kevin Smith?

  effect. So I'm putting that in the work now. There's a lot of vegan stuff in Jane's Silent Bob Reboot. I guarantee you I'mma flip some people, you know, and not in a way where I'm bragging about it, but like it's just gonna hit their ears in the right way coming in, you know, in in the middle of a movie or something like that.

• 2:09:35Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's cool.

• 2:09:35Kevin Smith?

  And they're gonna look at me and go like, well shit, there's a result there. And if they're one of those people that wants to like, you know, drop some of their weight, it's gonna be an option. And once they're there doing it, they're gonna realize they don't need to go back. Like, yeah, it's like, like you said before, you accept things because like, that's just the way it is. It's the way it's always been. And then when you step out the matrix, when you step out the box and shit, suddenly you're like, oh, there's a completely different way to be. And, you know, it's a useful lesson to learn because you can take it into anything. I was having a notes call the other day about this project we're working on. And the guy, you know, on the other end of the phone, like said some shit triggered me, not in a shitty way, but just like, you know, looking for changes. Like, well, maybe we do something else.

• 2:10:18Kevin Smith?

  And, you know, my first instinct was like, no, this is what we're doing. Like this is the story. You can't fucking change that. Like, that's the story. In order for everything else to happen, this needs to happen this way. And then I started thinking about it like, no, it's not. It's a fucking story. You make it up as you go along. So this guy's point is valid. You can change it to that. The only reason you're not gonna change it is because like you're being willful and you don't want to.

• 2:10:40Rich Roll?

  Your attachment, you know, your ego.

• 2:10:42Kevin Smith?

  Let go of the ego, let go of the attachment and you'll find a whole better place to live. It's, it makes me sad, not mad. But there are a lot of people online who whenever I put up something about like, yeah, I'm a vegan or whatnot. You get, my kid goes through it a lot. She'll put up something about compassion for animals and being a vegan. And, you know, fucking you got a bunch of people in the comments going, well, now I'm eating, now I'm eating twice as much fucking meat because of you. Number one, that's not true. Like, they're not really gonna go out and eat twice as much meat. Fact is, they probably won't even eat meat that day. They're just being shitty for the sake of being shitty. But my point is like, hey, man, you wanna go out and eat more meat? That's fine. I'm, I'll, I'll see you in the, I'll see you in hell one day. And not because you're a bad person, but just like, you're gonna die, man.

• 2:11:27Kevin Smith?

  There's, you're gonna die. Like meat is murder and, and in two ways. And I don't just mean like you're killing an animal and I ain't being political about this. So if you're sitting there going, fuck you, I like to eat hamburgers, keep eating hamburgers, but. There's some weird notion, once you get separated from it about like, so wait, we kill something and I put killed things into my body and somehow that's good for me? Like, what am I looking for? Protein? Okay, where are those things that I'm killing and eating getting it? They're getting it from plants? Why the fuck don't I just eat the fucking plants, man? Because then, yeah, this shit may taste tasty, but you know what? You know what I like more than a burger? All the shit I put on a burger. I like bread, I like ketchup, and I like barbecue sauce, and I can eat that shit without a burger.

• 2:12:07Rich Roll?

  And breathing.

• 2:12:07Kevin Smith?

  Yeah, as well. So like, it's, you know, I'm, I'm, I can't, I'm not trying to convert people, not telling you to leave behind your childhood. Some people have real romantic notions about eating meat, like, because it's tied in with eating their family at meals and shit like that. My dad used to barbecue and my mom made a pot roast and her chicken was, and I get it, I get it, but separate from it? You're gonna be much better. You have all those memories, like Penn said in his book, he's like, look, he ate pizza once with the fucking Lou Reed. And he's like, you know, the rest of my life, I'm trying to find a slice as good as the pizza I ate with Lou Reed, but guess what? It's never gonna happen because it was about that experience. It was about sitting down with Lou Reed and having fucking pizza.

• 2:12:51Kevin Smith?

  So I'll look for the rest of my life trying to replicate that experience by eating pizza, it's never gonna happen, so I can let pizza go. I've had the best piece of pizza I've ever gotten in my life. I ate it with fucking Lou Reed. So everything else now is just kind of a waste of time. Once you start looking at it like that, as opposed to just what you were raised with, like, here, man, you eat three times a day, that's what you do. These are the basic instructions we're given as kids. Three times a day and you eat fucking meat, you need meat, meat makes you grow and shit. And vegetables were always part of it, but a very small part of it. So now it's just different. You flip the script and, and honestly, life is better. I don't say that in any sort of like, uh, boy, I'm pulling one over on him. Like, it's just that simple.

• 2:13:29Rich Roll?

  Yeah, and I think it's important for people to understand that we're, we're malleable. You know, we're not set in stone, so when people say, well, you know, this is what I like, you know, this is, I need this, my body's telling, it's like, that shit changes.

• 2:13:42Kevin Smith?

  It does, and you're allowed to change it, and guess what? Let's say you fucking love eating meat. Love it, but you're willing to fucking take this journey. You're like, wow, I'm fucking maybe my health or whatever fucking reason. I'm here to tell you meat's never going away. It's not like while you fucking give up meat, suddenly all the meat in the world's going to disappear. And you're like, fuck, I didn't get to have my last meat.

• 2:14:08Rich Roll?

  But do you have that thing where you're like, now that you don't eat meat anymore, you're like, oh, wait, people still do that?

• 2:14:12Kevin Smith?

  Yeah. And not in a shitty way where I'm judging them, but I'm just like, oh, yeah, that's right. There's that. Um, you know, and every once in a while I bring something like I eat a veggie grill every fucking day of my life.

• 2:14:22Rich Roll?

  Dude, you have people bringing you veggie grill in the Chicago airport.

• 2:14:25Kevin Smith?

  I love it. Um, the, uh, when I bring, I'll bring non vegans or non vegetarians with me to the restaurant and stuff and they'll eat there. And I'm like, isn't this great? And they're like, bro, you forgot what cheese really tastes like. I'm like, that's fine because this counts. This is my cheese. Yeah, it's been, it's been really good. I, uh, uh, no complaints. I honestly knock wood, don't see myself ever backsliding. I'm not as militant as my kid. My kid will, and then believe me, I'm militant enough to do no animal products whatsoever. But my kid's the kind of person that's like, uh, in order to make this thing, they filter it through a bone that was once in an animal. So I'm not going to eat that thing. This has honey in it. Honey is stolen from a bee, so I'm not going to eat that. My kid goes to the extremes.

• 2:15:09Kevin Smith?

  So, you know, I'm like kiddo, I, I, you know, I'm, I'm okay with taking bunny honey from a bee. I, I, until they tell us it's wrong or bad or if that's, if it outs that that is what's been destroying the bee community and not cell phones. The fact that we've been taking honey all this time, then I'll definitely give up some money. She's got the good heart, dude. And that's, that's a kid, she wasn't raised with faith. I know, I know. I'm excited to get the possibility.

• 2:15:34Rich Roll?

  We'll see what's going on next year.

• 2:15:35Kevin Smith?

  I do want to point out though, like that kid. Big fat compassionate heart was not raised with one iota of religion. I was, so it makes sense when I'm empathetic and stuff because I was told from a young age that Jesus and blah, blah, blah. But this kid, her mother wouldn't let her go near a church. She's like, I didn't let her join any organization, won't let her be a priest.

• 2:15:54Rich Roll?

  A function of doctrine.

• 2:15:56Kevin Smith?

  It's not in the least. This kid's got a bigger heart than most fucking Catholics that I went to mass with throughout most of my life, man. She's got more empathy for human beings and other living things, particularly the small furry things than most people I've ever met. And that didn't come from a holy place. But it did. It didn't come, I shouldn't say it didn't come from a religious place, but came from a holy place. She considers things sacred, even though she's not a part of some organization that says this is this and that is that. You can find spirituality in this life, don't have to adhere to or subscribe to or fit into the boxes that anyone else has put in front of you. My parents, I love them to death, but you know, their parents said, this is what you do. And then they passed it on to us and stuff.

• 2:16:39Kevin Smith?

  And thankfully, my wife broke the chain. You know, she was like, look, I don't believe in that stuff and I don't, I don't want you forcing that on my kid. If she wants to grow up and embrace that, that'll be a choice for her one day. And I always told my wife, I was like, man, you don't really, you don't raise a kid with religion. They're going to grow up and they become a Jesus freak because the pendulum goes to swing the other way. And she never did, but she's a really wonderful person with more empathy than most quote unquote Christians that I know. So I feel like my wife was right to keep her out of it, man. Like, because that kid developed just fine, better than fucking most people that go through that organization that I went through, which again, ain't me shitting on the organization. I know they've done a lot of good historically and stuff, but we all know they've got faults.

• 2:17:22Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Well, there's a divine design to this. The child becomes the teacher.

• 2:17:26Kevin Smith?

  Yes.

• 2:17:27Rich Roll?

  And you've, you've.

• 2:17:28Kevin Smith?

  That's why I had a kid, so she would teach me to save my life. I'm that stupid.

• 2:17:32Rich Roll?

  Right. It's a, it's a comic book.

• 2:17:34Kevin Smith?

  It is.

• 2:17:34Rich Roll?

  You know, you're your own superhero in this narrative, but you made a conscious decision to kind of shoulder this, this mantle of, of sharing this experience. You could have been quietly kind of doing this, but not, you know. Taking advantage of the microphone in front of you to speak to this.

• 2:17:51Kevin Smith?

  It helps keep you honest if everybody's going through the journey with you and knows your intention. So there I was telling people like, I'm going vegan, you know, that you gotta put it out there. And suddenly, and everyone you meet afterwards, they see you eating, and you meet, they're like, bro, I thought you went vegan. Aren't you a vegan, bro? So soon, you know, that's the first part. You gotta throw your hat over the wall, name it and claim it and stuff. So that's me going, I'm gonna do this. And then losing the weight, I kept sharing it because, well, A, it's evident. But B, that kind of support, people going, you look good. Like, that makes you wanna keep going and stuff like that. But also, I'm just a content person. Like, you know, I do so many podcasts, I'm always on a stage somewhere talking, trying to write shit. I need content, and that's a big part of my life. For me to ignore that or not share it with others would like, that'd make me a poor storyteller.

• 2:18:37Kevin Smith?

  Like, I'd be leaving a big fat pointed arrow right in the quiver and stuff. So being able to talk about that is good. It's just, it also like, you're hitting people, like, just on the business level. You're hitting people you don't normally hit. You're getting people listening to you who wouldn't give a fuck about the work you do. Like Clerks, ew, that's not for me. But they see me on Colbert talking about the heart attack, and they're like, oh shit, that's interesting. Oh, I like this guy, he's being honest, and blah, blah, blah. So it gives me another opportunity to find an audience and help an audience. And those are, you know, one is an altruistic thing. I wanna help people, I wanna be of service in this life. There's nothing more beautiful than living in service of others. But I'm also selfish and, you know, self-involved. So it's like, what do I get out of this?

• 2:19:20Rich Roll?

  Right, well, and the art project that is Kevin Smith and his life. And this is just another story that you can tell.

• 2:19:26Kevin Smith?

  That's it, and oddly enough, hopefully, knock wood, you know, in a couple of years, the heart attack is just background noise. Like, hopefully, I don't have another one. I just watched that movie Vice about Dick Cheney last night. Who knew that dude had like fucking 19 heart attacks? And I'm like, oh my god, I don't wanna go that route. So, yeah, hopefully, until the next heart attack, and hopefully, there's never one, never another one. Like, this might just, hopefully, my life keeps being interesting. Or I do enough shit where the heart attack is just like, oh yeah, and he also had a heart attack once. But you don't want it to ever define you. Like, uh, he made Clerks, and then he had a heart attack, and that's all he is from now on.

• 2:20:04Kevin Smith?

  But share it, like.

• 2:20:05Rich Roll?

  And the walrus movie.

• 2:20:07Kevin Smith?

  Yes, there's that. A lot of people assume I had the heart attack because of the walrus movie. Probably. But like, he went nuts and his heart broke. But yeah, man, sharing it, like, A, I can't help it. But B, if others can get something out of it, that's wonderful. That's the idea.

• 2:20:21Rich Roll?

  All right, man. Well, let's wind this down. In terms of other people getting something out of it. If somebody is listening to this and they're, they are inspired by your story and your example. Like, man, I don't want to have a heart attack, but you know, I'm a little bit intimidated by this leap of faith into the, into the big V, you know?

• 2:20:39Kevin Smith?

  If you don't want to have a heart attack, the big V is the easiest way to not have a heart attack that I've seen. And I've had nutritionists say that as well, and I've had doctors. I mean, look, you won't find a doctor that'll tell you like, being vegan, that ain't gonna help. Like, you know, there's some doctors, like Dr. Leidenheim, who saved my life, was like, you don't need to give up meat. There's nothing wrong with a little meat in your life. And I'm like, that's awesome. Good to hear. My kid was mad about that. She was just like, how dare he as a doctor? I was like, that doctor just saved my life. She's like, but he's telling you you can eat meat still. I was like, because he's right. I could if I wanted to. It wouldn't necessarily kill me. It doesn't kill people. But I'm not going to. That's a choice I'm making and stuff. And, you know, you want, you want others to realize

• 2:21:22Kevin Smith?

  that as well. It's possible. And if you're worried about your body, if you're worried about your health and stuff, you know, on two levels. If you're worried that, oh my God, I look like shit, going vegan is gonna help that. And if you're more worried, rightfully so, about, I wonder what fucking is going on inside my body, something we rarely think about because we don't see it, right? We don't know what the inner workings are and stuff. It's good for that as well. It's like, nothing bad comes out of this. Unless what you think is bad is, oh, but I gotta give up fucking turkey, chicken, steak, whatever the fuck. You know, sometimes in life, you give up something, you get back so much more. I'm not, you know, we've talked about religion and the Bible and stuff.

• 2:22:02Kevin Smith?

  And while I, you know, have particular feelings about how people use that book, I do like that book quite a bit. It's full of great fucking useful tips and shit like that. And one of the things that somebody said in the Bible was that whatever you give out comes back to you sevenfold. You know, and when they said it back then, people took it literally. Like, all right, I'm gonna give you a dollar and you're gonna give me seven bucks. It's figuratively, it's what you put out, you get back what you put out there into the fucking world and stuff. So.

• 2:22:31Kevin Smith?

  I like to put this out there in the world. If it gives somebody a chance to maybe rectify their shit and change and make make their journey a little bit longer, or start their journey, where it makes them go like, this is the shit. Like, you know, I had no idea that being a vegan brings the poet out in you. You never know, like, think about it. If you're standing there going, yeah, that all sounds good, but change is fucking hard and stuff. You've changed before. We're human beings, man. We're so very capable of fucking change. But do what I did. Like, if you're really sitting there and you're like, I don't know.

• 2:23:03Rich Roll?

  Except the heart attack part.

• 2:23:04Kevin Smith?

  Yeah, skip that. Just give it fuck a year. Give it six months. Just tell yourself like, look, I've done whatever I've wanted to do for my whole fucking life. Let me try being a vegan for six months. Let me see if I can do it. Take it as a personal challenge and shit. And at the end of that six months, if you want to go back to eating meat, God bless. Go ahead. Chances are, you will see such a positive fucking impact, such improbable change that you've never experienced by all the other ways you've tried to get to this root and stuff, that you may just stay. That's what I did. I'm still here and I'll stay because I'm like, I can't argue with the fucking results. And also, I'm not, I don't want to just make it about results oriented. Shit, I eat, tastes good. I'm satisfied. I'm not sitting there going, man, I have to do without. I eat a lot of tasty things.

• 2:23:49Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's not martyrdom.

• 2:23:50Kevin Smith?

  No.

• 2:23:51Rich Roll?

  You know?

• 2:23:51Kevin Smith?

  It's smarterdom.

• 2:23:52Rich Roll?

  Smarter, I like that.

• 2:23:53Kevin Smith?

  Thank you.

• 2:23:54Rich Roll?

  I'm gonna steal it.

• 2:23:54Kevin Smith?

  I'm a writer.

• 2:23:55Rich Roll?

  All right, man. Super inspiring, man.

• 2:24:00Kevin Smith?

  Did you get anything out of it?

• 2:24:01Rich Roll?

  I think we got a couple of things.

• 2:24:02Kevin Smith?

  You got a, fuck, you got this down to a science, like, you know.

• 2:24:06Rich Roll?

  Not a science, man. I mean, I've been doing it a little bit longer than you. But, I mean, you know, I had a, I had a similar transformation. And that transformation was not just physical, it was mental, emotional, and spiritual. And it continues.

• 2:24:18Kevin Smith?

  It always does.

• 2:24:19Rich Roll?

  And I continue to learn, and I'm not a perfect human being, and I'm flawed, and I fuck up, and I'm an asshole, and all of that. Humanity writ large. But I will vouch for what you said, which is, there is a transformation that takes place when you remove these things from your plate. And what that boils down to, I can't say. Is it, is it, you know? Something beyond the senses. I don't know. You know, all I know is I feel better. I function better. It changed my life. It changed what I do for a living.

• 2:24:49Kevin Smith?

  And when you say beyond the senses, you mean like, we're not taking life.

• 2:24:52Rich Roll?

  Like this is what I asked you about earlier. Like, you know, have you had, you know, what is your spiritual perspective on this? Like, I, I believe that when I, and this sounds crazy and you can call me crazy. I don't care. But like when you, and it's part of this sevenfold thing, like when you remove violence.

• 2:25:09Kevin Smith?

  I agree with you completely.

• 2:25:11Rich Roll?

  There is an emotional and spiritual effect or impact that that has had on me.

• 2:25:18Kevin Smith?

  I, I would agree with that a hundred percent. And I've, I've always been a fairly empathetic person with a deep love, a deep abiding love for animals. But the distance.

• 2:25:27Rich Roll?

  I didn't do this to, I'm not your daughter. I didn't get into it to save the animals. I never thought that that would be important to me or that I would care.

• 2:25:33Kevin Smith?

  But it's kind of weird that it's like, I mean, this sounds kooky and, and, you know, artsy, but like, there's something to be said for removing blood from your life. It washes clean. Like, and I'm not, I ain't trying to make people, I don't think you are either. We're not trying to make people feel guilty and stuff like that. But like, there's a pretty fucking horrific step that goes between a living creature and your stomach. And, you know, we got a bunch of other shit to eat.

• 2:26:00Rich Roll?

  There's a lot of effort that goes into preventing you from connecting with that truth.

• 2:26:05Kevin Smith?

  Yeah. And seeing how fucking horrible it all is and thinking about it. Like I was told as a kid, like, oh, well, you know, that's God made it that way. No, that ain't, look, I'm not sure there's an existence of God to begin with, but if there is a God, a damn skippey know he didn't come up with the meat industry.

• 2:26:22Kevin Smith?

  So yeah, you're right. There is a certain consciousness that comes along with it and doesn't make, make one better. But it just, well, it honestly, physically it does make one better. It doesn't make you a better person than somebody else. It just means you got into someplace that a lot of people can get to if they're willing to take a step. It's like that hand in the box, like, right? Put the monkey's got his hand in the box, holding on to a banana and he can't escape the box. And all the monkey has to do is let go of the banana and then he can pull his hand out of the box. Everybody's holding on to that banana and shit. You and me let go and we let go for different reasons. We didn't even do it altruistically. It wasn't even like, man, I'm going to be a better human, but we found ourselves being better because of it, because of simple choices we made to save our own lives.

• 2:27:05Rich Roll?

  And I stand in judgment of nobody.

• 2:27:07Kevin Smith?

  Me neither.

• 2:27:07Rich Roll?

  I certainly don't feel like I'm better than anybody else.

• 2:27:10Kevin Smith?

  Me neither.

• 2:27:11Rich Roll?

  Or on any kind of pedestal and it is.

• 2:27:12Kevin Smith?

  But I do feel physically feel better.

• 2:27:13Rich Roll?

  Far from it for me to tell anybody how to live their life.

• 2:27:16Kevin Smith?

  Right.

• 2:27:17Rich Roll?

  You know, I'm here to share my experience.

• 2:27:19Kevin Smith?

  Exactly.

• 2:27:20Rich Roll?

  That's it. Take from it what you would like. Discard the rest and be your own experiment in an N of one. You know, try it. Like you said, six months, 30 days, one week, whatever it is, and see for yourself.

• 2:27:35Kevin Smith?

  Give more than a week, though.

• 2:27:36Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 2:27:36Kevin Smith?

  Anybody could do a week. Yeah, that's like Lent. Like, give it, give it.

• 2:27:40Rich Roll?

  I like how you said six months.

• 2:27:41Kevin Smith?

  I think that's a commitment. That's a man up challenge. And it also, the six, you need six months to change the brain chemistry in anything. If you're an alcoholic, if through a romance, like that's gone bad or ended or something. Six months is how you change your mindset. So if you take, if you do it for two months, you know, you may be like, oh, this is good. But yeah, I still like this other shit. Six months gives you enough distance and enough time and enough body purification where suddenly you will be thinking a little more clearly. Um, but, but again, I'm not, this isn't about like, uh, we're right and you're wrong. This is just what we've both experienced and we're just passing that on. And if it helps you, oh my God, welcome to the party and stuff.

• 2:28:23Kevin Smith?

  And if you don't hear it now, maybe you hear it two years from now. Maybe you hear it after you've been on the fucking table and stuff like that. It's never too late until it is too late. Uh, but give it a shot. Don't leave this world without fucking trying six months of doing something that you never thought you could do. A, you'll prove something to yourself. You prove yourself that you're a stronger individual than you ever possibly imagined. And B, you could drastically and vastly change your life in a positive way. And very few think, you know, you watch TV and they're always selling you the opportunity of change in your life and stuff like that. This is, this don't cost you anything. And some people are like, oh, it's expensive to eat healthy. Bullshit.

• 2:29:01Rich Roll?

  Doesn't have to be.

• 2:29:02Kevin Smith?

  It's cheaper.

• 2:29:03Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 2:29:03Kevin Smith?

  To eat healthy. Like, I'm not saying like Whole, Whole Foods, yes, you know, they've, they've definitely charged more than the average bear, but you ain't got to shop just there. And if you're reducing the amount you eat anyway, it's going to be cheaper, period. I'm telling you, it's all connected. You're gonna have more money, you're gonna feel better in life. It's crazy, the positives that come out of being a vegan. The only negative is every once in a while, somebody who's not a vegan is like, "Fuck you, vegan."

• 2:29:29Rich Roll?

  Every once in a while?

• 2:29:30Kevin Smith?

  Yes, every day, somebody says it.

• 2:29:33Rich Roll?

  I haven't scrolled through your @ mentions, but uh,

• 2:29:35Kevin Smith?

  I get a few.

• 2:29:36Rich Roll?

  There's a little bit of that.

• 2:29:37Kevin Smith?

  I think most people are, they're kinder to me, so more like, "Hey, bro, more meat for me." I'm like, "All right, if that's how you want to deal with it, fine."

• 2:29:44Rich Roll?

  They can have it.

• 2:29:45Kevin Smith?

  Thank you for having me, man. I rarely get to talk about health. It's so

• 2:29:48Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I appreciate it.

• 2:29:49Kevin Smith?

  Fun for a guy like me to talk about health.

• 2:29:50Rich Roll?

  Super inspiring, man. Thanks, Ken. Cool. Peace.

• 2:29:53Kevin Smith?

  Peace.

• 2:29:56Rich Roll?

  That was it. We did it. Kevin Smith, ladies and gentlemen. Did you guys enjoy that? I really liked that guy. That is an incredibly powerful and inspiring story. Let Kevin know what you thought of today's exchange by hitting him up on Twitter or Instagram, @ThatKevinSmith. He's also pretty active on Facebook as well, facebook.com/yesThatKevinSmith. I guess this is his page there. And you could check out his many podcasts at smodcast.com and keep an eye out for the new Jay and Silent Bob reboot movie, which is being filmed right now. I think it's coming out in October. If you are struggling with your diet in the way that Kevin once was, if you're really desiring of finally mastering your plate,

• 2:30:38Rich Roll?

  but feel like you don't have the skill in the kitchen or the time, I cannot stress enough how much I know for a fact our Plant Power Meal Planner can help you. It truly is an extraordinary product. We work very hard to create, and it solves a very simple, basic problem: making nutritious eating convenient and delicious. When you sign up at meals.richroll.com, you get access to thousands of plant-based recipes. You get grocery lists and grocery delivery in most metropolitan areas. You get access to our amazing team of nutrition coaches, seven days a week. And right now, we've got a special deal, a special offer, $20 off through April 13th, when you use the code POWER20 at checkout. So, check it

• 2:31:21Rich Roll?

  out, meals.richroll.com, or click on Meal Planner on the top menu on my website, richroll.com. If you'd like to support the work we do here on the podcast, there are a couple of simple ways to do that. Just tell your friends about it, share the enthusiasm, take a screen grab of it and share it on your favorite social media platform, tag me, subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, on YouTube, on Google Podcasts, on Spotify. Spotify making waves in the podcast space. And you can support us on Patreon at richroll.com/donate. I want to thank everybody who helped put on the show today. Jason Camiello for audio engineering, production, show notes, interstitial music. Blake Curtis and Margot Lubin, who

• 2:32:03Rich Roll?

  usually, typically, film and edit the podcast, but today's exchange with Kevin was audio only, so look forward to the next episode, get back to YouTube. Jessica Miranda for her beautiful graphics and visual imagery that accompanies the show. DK, my man, David Kahn, advertiser relationships. Thank you, DK. He's sitting right across from me, he's not saying anything. You're welcome. And theme music, as always, by NLM. Thanks for the love, you guys. See you back here in a couple of days with another highly anticipated, hotly anticipated, episode with my man Guru Singh. Another episode of Guru Corner. Until then, peace. Plants. Namaste. Namaste.