There’s no way not to feel bad for Kevin Smith. Even his worst enemy wouldn’t wish on anyone what happened to the filmmaker on Friday night at San Diego Comic-Con. Thankfully, if you missed the fireworks, Smith recounted the whole ordeal on his podcast, proving once again what an incredible verbal storyteller he can be.
Here’s what happened in a nutshell, in case you have been offline for the past few days. Kevin Smith was set to follow the Star Wars panel in Hall H. Only, J.J. Abrams concluded his panel by inviting THE ENTIRE HALL to a free Star Wars concert… and basically everyone in the room got up and left, leaving Smith dumbfounded. Up to that point, however, Smith – a rabid Star Wars fan – was having the time of his life. Then, it all went sour, which is why he made this incredible analogy on his Hollywood Babble-On podcast:
A bunch of Stormtroopers came up. In costume, the new ones and the old ones. I was like, ‘This is a dream come true!’ It was like… remember Carrie, when she was at the prom? And she’s having a fucking blast? And everything’s slo-mo, and you’re like, ‘It’s working out for Carrie! Everything’s coming up Milhouse for Carrie!’ And then all of a sudden… [makes horrible dive-bombing sound]. And I watched it happen in slo-mo."
Kevin Smith went on to describe the horror of watching J.J. Abrams tell everyone in the hall that they should leave to attend a free Star Wars concert. Smith, himself, admits that he wanted so bad to go to the concert that he contemplated canceling his panel to go attend the Star Wars show. As he joked, you can listen to Kevin Smith talk about his movies any day of the week on a dozen podcasts. This concert is a once-in-a-lifetime event! If you missed Abrams’ announcement, it looked like this:
Except, Smith soldiered on, and ended up playing to nearly 2,000+ people, according to reports – or as Smith calls it, one-third of the room. Listen to the whole Podcast. It’s a terrific recount of it, where Smith talks honestly about how his greatest nightmare was always the fear of showing up to a Hall H panel and finding no one in the room. He talked about what J.J. Abrams said to him backstage, and he confessed that even though the whole thing stings at the moment, he knows that it’s eventually going to be a great story for him to tell over and over on multiple podcasts for generations to come.
