A Bit Cheeky, But Cracking Fun
Book Review
My Boring-Ass Life
Since the debut of his 1994 film Clerks, director Kevin Smith has worn an ever-increasing number of hats. He is now a screenwriter, producer, actor, author, podcaster, small business owner, president of the Ben Affleck fan club, husband, father, lover, joker, smoker and definitely midnight toker. As My Boring-Ass Life proves, it is the author credit which is the most inadvertent of these.
My Boring-Ass Life - The Uncomfortably Candid Diary of Kevin Smith, to give the book its full title – is a collection of diary entries posted on www.silentbobspeaks.com. The entries take a number of forms - some more interesting than others. Smith explains in the intro that the book is mainly a product of his laziness – hard to fathom, given that it clocks in at 470 pages of rather small type. He says that the book came about because he was approached about producing a paper edition of his blog. When he found out that only minimal work would be involved on his part, he couldn't sign up quickly enough.
The book itself is a strange beast; it starts out as a very straight account of Smith's day-to-day life. He gets up in the morning and lets his dogs out, which is usually followed by a long toilet break before he begins the tasks of his day. The first half of the book proceeds like this and can begin to grate at times, especially – I imagine - for the casual Smith fan. I found though that there were enough nuggets lodged within the mundanity to warrant further reading. For instance, he discusses his work filming a recent movie called Catch and Release, his thoughts on various movies and TV shows he watches, as well as his regular and eclectic bouts of intercourse with his wife (an encounter between he, his wife and some strippers is mooted at one point, as well as various other sex acts too lewd to repeat here.)
It was during the concluding half though that my interest in the book really caught fire. At the mid point, Smith switches producing a plain Jane current events ticker to writing essays on varying topics, from working with Bruce Willis on Live Free or Die Hard to creating and screening Clerks 2.
The lengthy story about his friend Jason Mewes' (the Jay from Jay and Silent Bob) long term struggle with drug addiction is the highlight in a particularly good crop of essays. If nothing else it shows why Kevin Smith is one of the best filmmakers of his generation; he recalls the most interesting and minute details from a series of events which began over a decade before writing took place, imbuing them with infinite readability along the way. Any description of the story which I give will not do it justice, for the recap goes something like this; Jason Mewes becomes addicted to various drugs, including - but not limited to – heroin. Smith goes through several attempts at making Mewes clean up his act, but he continually relapses. I won't ruin the ending; suffice to say that towards the conclusion of the story – which I read in one sitting - a letter written by Mewes whilst in rehab made me shed a tear or two - in a very heterosexual way, of course.
Even though the change in writing style was very welcome, it does pose some conversion problems. It is in the latter half of the book where the transition from blog to printed page is most keenly felt; the essays are scattered with links to websites. While this isn't a problem online, I didn't feel compelled to spend my time hand copying the long internet addresses to my computer; in fact, it made me wonder why I had spent money on any inferior version of a product available free online.
The structure of the book is the only thing which holds it back from five-star greatness. That said though, it does manage to end with a very exciting and real flourish concerning a Kevin Smith film currently in development. Being boring was never so interesting.
8/10
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