An Evening With Kevin Smith

You can't say Kevin Smith didn't warn us, all 2800 or so of us who crammed into Palais Theatre on Monday night to catch the Clerks and Chasing Amy filmmaker reel off a few tales of his life and career. He said he would give "long-winded answers" during the Q&A section of his show An Evening With Kevin Smith — it was only one 90-minute answer to a single question (you had to feel a little bad for the seven other people standing in line) that made up the bulk of the gig.

Luckily, Smith's talents as a raconteur — both live and on podcasts, where he appears to have found his second wind (he calls them "punk rock for people who can't play music") — are formidable enough to keep everyone engaged and entertained, and he used the question about finding an audience and building a brand to deliver a potty-mouthed self-actualisation seminar about recognising your own voice and perspective as personal currency (you should "spend as much as possible"), while throwing in some crowd-pleasing showbiz dish (Johnny Depp is playful and chill, Bruce Willis is a lazy dick, Ben Affleck has always had a very healthy ego).

However, the second part of the show, which threw Smith's long-time friend and colleague Jason Mewes into the mix for a live presentation of the duo's Jay and Silent Bob Get Old podcast, slowed the momentum somewhat. We'll always have a soft spot for the raucous, ribald mischief Mewes brought to Smith's movies, and we're glad he's cleaned up his act — he's five years clean and sober, and a devoted dad to a six-month-old daughter — but a little Mewes goes a long way, and his toilet humour and sex stories were uninhibited, but also kind of uninteresting.