So it looks like it's going to be Gore versus Bush this November.
That's the joke, folks.
Everybody wants to rule the world.
Thank you.
Thank you.
I'm going to do the show very softly tonight.
Let's see what's new in the world this week.
I went to vote on Tuesday, and I just want to apologize to the guy taking the exit polls from CNN.
I thought you were a fan. That's why I was so rude.
John McCain dropped his presidential bid yesterday after losses in Tuesday's Republican primaries,
largely attributed to mistakes such as comparing George W. Bush to Bill Clinton
and then taking it back and calling conservative religious leaders evil
and then saying he was just kidding today.
However, McCain announced that he was just kidding when he said he was dropping out.
He's still really in the race and that he was kidding when he said he was kidding about religious leaders being evil.
He then denied taking back saying Bush is like Clinton and hopped aboard his campaign bus,
the Straight Talk Express, and screamed in Pig Latin as it sped away in reverse.
You know, I like John McCain, but that is probably the most botched candidacy
I have ever seen in my adult life, from calling Bush Clintonesque to getting all chippy with the Christ freaks.
I mean, come on.
I think the Super Tuesday exit poll showed he did better with North Vietnamese than he did with the religious right.
I'd like to think McCain will go off the reservation and run on a third or fourth party ticket,
but I'm not sure that's going to happen.
The same obstinate loyalty that no doubt kept him alive in Vietnam will probably preclude him from doing that.
But I do think the rise and fall of John McCain should remind us that less is more.
It's the same reason Gary Cooper was the man and Clint Eastwood got so big off those Sergio Leone movies.
All McCain really needed to do was have his advance team get into town early,
set the microphone on his podium a little above shoulder height at each one of his speeches,
and then he could just come out and go to adjust it and not be able to reach up that high,
subtext being it's because he held out so long Charlie broke both his arms,
and then just look out at the audience and say, hey, I gave you five and a half years, you fuckers owe me four, all right?
But I think they might have overthought it.
Increases in tuition and room and board at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
will bring the cost of attending the prestigious university to $33,225 per year.
Say what you will about being stupid, at least it's free.
Officials are investigating why a Southwest Airlines 737 skidded off a runway on Sunday night
after first ascertaining that it wasn't just one of those goofy Southwest flight crew practical jokes.
And Walmart announced this week that it will discontinue all of its butchering operations
at 180th of its super stores that have meat markets.
You know who's got a good flank, say Target.
Love letters from screen legend Greta Garbo to her lesbian lover Mercedes de Costa
will go on display at a museum in Philadelphia in May.
So remember guys, when a woman says to you, I want to be alone, lesbian.
Complete and utter bow.
The leader of the Indonesian President Abdurrahman Wahid's political party was stabbed in an attack this week by two men,
one of whom was then beaten to death by the crowd.
They know how to do Super Tuesday in Jakarta, don't they?
And Bob Jones University has dropped its ban on interracial dating.
So if you're black or Latino or Asian or whatever and you always wanted to have a relationship
with a white Christian fundamentalist who thinks you're one of the mud people, this is your day, huh?
Boy, whatever happened to the separation of church and hate, huh?
Everybody take it easy. I'm pretty sure God's registered as an independent.
Now I don't want to get off on a rant here, but it's amazing how in an election year,
God's name gets thrown around like the drunken dwarf at a biker rally.
So a little subtle tweak to that joke.
We could have said like a drunken dwarf at a biker rally,
but by saying the subliminally in tone that there is a requisite drunken dwarf at all.
It's giving me that true faux day for night glimpse at the schematic there.
You know, personally, when I try to picture what God looks like,
I see some guy wearing a white robe and frantically working at a huge panel of switches and knobs
while answering prayers like a hopped-up Larry King taking phone calls.
You know, Columbia, South Carolina, go ahead.
How many times do I have to tell you, take the goddamn flag down now.
You know, every religion has its own concept of God and every religion is wrong.
They have to be. We're talking about the ultimate totality here,
and no one creed can have absolute dominion over its definition.
I wish I'd said that sophomore year when I was trying to do Brenda Wilkins.
You know, I had Dark Side of the Moon on, we were splitting a bottle of Matus talking existentialism.
If I had this pseudo-psychological bullshit done back then, I would have gotten laid like Mothra's egg.
Western religions tend to imagine God as either a burning bush or Wilford Brimley with a beard and dreadlocks.
In the East, you get a little more leeway.
One God is a bare-breasted woman with six arms, another is a man with the head of an elephant.
There's no doubt in my mind as to who had the better weed.
Then he spelled out, thank you, man.
What happens to gods when people cease to worship them?
Do they sit lonely on Mount Olympus wondering what the fuck Harry Hamlin was doing in Clash of the Titans?
Or do they simply fade away?
Or do they, in fact, descend to earth and take jobs as wisecracking hosts of light cable shows?
Well, I've said it too much.
The concept of God lets us imagine there's something more,
that when you die you stumble out of this demented funhouse,
and there's someone there to explain what the hell you just went through, like the epilogue on a Quinn Martin show.
That's all I want. I want everything clarified. Do you hear me, God? Everything.
I want a perfectly logical reason for all the wars, shootings, tortures, rapes, murders, cruelty, and pain.
And when you're done with that, can you please explain the frogs and magnolia to me?
You know what else I've realized about God?
Even though Jesus once admonished, render unto Caesar what is Caesar's, God and commerce do frequently overlap.
Did you ever notice the phrase, in God we trust, only appears on the lesser denominations of our currency?
You get up around the $1,000 bill and it just says, God, I think I can take it from here, my man.
You know, I don't think there's any doubt that people often yell, oh God, during sex,
because he wants to be appreciated for his best invention.
If you don't shout his name when smelling a rose, well, that's okay.
Not really bowled over by the sight of a glorious sunset? Fair enough.
But you don't give him his props for orgasms that make your toes curl like flying bacon.
Well, you're about to feel the awesome wrath of Almighty's lightning bolt enema up your ass, all right?
He's doing a joke about God and he rendered me speechless.
Oh, God.
Got to do that Demosthenes thing, put a little rock in my mouth.
You know Demosthenes? Basis in Step 1?
Okay.
Yes, some of God's handiwork is flawed.
There are rivers that overflow, volcanoes that aren't quite sealed, and tectonic plates that tend to crack over time.
But isn't it comforting to know that even God has trouble finding a reliable contractor?
And for someone who is so great and all powerful, God's got an awful lot of people talking for him these days, doesn't he?
God's got more phonies claiming to know his will than Howard Hughes.
Jerry Falwell says homosexuality and abortion are sins. Yeah?
Well, so is gluttony, Jerry, so why don't you drop about 50 or so and then we'll talk about what people should do about you with their bodies.
Don't get me wrong, people are certainly entitled to worship as they see fit, but don't go using God as a convenient template for all your petty bigoted views.
If you want to ban interracial dating at the college you preside over because your father once caught you masturbating to a picture of Pam Greer and punished you by making you paint the house,
and now every time you smell wet DuPont latex exterior, it makes you think of Foxy Brown and you get all confused and horny and humiliated,
and you want to make someone pay, just fucking say so, okay?
Don't put it on God, Jonesy. Of course, that's just my opinion. I could do it.
Oh, I hate it when I can't do it right. I want to know what you think, America.
Give me a call at 1-800-522-8674. Jerk I am. 1-800-
See, all my steam's wrapped up in being a good chimp out here. When I fuck it up, I go completely plop.
I've soiled myself.
Now I dig the whole package again. Don't unpin it. From clerks to chasing Amy, tonight's guest is a director. That's why I'm fucked up. I have hairspray in.
That's what I needed. At Anne Margaret, kitten with a whip, plowsy look.
Ah, there you go. From clerks to chasing Amy, tonight's guest is a director who has become something of an icon himself among fans of independent film.
His latest release, Dogma, explores the complex relationship between God, humans, and backend participation.
And by the way, Dogma, spelled backwards, is Godma. Please welcome Kevin Smith, ladies and gentlemen.
Well, you know, I've done 146 of these and they tell me you're our most requested guest we've ever had on our website.
That's just fucking sad, isn't it? Who's watching TV? Who's watching HBO that's like Kevin Smith on the internet? That was a nice reaction.
Yeah, glad to see you can take a compliment, Smitty.
That's Catholic.
It is. Are you still practicing Catholic? I bailed out. I was brought up Catholic, but it got a little weird.
No, I still go. It's weird.
Did the nuns show you, the nuns used to show us slideshows of hell. Remember that?
I didn't have one of those.
I remember this nun looked at me one day, and even as a young boy, I was always skeptical about the getup.
You know, I'd think, wow, that's a weird little outfit you've put together there.
And she said there was a boy who wanted to make his first communion and they told him you're too young, you have to have your second teeth grown in.
And he loved God so much that he went home and got a hammer out of his dad's workbench and hammered out all his baby teeth so his big teeth could come in.
And she said that was like, you know, she said it like with some degree, that's how much he loved God.
And I thought, this is a fucked up religion. That never drove you away?
No, no, I didn't have any hammering out of the teeth nuns, so it was OK.
Sister Mary Marathon, man.
Is it safe? Yeah, I guess it's safe.
I didn't really have any bad experiences.
What about masturbation? They didn't dig masturbation.
There was a lot of that going on, but no nuns were present.
You know, that's when I knew I had to get off because of jerking off to sin.
I got my own wing at Cooperstown, my friend.
Usually that's how you do know when to get off.
What does it do for you now in your latter day life, this Catholic belief thing?
I believe in God, I should tell you that, but the Catholic part of it has dropped away.
See, I'm certainly not the poster child for Catholicism.
I got married almost a year ago, and we had a baby about four months later, so you do the math.
Immaculate conception. Exactly.
I was like, it wasn't me, it was God. Well, that's all right.
But she looks like Chris Rock.
Chris Rock is in the movie.
So you had the baby four months ago, and has it reinforced your faith in God?
No, but I've always been a big firm believer in God.
There's never really been a moment of doubt about that.
I've definitely had moments of doubt about the religion and God so far astray
to go out and seek out another religion.
And I tried out a few. I went to the Pentecostals.
Did you ever check out the Pentecostals?
No, that's the handling snakes and stuff?
No, they didn't do any of that, because this is the Jersey suburbs, so we don't even have snakes.
So they handle electric snakes?
Exactly.
The Rotor rats and whatnot.
But it was just kind of a little different than Catholicism, but it was still a little far-flung.
There was a girl, I remember, they were testifying, and this girl got up, and she was about 14,
and she was just like, I lost Christ when I was nine, and now I found him again,
and I just want to tell you, he's better than any drug, any sex, any booze.
And I was trying to chuckle him in the back of the church, going like, come on, then you've never had sex.
Like, I love Christ as much as the next guy, but, you know, church are fucking.
I've been to Mass, I've been to Mass a lot.
Yeah, but you don't go to Mass twice.
No, no.
And I certainly, like, if I was going to even them up, like, I'd like to fuck as much as I've been to church in my life.
There's a ways to go.
Yeah, exactly.
What other ones have you dabbled in? Pentecostal? What else?
I checked out the Pentecostals. I went to a faith that was called the, it escapes me, it's so weird.
What were the tenets of it? What were the precepts?
The precepts of what I was looking for was I was looking for a religion that didn't say, like, this is the Bible,
and the Bible is the Word of God, and we must believe everything that's written in the Bible,
because my feeling about the Bible is great book, inspirational book, but a book, you know,
certainly doesn't feel like the Word of God to me.
It feels like the words of a bunch of guys sitting around in, like, a hotel room going, like, this will keep them in line.
What was that thing? No adultery? That'll keep somebody from fucking my wife.
I think you've got a flock here.
I know. I'll be starting my own religion after the show.
So you went to this one, and what did they do?
I went to this one, and I was like, it was really inspirational.
You'd get in there, and you felt a presence in the room, and they held it in, like, a warehouse.
It was like a rave of some sort, but there were no poppers, no amyl nitrate, but a lot of spirit.
And I was like, this is pretty good, and there was no condemnation.
They didn't come after you. They didn't tell you you were sinning and whatnot.
So you liked the Bible.
I liked it a lot, and then I read their pamphlet one day, their dogma, like, what they're about,
and the first line is, like, we believe the Bible is the Word of God.
I was like, Jesus Christ, is there any faith that doesn't believe the Bible is the Word of God?
Can I find a faith that doesn't really adhere to that?
Well, when you are questioning God, to use His name in vain is always a good first step.
Yeah, yeah. But that's the key. I mean, people will tell you all sorts of things,
like, you're sinning because of this, you're sinning because of that, and I get it a lot.
I get a lot of people going, like, you're a Christian, or more specifically, like, you're a Catholic.
I've seen your movies. They curse a lot.
I'm like, and? I mean, I don't say anything in the Bible about thou shalt not say fucking awful.
That's not part of the exchange for you, that God sits up there.
No, I don't think God cares. It's just like the Smith kids talking dirty.
I've got more problems over here.
Okay, having said that, then, and so many people tune into those little things and say,
yeah, I believe He could care less about the trivialities, too.
What does the absence of God do to what appears sometimes to be an essentially godless world?
I mean, you read these stories about them pulling retarded children out of, you know,
places in Chechnya and, you know, beating them, and you think, my God, where is...
Where do you bring the show down?
Well, but I'm just saying, you know, sometimes you...
People are sitting there like, retarded children being killed.
I believe in God, and sometimes I go, Jesus Christ, is there, really? How does this go on?
So what happens without Godness?
I think without God, you've got a bunch of people who aren't the people that you hear about a lot.
Like, you always hear about the negative about religion or about faith or about belief in God,
and the people who are kind of put on display as the spokesmen of God are the people that are like,
you know what, it's a sin and it's morally wrong for this dude to be chugging that dude's dick,
and I don't want any part of that.
Chug it!
Chug it, just...
I kind of like that.
Now, see, I believe in a God that said, hey,
Smitty just had a great second word for blowjob down there.
I mean, I hope so.
Because I made dogma.
He's waiting on you, brother.
It's like the ultimate Siskel and Ebert show.
You go up there, he's just like this, you're fucked.
You're going straight to hell.
Say hello to Eisner while you're there.
What's the shot? I don't even understand the shot with Eisner.
I just had some problems with ABC recently.
Ah, fuck that.
We're on to God.
But most of the time, you see the people up front who are kind of,
I don't know, they just don't do much.
They're not the great spokesmen.
They're not the people you want on your team saying things about you
because they drive people away from the faith.
And that's what people think about when they talk about religion in this country
because it's always the people on TV, the people that you're looking at,
like, God, this guy's crazy.
I don't want to be part of any religion that's kind of so exclusionary as this
or a God that wants nothing to do with the bungled and the botched.
Because, I mean, I've read the Bible,
and Christ hung out with the bungled and the botched.
It wasn't the pious.
It was always putting down the Pharisees and the Sadducees.
He hung out with, like, hookers and tax collectors,
which was, I guess, as bad as being a hooker at the time.
Still is.
Still is.
Always, like, the lepers, you know, just the really ruined people.
And that's who religion and that's who really God is for to me.
The people who need that, the people who turn on the news
and see some horrible shit about retarded kids getting killed in Chechnya,
and they're just like, there has to be sense to this somewhere,
and they need God in their lives.
Not even the people who are watching the show on TV,
who are watching the shit in their daily lives,
who are just like, God, it's so horrible.
I was born into poverty, and it's not getting much better,
and I'm continually getting fucked by the man,
and I just need to believe that after this,
there's some kind of reward.
Some cosmic payoff.
Yeah, let it pay off somewhere,
because it's certainly not paying off here.
I get my payoff when I have an area that I guess come on,
because believe me, sometimes it's pulling teeth out here,
and you've obviously thought it out.
Thanks for coming on.
Kevin Smith, ladies and gentlemen.
Stick around.
We'll be right back.