When Kevin Smith talks, one cannot help but just sit back and listen. After all, not for nothing has the famously loquacious writer/producer/director has made a name for himself as a popular draw in public speaking engagements (immortalized on an ever-growing series of DVD's), which then paved the way for a project that, in recent years, has superseded his efforts as a filmmaker: building SModCo, a network of consistently popular podcasts, a number of which he hosts himself. Ironically, it is through the popularity of his podcasts--specifically, one episode in particular--that Smith has returned to filmmaking after a three-year absence, with Tusk, a part-horror, part-comedy, all-WTF man-as-walrus, walrus-as-man movie idea he spontaneously thought of and then further developed live on the fly across the cyberspace airwaves. Appropriately enough, when Smith sat down for a roundtable interview at the film's press day on Monday, September 15, what ensued was not so much an interview but rather an in-depth podcast, where he engagingly and rather thoroughly discussed all the various minutiae behind the movie's unusual conception, development, and eventual production before a small audience. Since text transcription can never do justice to Smith's singular gifts as a raconteur, below is the audio of the session, which is an amusing entertainment unto itself.
Tusk opens in cinemas nationwide today, Friday, September 19, from A24.