Kevin Smith at the Alamo Drafthouse on September 18, 2014 in Austin, Texas.
I was thinking about Ain’t It Cool News and Harry Knowles last night, wondering if anyone from Ain’t It Cool had reviewed my new movie yet. In the beginning, Harry was by himself, but now Harry has kind of created an industry. Nobody replaced Harry Knowles; an entire industry was built on the back of a guy who was just like, “I’m going to write about s— that I love, I’m going to write about movie scoops that people send me.” And now there’s a whole field of journalism that’s exactly like that. And thank God for it because that’s the only reason I have a career.
My whole career is predicated on the Internet. Even though “Clerks” was a theatrical release, 1995 was the first time I jumped online, and the tail end of ’95 was when we built the View Askew website, and that’s when I got to build an audience. In the beginning when I got online, it was me and Peter Jackson. And then he got offline and got very successful, and I stayed online. But I have had an absolute f—ing ball.
And the Internet has given me everything. When you think about it with regard to “Tusk,” everything about this movie is predicated on the Internet. So for me, the Internet’s been nothing but positive. Now, with every good thing there comes sometimes a dark lining. Yes, the Internet is also a horrible place where people can say the worst things in the world about you — not just you, they’ll attack your wife, your kid, anything to make a f—ing mark. You can bitch about things or you can be change. You can sit there going, “The Internet’s a f—ing wasteland of hate” or you can be like, “Well, I’m going to make it not a wasteland of hate.”
It’s tough to remember a time pre-Internet at this point. But that world of Internet journalism? I predate it and so I was there for the beginning. I’ve watched it go from, “We like Kevin Smith!” to “Go f— yourself, Kevin Smith!” And this weekend it seems to be turning back to, “Hey, look at him. Who knew?” I’ll take it.
I remember Ben Affleck getting up and taking the Oscar for “Argo,” and he was going, “You can’t hold grudges, you’ve got to look forward, never get mad at anybody.” And I remember thinking, “Speak for yourself.” But I’ll be honest with you, now I’ve got no grudges against anybody, about anything anybody’s ever said about me on the Internet — or even currently, if there are people like, “F— this movie,” I love it. The Internet is like anything in life, it runs the gamut. You can go find the negativity, or you can avoid it and just go look at kittens.
