If you've never seen a Kevin Smith Q&A, it's basically just him taking questions from the audience, and using that as jumping off point to talk about, well anything really. This wasn't the first time I've seen Kevin Smith at Macworld, but I didn't write about it last time, because... it's pretty hard to capture. So I just tried to write down some things that I thought were amusing and/or interesting:
Kevin Smith addressing a full house at Macworld 2010.
On Avatar: "The Na'vi are a cross between the Thundercats and the Smurfs".
On Conan: "My mother's 60 something, and she can't understand Conan. Like he's from Mars or something."
Question about more access to film making tools. Lots more independent films. "Used to be in the hands of some idiots, now it's in the hands of all idiots". The idea of democratization of film is totally okay with Kevin Smith. Not worried about being out of work — he'll always have stories to tell. It was easier to "pop out" back in the early 90's, when there were only thousands of people making independent movies. But now millions of people have access to technology that can produce higher quality movies. Hard to get attention. Shrinks audience — people spend more time creating content, and not consuming it. "We'll all be watching each other's movies".
"If there was no Twitter, the next movie you'd be seeing would be 'Ass Eaters!'".
One of the members of the audience joins Kevin Smith on stage.
On "Cop Out": "Warner Bros. is just like Harvey, they just leave you alone. You get to the point where you don't want to do everything yourself anymore. You know what you're doing, go do it." Says experience working with Warner Bros. was similar to working from Miramax. Said it was different working with Bruce Willis — he had worked him before as an actor, and now was doing it as a director.
He directs a lot like how people write code — he lets the actors do a first take, sees how they read the lines. Then he makes tweaks.
"Bruce made clear he's the author of his performance. And Bruce was looking way while I was talking, which was good, because it made for the great Bruce Willis head turn..."
On the iPad: "Jason Mewes asked me as I was heading here 'get me an iPad'. I don't think it works that way. Will it change filmmaking? I dunno. I'm sure it'll be used to kill somebody in a movie at some point."