Kevin Smith reveals his heart attack survival—clearing an 80% fatal "widowmaker" blockage via angioplasty—while joking about mortality as fuel for his Jay and Silent Bob Reboot roadshow tour, which recouped $8M in equity financing within a year through sold-out Q&A screenings like the 93,000-attendee New Jersey event. The film’s indie success, driven by direct fan engagement (via RebootRoadShow.com or Fandango) and minimal studio marketing, contrasts with traditional Hollywood returns, proving Smith’s self-sustaining career model works. Both celebrate creative independence—Smith’s "eventized" stand-up/comedy hybrid approach and Rogan’s viral podcasting—over industry trends, with Smith calling it "masturbatory" but rewarding for fans. Their shared obsession with full commitment to art, whether in combat sports or comedy, underscores how passion trumps convention when audiences connect deeply. [Automatically generated summary]
You and I started podcasting roughly around the same time, and it never occurred to me when I started, and I wonder if it occurred to you, to do Seasons.
Rather than like, hey, we'll put the movie out in a thousand theaters.
We don't have that kind of marketing money.
So instead, me and Jay are just touring with the movie.
Oh, okay.
Essentially, it's like a comedy tour or like a small punk band tour.
We go to a theater, we set up shop, we sold tickets in advance, a lot of the tours sold out, rebootroadshow.com for tickets.
And we intro the movie, watch the movie with them, and then hang out afterwards, Q&A and shit like that.
And for me, it's like, you know, it's a pretty grueling schedule every day in a different city, but every day I get to like sit and watch the movie with the exact audience it was made for.
It's not like walking into a multiplex that's playing your movie, and even if it's crowded, you're like, man, I hope We're good to go.
And in a world where people would come see me and Jay anyway, talk about the old movies, like, and pay 50 to 100 bucks, we're like, they'd pay the same thing, see us bring a new fucking movie.
We share the stage, which is difficult because I tend to, as you see, blah, blah, blah.
So I've tried to hold back to let him kind of take front and center during the Q&A because he's the star of the movie and he's amazing in the fucking flick.
Like I tell people at the beginning of every night, I'm like, we only get to make this journey and we've been doing it for 25 years since Clerks.
Because like I met a boy who said dirty things to me and I said, come with me, we're going to Hollywood.
And like I met a true American original, Jason Mews, who I said, I think you're funny.
I wonder if people would find you funny outside of New Jersey.
And like somebody should put you in a movie one day.
And then one day I was that person.
And he was our passport and has been our passport to the world.
The guy least likely.
The guy that was never going to get out of Highlands, you know, on his own accord.
But like, simply by being like, wait, say these things here on camera.
Now we've got a movie.
Like, he opened up the entire world to us.
So it's his finest hour in this movie.
Like, he's funny as fuck, man.
He carries the whole show.
But...
He also gets to be emotional, because it's about him finding out he's got a long-lost daughter and shit, so it's a father-daughter movie.
And so there are moments in the movie where people cry, and not because they're like, Kevin fucked up another movie!
They're like, oh my god, he's getting me there as an actor.
It's been fucking thrilling to watch.
So every night, it was thrilling to watch when we made it.
Every night I get to sit back and watch the audience take it in.
And I'm used to making comedy, and you want people laughing, otherwise if it's silence, it's death.
But there are moments in the movie where, like, it's quiet, and that's a good thing.
And, like, you know, I still clench my asshole, because in any silence, you're always like, you just need one heckler to be like, fuck this blows, or whatever, and the audience breaks, or whatever.
So far, man, it's been, like, really fucking beautiful.
I don't want this to sound like a commercial, but that sativa is pumped up with 30% CBD. He jacks up the CBD. So when you smoke it, you're healing something as you smoke it, but it's a nice crisp pie.
Like at one point I was like, I weigh my area code and I was 323. Holy shit, dude!
Well, I'm not done because I was like, well, let's round this motherfucker out and I went up to 330. Really?
Yeah, which is nobody's area code that I know of.
So that was my highest.
Then I saw, what was it?
Was it Fed Up?
up the sugar documentary and took off like a bunch of weight because I stopped doing sugar.
Then, you know, my weight yo-yoed for a bit.
Then it's coming in February to be two years that I had the heart attack.
I was shooting the Showtime special in between shows.
I had the heart attack.
So then I started losing weight.
First I went on Penn Jillette's suggested diet with Ray Cronis, Just Sides, and it was like all potatoes, just eat potatoes for like two weeks.
And I was like, this will be easy.
I love potatoes.
And after two fucking days, you learn you hate potatoes.
You love milk and salt and butter and shit that goes into mashed potatoes.
But just eating a baked potato, and you can have as many as you want.
They're like, oh my god, eat as many as you fucking want.
And that's where I learned fasting.
Because when your choice is like a fucking potato or nothing, you're like, you know what?
I'd rather eat fucking air than eat a potato and stuff.
And then you realize, oh, I'm okay.
I didn't die.
And my body will start feeding off some stored fat.
So, at that point, when I had the heart attack, my kid was like, please go vegan.
Because there was a nutritionist was in the room the morning after I had the heart attacks.
Kid slept there all night just staring at me to make sure I didn't, like, fucking have a second heart attack.
And really, that wasn't the big danger.
The big danger, apparently, was in order to get to my heart, they punctured my groin.
That's how they get to your heart.
That's the easiest, fastest route and stuff.
And so, the whole night, they're like, yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, I mean, they could either crack your chest, but they don't like to do that anymore, right?
So it's not as invasive to go through your femoral, and so you go through the groin.
Some people go through the wrist as well.
I met a cat who was like, they went through my wrist.
I was like, why did they go through my groin?
He's like, probably wanted to see your dick.
So...
I sat there.
The morning after the kid was there and the nutritionist was like, if you thought about plant-based, that'll cut your cholesterol down, or at least losing some meat.
And the kid was like, yeah, go vegan, one of us.
And she was definitely looking out for me, but at the same time, She knew that I'd be a big get for the vegan community.
Like, oh, I flipped this fucking motherfucker, this meat-eating.
I used to drink two gallons of milk a day.
If I could flip him, that's a good get.
So I tried it, and I was like, oh, I'll give it a shot.
I lived the way I wanted to for many, many years, and obviously that led me to almost dying.
So how about I try what you're talking about, you know, for a few months, six months.
And that was a year and a half over a year and a half ago.
So being vegan and also intermittent fasting, meaning essentially I don't do breakfast like yourself, has dropped me down another 70. So I'm 198 right now, which is like my high school weight.
The good thing about strength training is strength training is particularly important as you get older.
It maintains bone density, maintains your muscle mass, and there's a lot of correlations between people who exercise and maintain muscle and heart health and just overall vitality of your body.
A stronger body is more durable, you know, and It's not hard for you to hire somebody.
You know, what really irritates me about this is like as you imitated a guy doing squats, you closed your eyes, you went to a place, you literally played a character, you acted in front of me.
It's a slow changing, like water hitting rocks, right?
When you see water carving a pathway through rocks...
That shit takes forever.
It takes forever.
And that's the same thing with fitness.
You're not going to get giant muscles quick.
I mean, you could be one of those fucking psychopaths that decides to completely change their life and completely dedicate themselves to fitness and all of a sudden you get jacked and you have all these muscles.
But that is going to have to be a massive commitment and a life-changing thing.
And for a guy who's had a heart attack, I don't recommend that at all.
I think he was hoping for purses, but I don't think it was just like this or mailman.
Although, that's where the story's kind of gone.
Not mailman, but...
This was a guy who boxed professionally.
And the story was that my grandmother, like when they had their first kid, my aunt Virginia, my grandmother was like, you can't be a boxer anymore.
And so he was like, alright.
And then he stopped being a boxer.
And then my grandfather became a custodian in the Newark courthouse.
And every day he would get dressed up in a suit and take the bus to the Newark courthouse.
They lived in a different section of Newark.
And then he'd put on his custodian outfit and clean the toilet, sweep the floors and stuff like that.
Noble, salt of the earth shit.
So my whole life I never questioned this.
You know, your wife says, you quit.
And you quit and stuff like that.
Until I became older and I became something of the man in the ring myself.
I know what it's like to stand at attention for everybody, where everybody, you are the focus of thousands, where you get a level of affection from one vociferous mass that is unparalleled from any amount of affection you could give from any other single human being in this world.
It is...
I've never done heroin, but I imagine it's better than heroin.
It's one of the greatest drugs.
It fuels us, and we obviously like it.
We keep fucking doing it.
We make money off it, yes, but there's many ways to make money, and we like it, and we do it because there's power to it, and it feels fantastic, and you feel like, man, they like me.
They really like me.
And then I started thinking, why would he have put that all to the side?
Like, how do you step outside all that just because your wife is like, I don't want you to do that anymore?
And then it made me reconsider my grandparents.
And I figured out, and I want to see if you back me on this play.
You don't know these cats, so you've got no skin in the game, so you can't offend anybody.
Doesn't that sound like she did dirty shit that nobody else did?
My thought is that he recognized that it's very dangerous, and he probably knew people who died, and he probably wanted to find a way out of it anyway, which most fighters do.
Most fighters, at some point in time, they realize, I'm going to have to jump off this ride one day.
I can't stay on this ride and tell him a dead man, tell him 90 years old or 100 years old.
They've got a flashlight in your face and ice on the back of your neck.
And you don't even know what day it is.
And then that, you never get back.
And you can only get so many of those in your life.
It depends on the person, but you get knocked out three, four, five times, whatever the number is.
There's a certain number that your life is going to be fucking different now.
Because now your brain doesn't work good anymore.
That's a fact.
And maybe it'll get a little bit better over time.
Maybe you can go through some cognitive therapy.
There's some different things they're doing with magnets and different things they're doing with stem cells where they're shooting them straight into your cerebral spinal fluid.
And they think that that might have some sort of a positive impact on CTE.
But, man, the reality is combat sports are a fucking brutal, brutal business.
unidentified
And so you think it's possible he just got to a place where he's probably smart.
Sub-concussive trauma is terrible, but knockouts are also horrific.
And then for me, my discussions with guys like Dr. Mark Gordon, who's an expert in traumatic brain injuries, and he works with a lot of soldiers, and he runs his TBI foundation to deal with injuries that soldiers and football players and fighters face, and his descriptions of it will scare the fucking shit out of you.
I mean, he's like, people can get brain damage from fucking jet skiing.
Just blah, blah, blah.
All that bouncing up and down can give you fucking brain damage.
But he's talking about like people, some people get in accidents, some sort of a, something happens to you, we get knocked out, and they are never the same again.
This is a real thing.
You can get a shot to the head, a golf ball, somebody misses, they crack you in the head with a golf ball, right?
You get hit with a line drive.
That kind of shit changes people forever, forever.
The amount of force you can generate with a kick is just so terrifying.
It's so terrifying.
You know, to think that that's going to bounce off your head and then the lights go out and then you could incur legitimate permanent brain damage from something like that.
I've been stopped, which means I got TKO'd, I got dropped with a punch, and then the guy followed up with a bunch of punches and the referee stopped the fight.
No, because it was kickboxing, it wasn't MMA. In MMA, the guy would jump on you and they'd stop it right there.
Or you'd maybe grab a hold of him and maybe you would survive, maybe you wouldn't.
You know, there's arguments that it's safer in MMA because they stop it quicker.
There's also arguments that when it goes to the ground, you could actually survive better and you could hold on and maybe that would allow you to take more damage and maybe that's not as safe.
No, well, I knew somewhere around the time I was 19 that there was no future in this.
And I was trying to make the Olympic team, which the Nationals were in Miami in 1988. Wait, where are you from?
Boston.
That's where I was at.
So I was a Massachusetts state champion, and then I would go to these national tournaments and compete against the Illinois champion or the New Hampshire champion.
Well, it changed who I was from the time I was 15 to the time I was 21, almost 22. When I started fighting, when I started doing competitions, it gave me a focus and it gave me something where I didn't feel like I was a loser.
A lot of things you can get better at, and especially artistic pursuits.
Because the thing about artistic pursuits is everybody finds their own way.
So the shift to me from doing something that was competition, especially competition with grave physical consequences, to go from that to doing stand-up.
When I first started doing stand-up, I realized, okay, this could be it.
The fucking fighting thing, it's a dead end.
There's no money.
This is before the UFC. There was no money in kickboxing.
I remember I'd gotten offered a kickboxing fight, a professional fight, for $500.
And I was like, what is that?
$500?
It means I have to train for six weeks?
No alcohol, eat good, run, do all these different things, train, spar, and then $500 at the end of it.
All the stories I read about Green Arrow punches, or all the stories I've written, where fucking Daredevil punches a motherfucker, you've actually done the punching and received the fucking punch.
Yeah, because my earliest martial art was taekwondo, which is mostly kicking-based.
But yeah, I did a lot of that, too.
The kickboxing was a big turnaround, too, because kickboxing happened at the end of my taekwondo career when I was realizing that taekwondo was really limited.
And I just was really, really, really, really fortunate that I wanted to do stand-up comedy, and I happened to be in Boston, which at the time was one of the hubs, one of the most creative environments in the history of comedy.
Well, there was a lot of guys that you'll never hear about.
But they stayed in Boston.
But Bill Burr was – he was a little bit after me, like a year or two after me.
And there's Patrice O'Neal who's also in like Bill Burr's group and Nick DiPaolo.
And there was – fucking god damn.
I mean there's so many guys that came out of that area.
You could just go on and on and on about the local headliners.
But the environment, Stephen Wright came out of there.
He was out of Boston?
Yeah, he's from that area.
And there was guys you never heard of that were fucking – oh, Lenny Clark, of course.
But there's guys like Don Gavin and Steve Sweeney who are to this day I think some of the best comedians I've ever seen in my life.
And they were just local headliners who were just masters.
They just were just destroyers.
And we got a chance to see those guys.
Greg Fitzsimmons, who's another good buddy of mine who came out of that group.
We got to see those guys when we were amateurs.
And we got to see these guys where they were just destroying in a way that you didn't even think was possible.
And we got to...
Unique opportunity as amateurs to be in this incredible environment where there are so many comedy clubs.
There was three comedy clubs in one area on Warranted Street.
There was one where was Nick's Comedy Stop, and then there was down the street, there was the Comedy Connection, and above it, there was a comedy club at the Charles Playhouse, and then across the street, there was Duck Soup.
So there was four comedy clubs within...
A half a block.
I mean, it was crazy.
It was a boom of comedy.
Then there were stitches, and there were just so many outside bars and stuff that had stand-up, too.
It was mean funny because fighting is a mean sport.
It's mean.
You have to be mean if you want to be successful.
So some of my comedy was mean.
And then I didn't know about amateurs.
I didn't understand.
And then I went to an open mic night.
One of the things about going to an open mic night is you get to see the professionals, like the hosts, and occasionally professionals drop in and do a set, but you also get to see these amateurs who are terrible.
And you go, oh, I get it.
So everybody sucks at first.
And then...
You know, you could just go up with the people who suck and you suck too.
And it was like, okay, it was a huge relief.
Because I thought of stand-up, oh my god, it's like Richard Pryor or Jerry Seinfeld, those are comics.
No, the one in Eatontown, right between the Monmouth Mall and the Seaview Square Mall.
And so I went up and I did like five minutes.
The only bit that worked was a bit about sucking my own dick, and I put that in Clerks.
Years later, I was like, oh, I remember they laughed at that bit.
I'll throw it in.
But I remember trying it, and I never told my friends this would be 1990. It was before I even saw Slacker, and that was when I knew I wanted to make Clerks.
So probably 1990 or 91 pre-August.
But it was like, I remember being like, well, I tried it, but I'll never do that again.
And now I literally make my living being on stage fucking talking.
Whereas as amazing as it feels to kill, it feels equally horrific.
Or maybe even more so to bomb.
It'll haunt you.
And then the thing about...
is you don't think about it while it's happening because while it's happening I'm thinking about my performance I'm thinking about making sure that I'm in the zone with you can stick the landing yes I'm I'm not thinking everybody loves me I'm thinking okay this bit this here's the peak here's the valley here's where I bring it up and here's where I hammer it home and And here comes the pause, and then there's the punch.
And I'm also in the moment where I have to be...
When I'm doing a bit, if I'm doing a bit on a clock or something like that, I have to be thinking about a fucking clock.
I'm not just saying those words.
I am thinking 100% about what I'm saying.
Because if I don't, it doesn't work as good.
There's no way.
You can't just say the words.
It's a form of hypnosis.
It's like a mass hypnosis.
And these people know those fucking animals out there in that crowd.
They smell weakness.
They smell distraction.
They smell when you're disconnected.
They feel you like in the way the avatar people do.
unidentified
Thank you for using a movie reference so I can understand.
There's a thing that's happening that's undefined, because the only people that really understand it are the people who are real comics, who have been doing it a long time, who know how to kill.
And there's this thing that happens when everything's tight and everything's in place, that is, you're a ride, and you're a passenger on the ride.
You're not driving it.
You are in a sense that you have to do the work and you have to do the writing and you have to perform.
And it's like, even though it's a different show every night and it's a different wonderful audience, I'm still thinking about the two shows we had at the Music Box in the Chicago Theater.
I'm like, oh my god, it was religious.
Of all the screenings I've ever had in my life, those two will stick out.
So, you know, long before I met him, I'd always hear that bit and be like, ah.
So the night we're at the show, he's up there doing a bit and, you know, he's like, another person I could do without?
Kevin, you're exempt from this.
Guys over the age of 12 who wear their baseball cap backwards and my eyes lit up and Rock's next to me and Rock goes, he knows who you are, even though we'd worked together on the movie.
It doesn't have any idea because it's outside of its realm of understanding.
And it's entirely possible that if something lives a million years longer than human beings have existed and it continues to innovate and continues to create new technology, They can make technology that is indistinguishable from sorcery.
If you think about the way Bob Lazar explained it when he was working at Area 51, it's like if you took a nuclear reactor of today and showed it to some people from the Victorian era, they would think that it was magic.
And this is exactly how we were approaching these recovered crafts.
Because they were trying to back-engineer, according to Bob Lazar, whether you believe him or not, they were trying to back-engineer these crafts.
And they were saying that these crafts were operating on something called Element 115, which we didn't even know was a real thing.
I mean, they had speculated that it existed.
But he was talking about this in the late 80s and the 90s.
While they didn't even absolutely prove that Element 115 was real, I think it was 2013. So he's talking about something that the Air Force or the Navy or whoever the fuck was operating Area 51 and S4, where he was, that they had this knowledge and understanding of this element that they had somehow or another made stable.
That could bend gravity.
It could change gravity.
So instead of being a propulsion system where you have a fire that comes out of the back of a thing and it forces the thing forward, this thing just pushed gravity in front of it and it shot through insane amounts of space and time with incredible speed that didn't even make any sense.
But the way he was describing it, there was something about this element 115 that utilized, when it was inside of the spaceship, it utilized gravity and some sort of an un...
In an impossible-to-understand way that they still have not figured out how to do it.
He saw it in action, and he was a propulsion expert from Los Alamos.
And he had worked on propulsion systems during his own free time, and he had worked on some nuclear projects at Los Alamos that was in the middle of concocting some top-secret military shit.
And he's clearly a brilliant guy.
But so many people try to discredit him, and maybe they're right, and maybe, I don't know.
Well, I think they're making contact whether we like it or not.
That's what I think.
I think they're looking and watching whether we like it or not.
They're observing.
And I think if you were an intelligent being from another planet, you would want to make sure that the Territorial monkeys don't blow each other up, and that's what we are.
We're like this adolescent stage of evolution where we still have all of our primal, territorial, jungle instincts, but yet we also have this insane ability to harness the atom.
We also have this ability to send videos through space.
We can catch them on your phone and play it back and forth.
We hold energy in these little rectangular devices that we hold in our pocket.
We charge them.
And we're charging them with fucking nuclear power that's You know, nuclear power plants are charging our phones, and then the phones go into our pockets, and we're like real close, you know?
We're real close to a lot of this crazy technological innovation, and it keeps getting more and more spectacular with every passing generation, and they're probably watching.
They're probably watching and waiting and trying to figure out what the fuck we're doing, and if you believe what they told Bob Lazar, that they were responsible for an accelerated evolution.
When he was working for—what is he working for, the Air Force?
Was it the Air Force that Lazar was working for?
Whatever the government body that was operating Area S4. They gave him a bunch of breakdowns on a lot of things they do and where they think they got these crafts from and where the crafts are.
One of them was from an archaeological dig, he said.
But they gave him an explanation of what these aliens are here for and what they're doing.
And one of the things that they said, and he said, I have no method of verifying whether or not this is true or not, but that they had accelerated the evolution of primitive primates.
So they had taken primitive primates and they had done something to them to change them from a primitive being to what we have now in Homo sapiens.
And that's us.
If you really look at evolution, the difference between Australopithecus and Homo sapien, it's only a few hundred thousand years, which is insane.
If you think of how much more advanced we are than those lower hominids, and there's no other animal that's experienced that kind of a leap.
The human brain doubled in brain size over a period of two million years.
We have no idea how.
We have no idea what happened.
It's all speculation, whether it's We're good to go.
That humans figured out a way to use an arm to throw and hit things and that accelerated our problem-solving skills.
There's a lot of theories.
We don't know.
Terence McKenna had a theory called the stoned ape theory.
He believed that human beings were experimenting with psilocybin mushrooms and that psilocybin mushrooms accelerated our evolution.
Who knows?
We don't know.
But one of the things that they were telling Lazar when he was working at S4, back engineering these crafts, were that human beings were the product of accelerated evolution, and that these space beings, and that there was more than one, there was more than one civilization that was involved in this, these space beings had had some sort of a hand in this running experiment that is the evolution of man.
And, you know, I had a philosopher on that was trying to explain to me the likelihood of assimilation.
And his – what was his name again?
How do you say it?
Nick Bostrom.
His perception was that if you look at the laws of probability, it's more likely that we are in assimilation than we're not.
And that was really hard for my stupid brain to accept.
If you look at the amount of planets that there are, if you look at the Fermi Paradox, like where are these planets?
If you look at the insane number of stars just in our galaxy alone, and then the insane number of galaxies in the universe, What are the odds that a life form hasn't gotten to the point where it can create a simulation that's indistinguishable from reality?
Well, the odds are very small.
So, if the odds are more likely that something has created a simulation that's indiscernible from reality, the odds are very likely that we're in it right now.
How the fuck do you know that what you've experienced in your past, all of it, wasn't just simulated?
And if it is simulated, wouldn't sleep be simulated as well?
Wouldn't all of it be simulated?
If you are just in this state, this state of perpetual simulation, where everything is existing all at once, but your mind puts it in this context of the day-to-day grind.
Get up in the morning.
I gotta hustle.
I gotta go out there and go out.
Get after it.
Maybe it's all nonsense.
Maybe you're all in this eternal neurological concoction, some thing that's forcing your brain to interact with these ideas and memories as if they're real.
When I had my heart attack, the doctor said, you've got to have a widowmaker.
He goes, that means in 80% of the cases of 100% occlusion, the patient always dies.
He's like, but you're going to be the 20% because I'm good at my job.
And that's when he disappeared into my crotch, punched a hole, made magic.
So, Dr. Mark Leidenheim, if you're going to have a heart attack, find this guy.
I went to get a physical for Jay and Son Bob Reboot before you go make a movie.
If you're the director, they make you, and if you're the actors too, they make you get a physical and make sure you're not going to die during production.
So I saw this doctor, Dr. Paula, who, like I've seen for years whenever I make a movie, she's the movie physical doctor.
And when I came in, she was like, oh my god, you don't know how lucky you are.
And I was like, I know everyone's been telling me I'm lucky.
And she was like, no, no, no, let me tell you a story.
She's like, me, two other heart surgeons working on a heart patient in a hospital in the emergency room.
Suddenly, heart attack.
And I was like, guy had another heart attack?
She goes, no, the other doctor drops to the floor, has a massive heart attack.
Widowmaker like yours.
And I was like, well, I guess if you're going to have a heart attack, have one in the hospital surrounded by doctors, man.
We had all the equipment, we had all the expertise, and all of us were trained, but with the Widowmaker, it's not like, if I'm good at my job, I can save this motherfucker.
Also, more importantly, Jay and Silent Bob Reboot.
I'm going to use this opportunity while he's taking a piss because I just get lost.
I'll let him roam.
I'm supposed to be selling shit, but I'm like, tell me about the aliens, Joe.
This is why I come here, to be entertained one-on-one.
But Jay and Silent Bob Reboot, man, if you want to go see the movie with me and Jay, we're traveling for the next 55 dates with the movie up until February.
You watch it with us.
We do a Q&A. It's a good time, man.
Rebootroadshow.com, that's the address for tickets and stuff.
It's also opening in all the areas that we've went.
So we went to Jersey, Chicago, Detroit, Grand Rapids last week, and then it opened in Chicago, New Jersey, yeah.
And in Illinois, New Jersey, and Michigan in theaters.
So this week, November 1st, it's opening on a bunch of screens following the places that we've actually went to.
So let me see.
Opening November 1st, Minneapolis at AMC Arbor Lakes, Houston at the AMC Willowbrook and the AMC Gulf Point 30, in Columbus, Ohio at the Gateway Film Center, in Des Moines at the Century W, Des Moines-Jordan Creek, in St. Louis at the AMC West Isle of San Antonio, at the Regal Cielo Vista.
So every place we go with the movie, Me and Jay, then the movie opens up.
In our wake.
So if you don't want to see it with us at RebootRoadShow.com, you can go to Fandango.com, just enter Jay and Sal and Bob, Reboot, and see if it's playing near you.
It's a good time.
It's a heartwarming film.
Every night for me going to watch this movie is like being in church where I'm the priest and also the person they're celebrating.
Saban Films has the movie domestically and they've got an output deal with somebody, I think Amazon.
And then Universal has the movie Abroad.
We're opening in the UK November 29th or something like that.
I'm going over there at Thanksgiving.
Yeah, fucking smoking.
No, I got some, man.
It's all you.
To tour there as well for a week in England.
So it's got homes and stuff, but the reason we go out on tour was because, like you, I got an audience, man.
I can count on the audience, and I live off that audience like Normally me and Jay are just out there.
I'm doing Q&A or stand-up or whatever.
So like going out with the movie, like the budget of the movie was like, we shot it in New Orleans.
So it's like 10 million, but you get money back.
So it's like 8 million.
We needed 8 million bucks.
So we got some money from Saban for the domestic rights.
We got some money from Universal.
For the overseas rights.
But then there was equity financing we had to pull together like a missing two, three million bucks to make up the budget and stuff.
And that's where you get money from real people.
People are like, I'm going to invest in a movie and hope I get my money back or if not make it and stuff.
And those people always get fucked in this business, never make their money back, ever.
But the tour, I was able to assure those people, I'm like, within one year of the date we start the movie, you're gonna get your money back.
Because I knew I could take the movie out on tour, and as long as I was willing to live with it, We can get all that equity financing back.
So one year from the date of my heart attack, we started shooting Jay and Silent Bob Reboot as a big fuck you to the heart attack.
One year from the date we started shooting Jay and Silent Bob Reboot, I'm going to be able to pay off my equity investors.
That's fucking unheard of in this business, but I only get to do that because of the audience that we built up, because the audience will come out and support us.
And I was told a long time ago, if you work for the audience, you'll never work a day in your life.
Absolutely fucking true.
I've had not a boss.
And then I meet the bosses every night at the show, and they're beautiful.
They're fantastic.
They are my boss.
They give me money, just like a boss gives you money and shit.
And they'll let you know if you're fucking up.
You know the audience will fucking tell you.
Your boss will let you know.
But this tour with this movie, we banged out a tiny record, because we don't have marketing money.
It's one thing to get money to make the movie.
Then it usually costs double what you spent to make the movie, to market the movie, to tell people it's coming, to put it up on screens and shit.
So we were lucky enough to get the 8 million to make the movie.
We weren't going to get fucking 15 to market the movie.
That's crazy.
And that's generally what happens.
So we just had to be smarter about it.
And since I tour anyway with the podcast, I'm like, oh, let's use this fucking model and expand it.
So we hit a little record with our opening weeks.
We did the opening day of the tour was in New Jersey at Asbury Park at the Paramount.
And we did like 93,000 on one screen.
So we got like a We're good to go.
The brains of our operation.
We thought like we could count on the audience.
We'll take the movie out on tour and stuff like that.
And it's really been working out and it's nice that like some business people are being like, hey, good job.
Like people are going like, oh, they figured out their niche and they've been doing – we've been doing this for years.
We did it with Red State years ago.
Remember we toured that as well.
So it's great if you got, like, most filmmakers wouldn't bother because they're like, I'm just going to put in a bunch of theaters and shit and let the studio pay for it.
And I don't have a studio, so I got to take my movie to the people and four-wall it.
But I'll be honest with you, like, I started as an indie filmmaker, so that's in my blood.
And there's something insanely gratifying about sitting there with the audience.
The thing I used to hate the most, man, is you spend your time trying to make a movie.
You dream like, I want to see it up on the silver screen.
You have these movie dreams and shit.
And then you have to make it a reality.
If you're lucky...
You get to make the movie a reality.
If you're lucky, it gets a release.
If you're lucky, you spend opening weekend not celebrating like, we fucking did it.
We did a thing that not everybody ever fucking does.
Who are we?
We're chimps and we figured it out.
But instead, we'd spend every fucking waking moment of opening weekend going, how much did it make?
Who's going?
Are people going?
It's not making enough?
Fuck, we've got to drive more business.
And suddenly, the joy of what you were seeking is fucking gone because you're mired in the business.
And if you're lucky, if you're the Avengers, you get a month at the box office.
That's about it before everyone moves on to something else.
If you're a Kevin Smith movie, you don't even get a weekend.
You get a day if you're fucking lucky.
And so suddenly all that dreaming took me five years to make this movie and living through a fucking heart attack.
Comes down to one day at the box office.
Fuck that, man.
Like, tilt the table in your favor.
So I said, I'm going to take myself out of that box office race and instead do this.
Like...
What I'm losing in, well, I don't have marketing and stuff, but what I'm losing in a mass release of the movie, I make up for it by being able to accompany the movie myself, and that makes it a premium event.
It eventizes it.
It's an idea that I stole from Eddie Izzard.
I remember when I fell in love with Eddie Izzard's stuff, I was like, Eddie Izzard's literally just doing fucking stand-up in a big theater with a costume on.
Like, he's just doing stand-up that you would do with fucking improv and stuff, but, like, he eventized it.
He turned it into something.
It's a one-man show, as opposed to, like, he's doing 90 minutes of stand-up.
So for us, we were like, let's take the movie out on the road and eventize it.
If you're next to the movie, people are like, oh shit, the director's there.
If I bring Jay, they're like, oh shit, Jay and Silent Bob are there as well.
So it's been like a blast, but you just have to be willing to put the time in.
And some people are like, yeah, you could do this.
But I'm like, yeah, we could do it because we've been doing it for like a quarter, man.
25 years since Clerks happened.
And from day one, I've been engaged with the audience.
Long before it was fashionable or profitable just because...
Why else wouldn't I want to?
Like in the early beginnings, I was like, my friend Ming Chen, the guy from Comic Book Men, he built a website and I was like, can you put up like a thing where I could do Q&A all the time with the video?
Is that possible?
He goes, no, because it was like 1995. And he goes, but I can put up a message board.
And it was like a whiteboard like Reddit.
He's like, people could put up, it was long before Reddit existed, people could put up messages and then you could look at them anytime you want.
Three in the morning you can respond to them.
And I realized I'm never going to fucking be alone again in this life, man.
I'll always be able to reach out to somebody who's like, hey man, I saw your movie, I got a question for you.
And boom, there's a connection and shit like that.
So since 95, I've been in it online with the audience.
I remember when I started, it was me and Peter Jackson were the only two filmmakers on the web.
And then Peter Jackson got smart and was like, if I'm on the web, I ain't winning Oscars.
And he went off and had a great career.
I'm still on the fucking web because I love connecting with the people that you're trying to reach.
I don't do it in a vacuum going like...
Good filmmakers like David Fincher, they make a thing and they put a movie out there and they don't fucking go follow it.
They let the movie speak for itself.
I'm the other guy who's like, when the movie's done, I run out.
I'm like, hold on, let me tell you the story of how it all fucking happened and shit.
Every night last week was like fucking sold out and it just felt like amazing.
And as the tour unrolls, we were going to fly from place to place and then I was like, let's just fucking drive.
Let's do it punk style.
So we've been driving around.
Yeah, we got a little SUV and we've been trucking around and it's fucking glorious, man.
I'm 49. You don't get this at 49. This is the shit you're supposed to do in your 20s.
Right.
Post heart attack, now I'm like, well, like, post heart attack, I didn't go crazy where I'm like, give me all the pussy in the world and shit.
Like, nothing really changed for me, but I did become very cognizant of like, you know, my wife hates when I say it, but I'm like, I'm living on borrowed time.
I know for a fact, my old man fucking died after the second heart attack.
We're all living on borrowed time.
Act accordingly.
I'm just acutely aware of it because I was so fucking close to the moment.
So it's not so much like I'm having a midlife crisis, not by any stretch of the imagination, but anything that allows you to feel young, vital, makes you feel like, oh, yeah, this is why I started shit like this.
Or it's fun.
We're making a living.
It's crazy.
We're on the road all the time, and I've been saying all week, this is the best vacation I've had in years, even though we're working sometimes three times, three shows in a day.
Because it never feels like work.
I'm just driving around.
My whole job is to go to a theater and fucking show the movie to people and stuff.