INSIDE BOB
Stuck indoors? KEVIN SMITH shares his top comfort-viewing picks...
MY GO-TO COMFORT VIEWING TV
“Throughout the pandemic thus far it’s been The Simpsons. I was an early advocate - I watched them from The Tracey Ullman Show onwards, so in my mind I’ve been a Simpsons fan all of my life, right up until I recently played myself in an episode. In your mind, you’re like, ‘I’ve seen every episode of The Simpsons,’ but I got Disney+ and realised I’d kind of dropped out around season 15. They’re up to season 31 - so there are now more seasons of The Simpsons that I haven’t seen than I have seen, so in the midst of this quarantine it’s been a glorious descent into Springfield for a bunch of new adventures. In one fell swoop, I’m getting to watch technology and the 21st Century descend upon the show. One day, all of a sudden they have iPads and you’re like, ‘When did this happen?’ It’s an absolute blast and has become like comfort food. Life’s always better in Springfield. Also, they’ve gone through it all. They even have pandemic episodes so there’s really nothing you can encounter in life that The Simpsons haven’t encountered first – and that’s very comforting.”
MY GO-TO COMFORT VIEWING MOVIES
“Good or bad, I turn to the Marvel movies. That’s my pack of cigarettes. That’s my comfy pair of ’jamas. That’s my going-out outfit. That’s my speedy car as well as my saunter through the countryside. Whether times are good or times are bad, those movies always make me feel good. Whenever I have no work to do, I gravitate towards those flicks. I’ll just start running Iron Man again because it’s a perfect film. I’ll just start running Infinity War again because it’s one of the greatest – if not the greatest – comic-book movie ever made. I’ll roll Endgame again, just to make sure evil gets fucking punished and shit. I love those Marvel movies. As my grandmother used to refer to her soap operas as her stories, those are my stories. You can’t bother me when my stories are on, that’s what my grandmother would say to me, and that’s how I feel when I’m rolling a Marvel movie. They’re my medicine.”
MY ADVICE ON BINGEWATCHING MY BACK CATALOGUE
“The ’90s are where I lived, breathed and thrived, so dive back into the entire View Askewniverse back-catalogue. If you want to watch them in order of the way they came out, watch Clerks first, then Mallrats, Chasing Amy, Dogma and Jay And Silent Bob Strike Back. If you want to watch them in order of how they happened in the View Askewniverse, watch Mallrats first, then Clerks, then Chasing Amy, Dogma, Jay And Silent Bob Strike Back and Clerks II, then you get to wrap it all up with Jay And Silent Bob Reboot which is now available on Amazon Prime and iTunes. You’ll get to watch everybody get old and just like in Springfield, you’ll get to see technology creep in. At one point in Chasing Amy, Ben Affleck’s character Holden gets a beep and has to use a beeper to use a payphone. If you’re remotely into escaping 2020, 1994 is a great place to go run and hide - so head back there. Everything is a lot more black-and-white in Clerks.”
HOW JAY AND SILENT BOB WOULD FARE IN SELF ISOLATION
“According to the news, their business was basically declared essential in a lot of the weed legal states. I live in California and they’re not closing down the weed stores so I think the boys would probably hightail it to a weed legal state where they could sell their wares during the pandemic. I’m sure Jay would just tie his long hair around his face to act as a mask and Silent Bob? Well, he’s a genius – this is a guy who made a stereo system using his mom’s vibrator and some chicken wire and shit so at the end of the day, I’m sure he could come up with some sort of mask replacement that he just built himself. Actually, if you saw Jay And Silent Bob Reboot, he’d probably just climb inside the Iron Bob suit for protection…”