THE SUPER - FAN

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”

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? 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 first thing 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.