Thanks to The Movie Blog, I just listened to (it’s a video, but I was doing other stuff) this entertaining 20-minute video of Kevin Smith giving a lecture at a college campus. He offers a long, rambling, hilarious tale of his participation in the non-production that was Superman Lives. It’s pure Hollywood insanity.
This apparently comes from the 2002 DVD An Evening with Kevin Smith. So, I may be the last person on Earth not to have seen it. Regardless, if you have any interest in the way Hollywood works, or just want a laugh, it’s worth 20 minutes of your life.
UPDATE: Here’s another bit where he talks about the response to Dogma.
DarrenBarefoot.com 
i have that DVD if you’d like to borrow it. it’s pretty much the best thing ever.
Nothing to do with your post.
Darren, how do you deal with it when someone insults you and speaks unkindly of you on your blog or on theirs?
My theory is that if I have nothing nice to say, then I shouldn’t say anything at all. I know that people aren’t going to agree with me, or think the things that I post about are dumb, but there’s a big difference between disagreeing with them and attacking them.
So how do you deal with attacks?
Alexis: Let’s assume for now that we’re talking about personal attacks, as opposed to legitimate debate. I make this delineation because I generally enjoy the latter.
In truth, I don’t really get personal attacks all that often. When they occur on my own blog, I just tend to leave them up. If there’s some specific criticism that I can respond to, I generally do, and I challenge the other person to defend their position. More often than not, these attacks are ‘fire and forget’ and the person never returns.
I also say something to the effect of “if you don’t like my site, check out the 180 links on the sidebar–you’ll probably like some of them better”.
If the personal attacks occur on other sites, which is rarer, I’ll again respond if there’s a particular criticism I can respond to. Sometimes my comments get deleted, sometimes they don’t.
Regardless, my philosophy is this: I trust readers (where on this site or elsewhere) to be able to judge the merit of the attack. That’s why I generally leave them up. Most of the time, the attack exposes more about the attacker than the attackee.
I’m not sure that helps, but it’s my two cents on the subject.
Thanks. I also enjoy legitimate debate, but I don’t feel that I should be personally attacked for anything I post. Attack my ideas, sure, that’s fine, but in a calm and respectful manner.
I know you have a lot more readers than I do. My site is sometimes quite personal, so I think that’s why this particular instance really shocked me in the gut.
Thanks for recommending these clips, both very interesting and funny. Makes me want to hear an MP3 of the entire talk.
The DVD’s for An Evening with Kevin Smith are hilarious. Highly recommended. In some ways funnier than any movie he’s done.