An Evening With Kevin Smith

First of all, let me just explain that it's impossible to review "An Evening With Kevin Smith". No two Q&A's are alike, it's completely unscripted, full of surprises, and always fall on the floor hysterical.

I have to admire Kevin Smith for one major reason: he doesn't hold himself back. Not only does he not have an internal censor, which allows him to be up front and say exactly what he thinks or feels about a subject, he is inherently truthful and tells it like it is. Now this comes at a price, of course, when he starts to divulge in rather personal stories about he and his wife's sex life, or her experience with an "ass shovel" as it were, but as he put it: "I get paid to tell stories", and the people in his life have to be ready and willing to share their lives as he is with his own.

What made the night so fantastic was how appreciative he was of the Toronto fans for selling out his Roy Thomson Hall gig so fast that they instantly had to add a second show. The news of the sellout came at a time when he was reeling from the blow of learning that his latest film, "Zack and Miri Make a Porno," only made $2mil on its opening weekend and was fast becoming the lowest grossing Seth Rogan film to date. He truly loves his fan base here in Canada and is always happy to be here.

The topic he could never stray too far away from this evening was his new discovery/obsession with Wayne and Walter Gretzky. He recently watched the 10 hour DVD set of the CBC broadcast, "Hockey: A People's History" and fell in love with the Gretzky's story so much that he's made Wayne and Walter his own religious icons and always refers back to their mottos as dogma. Almost everything he had to say came back to "What would Walter do?" or "That's the Gretzky way!"

Of course he had many fans asking pretty standard questions about his films and such, but the most interesting story came from someone asking about the MPAA issues when it came to fighting for an R rating instead of an NC17 for "Zak and Miri". Another absolutely hysterical story came when discussing when he realized how fat he had become (because of Seth Rogan's introducing him to the joys of weed) when he sat on and broke a toilet in a bar bathroom. Insanely funny.

And of course, he had his partner in crime Jason Mewes with him and, like always, he sat through most of it just hanging out quietly on the couch, occasionally wandering offstage or answering his own questions. Although at one point in the evening he did give his microphone to a woman who was leaving to go to the bathroom....

Three solid nonstop hours of great stories, hysterical tangents and sheer hilarity.