Clerks director will answer your questions, maybe even about Ben and Jen

On stage
An Evening With Kevin Smith
Where: The Vogue Theatre, 918 Granville St.
When: Saturday at 7 p.m.
Tickets: $50, at kevinthevan.com or at the door

Kevin Smith is grousing on his blog about Vancouver weather. He’s also not happy with the Sutton Place Hotel, a few restaurants around town and a snippy desk clerk in Squamish. But, after some great sex with his wife, Jen, and a TiVo’d episode of The Simpsons, all is well.

Smith tells everybody everything. We know he gets up in the morning and, in his words, “takes a dump,” then takes advantage of the down time to check his mail. He’s gained 30 pounds in the last year, quit smoking, and apparently isn’t too happy with buddy Ben Affleck right now — but so far, we don’t know why.

But you can ask him in person on Saturday, and he’ll probably tell you.

The verbose Smith, the infamous director, actor and oh-so-prolific blogger is staging a live question and answer session Saturday at the Vogue, an “audience as straight man” format that proved itself wildly successful a few years ago with the DVD release of An Evening With Kevin Smith.

Smith is in town acting in Susannah Grant’s Catch and Release, but he’s primarily a director himself. The 1994 cult classic Clerks is thought to be his first film, but fanatics and some Vancouverites know that honour belongs to Mae, I (a.k.a. Mae Day: The Crumbling of a Documentary), his Vancouver Film School effort — or lack thereof.

“I was here circa 1992,” Smith tells The Province. “I did four months of the eight-month program.”

It was worth it, he says, because that’s where he met Lower Mainland native Scott Mosier, who remains his production partner. They first teamed to pitch a 10-minute short subject documentary for a VFS major class project.

“I used to walk to the film school at eight o’clock every morning, and man, it was hooker central,” he says. Through that scene, Smith met Emelda Mae, a pre-op transsexual who sang in a club and decided to chronicle her plight in a sensitive character study.

“We had a reputation of being jokers in class, but we made a real serious pitch. We were going to treat it maturely and sensitively. And they bought it.”

Twelve films were pitched, but only four were chosen, with the unsuccessful bidders relegated to crew positions.

Their elation soon turned to dismay.

“We’re like, ‘Oh my god, we’ve succeeded, this is awesome!’” says Smith, “and then we were faced with the task of actually making the documentary. And it was like, ‘I didn’t know we were actually going to have to do it, I just wanted to be one of the ones that were picked!’”

There was little in the way of organization or progress, and Mae eventually dropped out. (”I think she went to have her sex change operation in the Philippines,” recalls Smith). The filmmakers were left with a short clip of a Mae performance at the West End restaurant Doll and Penny’s, and no interviews.

The crew, faced with the same failing grade as the slackers, was livid.

“They kind of turned on us, so I said, ‘Hey let’s do a documentary about how our documentary fell apart.’ So Mae I turned into Mae Day.”

In spite of this measured success, Smith had had enough of film school.

“I don’t think you need to go to film school to direct,” contends Smith. “It’s like writing. You either can or you can’t.”

Smith’s former VFS instructor agrees.

“He didn’t need it,” says Jon Stoddart. “He enjoyed not doing the project the way it was designed, and thinking around the rules. Film school is about structure.”

Smith got half of his tuition back — $4,500 — and threw it into Clerks.

Says Smith: “Ultimately I think I made the right decision, although there are a bunch of film critics out there who felt I should have done at least 10 more years of film school.”

Clerks won accolades from Cannes to Sundance, and Smith went on to make Mallrats, Chasing Amy, Dogma, Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back (the two characters played by Smith and Jason Mewes in almost every film), and Jersey Girl.

Mewes, says Smith, will definitely be in attendance at the Q&A, but he’s not sure about Affleck, the star of a number of Smith flicks and now the husband of Smith’s Catch and Release co-star Jennifer Garner.

“Yeah, what better wedding present to give your new bride than to take her to see your friend who she sees every day at work anyway,” cracks Smith.

“He might go to make sure that I’m not slagging off on him. This would be the one Q&A where I could be telling an Affleck story and he could stand up and say, ‘That’s bullshit!’

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