My Boring-Ass Life (Revised edition) [Paperback]

First up, I'm a fan so take these comments with this in mind.

This is a great train book. You can dip in and out like any diary book and you will find something great every time. This said, it is Kevin's "boring ass life" and sometimes he just gets up, lets the dogs out, takes a poop and falls asleep to TIVO'd Simpsons. You'll understand this when you read it.

There are some cracking stories, which, if history is anything to go by, will, in some form or another find there way into one or more of his movies in the coming years. That is if he can stay off the processed sugar foods long enough so he doesn't die before the decade is out. This guy's diet is scary!

There is a very touching story about the death of his father, and the list of "What I learned from my father" will bring a lump to your throat and should form the basis for every eulogy written from here on in. Look for the excellent story of "me and my shadow" which should make it into a film , the Die Hard 4.0 (Live free or die hard) filming/writing story which is laugh out loud funny and the Catch and release story which is also pretty good.

There are plenty of good "inside the film industry" insights that made me shake my head in despair and wonder how any films get made, ever. Interspersed with all this gold is the hum-drum day to day stuff that we all have to do and suffer from.

Critcs schmitics!

This only thing that has ever bugged me about Kevin Smith is his need to publicly fight with those critics in the business that have no time for him or his movies. He recognises this "failing" in himself as overcompensation and there are some good examples of this in the book. On reading them I just thought "Sir, let it go".

These events are an excellent insight into the movie business, the complete uselessness of critics in all walks of life, and Kevin himself. The group of stories scattered through out the book provide the evidence for the simple truth that film critics know nothing about the movie business. As for the man himself his retorts, whilst unnecessary, are at least witty and done with some flair and style and any spite is quickly neutralised by his own self deprecating personality.

He's a pretty normal bloke.

I am a very big Kevin Smith fan and as such could not wait to read this book, I agree with other reviews which state that there are a lot of mundane activities and sometimes to start with this book could be boring to anybody who is not a big fan.
However, I am not a big reader in-fact apart from this book I have only ever finished one other book, this is not because I cannot read it is actually because no book ever keeps me interested long enough to finish them.
The perfect thing about this book for me is that because it is separated into days I know I can read a day at a time and not worry about getting lost or trying to find where I stopped last time. Because of this I have found this by far the easiest book I have ever read and towards the end hoped it would not finish.

The almost separate book inside this book entitled `me and my shadow'- the story of Jason Mewes addiction to Heroin, is brilliant its harrowing while at the same time bringing drug abuse to somebody who has never thankfully had to experience it before. I was so impressed by this section of the book I have passed it onto a friend who, also does not read allot however I have told him he has to read that chapter.

I would recommend this book to any Kevin Smith fan but also to anybody who has had dealings with drug addiction, because from outsiders' eyes it shows how much you have to love somebody to help them with their demons.
Brilliant!

I like Kevin Smith a lot, so any comments I make here should be taken with that in mind. He's a good storyteller, he makes me laugh and he has a relationship with his audience that most writers can only look upon with sick envy. He also seems to be a reasonably straight-up and decent person, which is a miracle in a Hollywood director.

Having said that, I have no great appetite for reading about the lives of celebrities. 'My Boring-Ass Life' is nothing more than the print version of Smith's blog, which blog is basically a bare chronicle of his life. Since his life appears to consist mostly of letting out dogs, looking at the internet, having sex with his wife, watching TV, eating and driving around, it really is pretty boring-ass. There's not a lot here in the way of Bressonian reflections on the nature of cinema, or erudite, Paul-Schraderesque analysis of masterpieces of world cinema, or even anything as outright haunted and manic as Steven Soderbergh's very funny and absurdist 'Getting Away With It'. As books by directors go, this is easily the most boring I have ever read, or rather dipped into.

And yet. The middle of the book is taken up by 'Me and My Shadow', the story of how Smith's friend and (sort of) protégé Jason Mewes became a heroin addict, and how he ultimately kicked the habit, and it's riveting stuff. You wonder why it hasn't become a movie; but maybe Smith doesn't want to tell a story that cuts so close to the bone, despite the happy ending (Mewes has apparently been clean for a couple of years now.)

So, it's worth it for the Mewes bit. But otherwise, the only time I have found appropriate to read this book is at 6.50am when I'm feeding my infant daughter; half-asleep seems to be the right frame of my mind to absorb something so undemanding and forgettable as Kevin Smith's diary.