Writer-director Kevin Smith is thankful he survived his massive heart attack because he didn’t want to shuffle off the mortal coil before re-teaming stoners Jay and Silent Bob in their upcoming “reboot.”
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Smith, who was hospitalized after suffering a near-fatal heart attack in February, took the stage at San Diego Comic-Con and recounted his experience with the “Widow-Maker” and how, in his near-final moments, he recalled not wanting the poorly-received Yoga Hosers as his final movie credit.
“I was sitting there, like, there’s this weird sense of calm I feel. I’m like, ‘This ain’t gonna be as bad as thought.’ Like, it’s gonna suck to leave this world and sh-t — I had one, kind of, not even a regret, that’s the beautiful thing, I had no f—ing regrets, but I had this one sense of, ‘Oh, man, I wish we had made Jay and Silent Bob Reboot.’ The movie that we’re actually gonna make in November,” Smith said.
“But I thought, ‘Oh man, I wish we’d made Jay and Silent Bob Reboot,’ solely because as I was laying there about to die, the last movie I would have made was Yoga Hosers [laughs]. I was like, ‘I can’t go out on that one, f—k no! I was just f—king around, hold on!’”
The Clerks and Mallrats filmmaker said his close encounter with death left him unexpectedly serene because of his achievements in his personal and professional lives.
“So I was filled with a weird sense of calm. Now, it could be different if it was a home invasion and someone was stabbing me to death or a shark was eating me, I’m sure I wouldn’t be so zen about the whole experience at that point, but where I was, man, it just was a dire moment and sh-t, and instead of crumbling like I assumed I would — it’s not like, ‘I found inner strength’ — the perspective completely shifted,” Smith said.
“So much so that I was ready. I didn’t want it, but I was like, ‘Oh, alright, well, this is gonna be it. F—k, man, what a journey that was. I got to do some incredible things. Alright, I get it. Maybe you’re dying at 47 because all this sh-t started when you were like 23. Clerks happened when you were a kid, so you got a nice ample bite of that apple, and you had a family, and sh-t like that. So if this it, don’t bitch. Don’t be that last person at the party where people are like, ‘When’s he f—n gonna leave?’ Just go. Get on the boat, man.”
Smith is now developing a mysterious IP-based project that he calls “massive” and the “biggest-budgeted anything” he’s ever worked on.
He’ll again star as the characteristically usually-mute Silent Bob alongside longtime friend and co-star Jason Mewes in Jay and Silent Bob Reboot, which is also slated to bring back View Askewniverse favorite Brian O’Halloran as Dante Hicks.
