Friday , March 29 2024
This recipe for happiness might not be right for everyone, but for those willing to follow a dream, it's perfect.

Book Review: Tough Shit: Life Advice From A Fat Lazy Slob Who Did Good by Kevin Smith

You know a book by Kevin Smith, a guy famous for making movies about “dick and fart jokes,” is bound to be crude, lewd and rude. However what might surprise most people, especially those who believe he makes movies about dick and fart jokes and never look further than that, is beneath the bluster and foul mouth of a 12-year-old boy from Jersey are a brain and a heart.

As he himself says in his latest book, Tough Shit: Life Advice From A Fat Lazy Slob Who Did Good published by Penguin Canada, as an overweight kid from Jersey he had to find a way to prevent himself from being made everybody’s favourite punching bag. If people are pissing themselves laughing, it’s much harder for them to beat the crap out of you. So in many ways he’s never stopped being that kid trying to make us laugh.

Now most people who pick up a book by Smith already know what he’s about and aren’t about to be offended by anything he’s got to say. The thing is that a lot of people who pick up this book in the hopes that’s it just like the movies he used to make are going to be somewhat disappointed.

Oh sure, there’s more use of the word pussy not in reference to the family cat than in most works of non-fiction, and not many people dedicate their books to their wife’s sphincter, yet even excesses along those lines aren’t gratuitous.

The book is exactly what the title claims it is, except just like his movies there’s far more to it than you’d expect. As with the majority of Smith’s work, it’s up to you what you take away from it.

With his movies it was laugh at the puerile jokes, enjoy the gross out moments and appreciate the overall anarchy as epitomized by Jay and Silent Bob, or you can go a little deeper and dig his love for the misfits up on screen and the statement that makes.

Of course Smith would have you believe he’s the biggest misfit of them all; an overweight, lazy dude from the armpit of the nation who managed to make it as an outsider in the ultimate insider industry. The thing is he’s right. For all intents and purposes this is not somebody who should have been able to make a career in movies.

His first movie was shot on a shoestring budget with a cast made up of friends and local community theatre actors. Clerks should have disappeared without a trace and Smith with it. However, through sheer balls and faith in his own work he managed to secure a screening for it at Sundance, which led to a distribution deal with the then kings of indie cinema, Miramax. Maybe it was a case of being in the right place at the right time, but if he hadn’t had the chutzpah to make the movie in the first place, to risk it all on a dream, none of it would ever have happened.

As you read through Tough Shit and listen to him recount the various stages of his career and what he considers the important turning points in his life, you’re struck by the size of the risks he took all along the way. The other thing you realize is that no matter how many self-depreciating remarks he might cast his own way, this is a guy who has great faith in his own abilities and the huge amount of courage required to bring his dream of doing what he loves to make a living come true. Of course, he also has his own unique context, which helps him keep things in perspective.

The opening chapter of the book is about his dad and three lessons that were to influence Smith junior’s life. The first being the freaking miracle that out of all the sperm from his dad that ended up inside his mother, it was the one with his name on it that survived. The way Smith figures it, winning that race with the odds so strongly stacked against you means you’ve already won half the battle.

The second was his dad hated his job with a passion. Now most people would have accepted that as their lot in life and followed their old man’s example of taking a job they hated to put bread on the table. Not Smith. He looked at how unhappy his dad was and thought there has to be something better; why can’t you do what you love for a living?

The final lesson he learned from his father was from how he died. His father died screaming in pain having a massive heart attack. The lesson Smith took from that was if that was his dad’s reward for years of self-sacrifice and hating his job, than he might as well make as much a paradise for himself in this world as he could.

While that might sound like a sure fire recipe for self-indulgence, and maybe some can’t see the difference between that and a life dedicated to self-expression, for Smith it provided the motivation for keeping as true to himself as possible. During the course of the book he describes what happened when he let his life drift off that path.

The worst of those experiences was directing Bruce Willis in Cop Out. While it earned him the respect of executives of the studio he did the film for, and led to more offers of directing work, he realized that even if he never had to work with a prima donna like Willis again, simply directing somebody else’s material wasn’t for him. It would eventually turn into a job he would hate, or at least resent, and that’s not what he had set out to do when he embarked upon finding a way of making a living doing what he loved.
Smith is nothing if not honest. Throughout the entire book he’s upfront with readers, telling them there’s nothing easy about the course he’s chosen and if they want to emulate what he’s doing they’re in for a hard slog. This is the tough shit of the title, “Security, normalcy, convenience, protection, and identity are opiates you’ve gotta wean yourself off before you can be an individual. You can’t stand out if you’re blending in.”

Now that might sound easy but it has to be the hardest thing in the world to actually follow through on. He’s talking about giving up everything from normal relationships to anything else you can think of that all of your friends will be doing.

Maybe that’s why he’s dedicated the book to such a specific part of his wife’s anatomy. He goes into details for you in the chapter talking about her, but that’s just his way of making the real point. Which is that he’s been incredibly blessed not just because as he puts it “she’s way out of my league” but because she willingly gave up her career as a journalist to join forces with him. That she allows him to be who he is warts and all and accepts that he won’t change for anyone is a miracle and he knows it.

Being an artist is an incredibly selfish endeavour and to find somebody willing to go along for the ride with you is amazing, because they know they’re never going to be first in your heart, they might tie for top spot but will never come out on top. If they asked you to choose between them and your art, you’ll either choose art or hate them for the rest of your days.

The great thing about reading a Kevin Smith book is it’s like having a conversation. True it might be a bit one-sided as you’re hard pressed to get a word in edgewise when dealing with a book.

Anyone who has ever listened to any of the commentary Smith includes with the DVDs of his movies, watched a DVD of his speaking tours or listened to any of his podcasts at Smodcast.com will understand what I’m talking about. He doesn’t belabour a point or come across all heavy and intellectual, but still manages to make more sense and talk more intelligently about art, movies and life than 90 percent of the called self-help gurus out there. His recipe for happiness might not be right for everyone, but for those who are willing to give it all for their dream, it’s a damn good one to follow.

About Richard Marcus

Richard Marcus is the author of three books commissioned by Ulysses Press, "What Will Happen In Eragon IV?" (2009) and "The Unofficial Heroes Of Olympus Companion" and "Introduction to Greek Mythology For Kids". Aside from Blogcritics he contributes to Qantara.de and his work has appeared in the German edition of Rolling Stone Magazine and has been translated into numerous languages in multiple publications.

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