Main pic, left: Kevin
Smith and Tarantino
at the Kill Bill Volume
1 premiere after-
party in LA on
29 September 2003.
Below: Reservoir
Dogs – “It opened up
what I would write
about,” says Smith.I want to see how he lives!” So we went
to his place and watched Shaun Of The
Dead. I remember him and P.T. Anderson
smoking a joint. He was like, “You
wanna hit this?” I was so flabbergasted.
I felt like I was in high school. “Nah,
I don’t do that.” They both looked at me
like, “What do you mean, you don’t do
that? We’ve seen your movies. They’re all
about weed!” But I wasn’t a stoner at that
point. Now, I pass his house almost every
day and think, “That’s the first place I
saw Shaun Of The Dead.”
I was working on Catch And Release
as an actor up in Vancouver. One day
they brought me in at 8am and I didn’t
work until 6pm. So I had time to watch
both Kill Bill movies back to back. It was
fucking astounding. Kill Bill Volume 2
is a beautiful movie. It’s his break-up
movie. This is what it feels like when
you break up. I was so proud of him. So
I called and left him a long message: “This
is a human fucking movie, dude. This is
what it feels like to hurt.” He called me
back an hour later. We talked on the
phone for two fucking hours. That’s one
of my favourite interactions with him.
Every time we see each other, it’s me
blowing him up. But in 2001, when we
did Jay And Silent Bob Strike Back, he
went to the premiere, and he blew me up
at the party afterwards. It was the firstthing of mine that he’d responded to on
every level. And he was like, “Why didn’t
you cast me?” I said, “The next time I
make a movie like that, I’ll put you in it.”
So when I wrote Jay And Silent Bob
Reboot, there was a beating-up-directors
montage. The idea was that Jay and Bob
are in Hollywood, where a lot of terrible
fucking directors live, so it’s payback
time. I had a bunch of cool people lined
up. Then they get to Quentin and as
they’re about to lay hands on him, he
would spin around and go, “FUCK
YOU! I’VE NEVER MADE A BAD
MOVIE IN MY LIFE!” But the movie
didn’t lend itself to that scene, so I let go
of the whole sequence.
I remember having a conversation
with him after an event we did with
Edgar Wright for Spaced at the Arclight
in Los Angeles. I was moderating, and
Quentin came. This was maybe two
months after Grindhouse came out.
I’d never seen him be anything other
than Quentin. That night he was not so
Quentin. He felt dinged by Grindhouse,
and he was on his way the next day to go
to Germany to start Inglourious Basterds.
He was so hellbent to get there. He said,
“I’m going to make a movie that’s going
to blow their fucking minds, and show
that I still know how to fuck.” He was on
a mission. It was such a weird thing to
hear somebody at the top of the
mountain say. Wait — if you think you’re
doing poorly, I must be in the fucking
toilet and not even know it. But that was
the moment when I realised that it wasn’t
enough for him to just make great movies.
He likes to dent the universe each time
out, and each time out he kinda does.
I see him not just as my elder. He is
a rock star. I don’t know that I’ll ever
see him as an equal human being, and a
friend. I’ll always see him as the gift-giver,
the guy who went first, the guy who made
it all possible. But it’s always stayed in
the back of my mind: he legit wanted
to be in Jay And Silent Bob Strike Back.QUENTIN TARANTINO WAS the one
who gave me licence. He blazed a trail.
Richard Linklater’s Slacker was the movie
that made me go, “Ooh, maybe I can be a
filmmaker.” But Reservoir Dogs opened
up what I would write about. The opening
scene has these guys, up to no good,
sitting around talking about a Madonna
song. The way my friends and I would
talk about it. And I was like, “That
counts? You can do that in a movie?”
I first met him in Cannes, on the Pulp
Fiction yacht in 1994. I told him how
much I loved Reservoir Dogs. He said,
“You’re gonna love the new one, man. You
gonna come see it?” I said I didn’t have a
tux. “There’s gonna be another screening.
You can go to that.” So we saw it before it
debuted at this private screening off the
Croisette at midnight. That was the week
his life changed. Prior to that he was
Quentin Tarantino — capital Q, capital T,
the rest of the letters were lower-case. Pulp
Fiction put all those letters upper-case.
QUENTIN TARANTINO. Just like the
Hollywood sign itself.
Pulp Fiction was a seminal film for
me. It was full of such wild tone swings
that it was dizzying and intoxicating.
I had already done a draft of Dogma,
which existed before Clerks existed.
And I remember saying to Scott Mosier,
my producer, afterwards, “If you can
get away with that now, I’m going back
into Dogma.” You can go from funny
to harrowing. His stuff was not just
shocking people. It was a mixture of
tones, the way a painter mixes paint. He
lit my fire as a writer and then he helped
shape Dogma, all without touching it.
I’VE NEVER BEEN like, “Hey man, let’s
go grab a burger.” But I remember going
to Quentin’s house once. He’s got a movie
theatre with real seats and a popcorn
machine. He said, “I’m going to show
this movie that I think you’ll love. Come
and watch it.” I was like, “Nah, I’m
cool.” My wife was like, “Are you nuts?
QUENTIN TARANTINO AND KEVIN SMITH BOTH BURST ONTO THE SCENE AS INDIE AUTEURS IN THE
EARLY 1990S. THREE DECADES ON, SMITH REFLECTS ON “THE GUY WHO MADE IT ALL POSSIBLE”
ON THE QT / VOLUME 2