When Kevin Smith first announced his plans to retire from filmmaking early last year, plenty of people on the Internet wondered if he was just pulling a Steven Soderbergh. But then he kept on repeating his intention, and eventually we all realized that apparently he really meant it. The decision to stop making movies twenty years into his career is just one of the many things that Smith discusses in his new book, Tough Sh*t: Life Advice from a Fat, Lazy Slob Who Did Good .
“You know, for me it was never about, this is what I want to do for the rest of my life,” he explained to NPR’s Steve Inskeep in this Morning Edition interview. “I was just like, ‘You know what, man, I’ve got this audience, and they like the films, but they like when I do Q&As as well. They just like whatever I do.’ So the audience made me feel safe enough to step away from filmmaking. It’s weird — you feel conflicted as an artist, right? You want an audience, but ideally, you don’t want them to have to pay for what you do. You want to give it away. That’s where the podcasting came from. I was like, this is a way we can just give it away for free. And the podcasting — I swear to you — on its worst day, the podcasts are better than our best films. Because they’re more imaginative, and there’s no artifice, and it’s far more real.”
Check out the rest of their interview, which also covers Smith’s father-son relationship with Harvey Weinstein and his thoughts on Kim Kardashian-style fame, as well as an excerpt from his new book, here. [via @ebertchicago]