Kevin Smith’s 13 Best Jokes From His Graphic Comic-Con Recap of His Near-Fatal Heart Attack
San Diego Comic-Con fixture Kevin Smith spent the first half of his improvised, 90-minute Hall H talk giving a beat-by-beat account of the heart attack he suffered in February. “I didn’t die, but I was real fucking close,” said the 47-year-old filmmaker, who also used his stage time to promote fundraising for his Rivit TV series, “Hollyweed,” and to energize fans about “Jay & Silent Bob Reboot” (shooting this November).
Smith’s family has a history of cardiac problems: His father “died screaming” during his own heart attack at age 67, while his mother has a stent in one of her arteries. During his personal ordeal, Smith learned that his LAD artery was 100 percent blocked. The heart attack happened while Smith was filming Showtime comedy specials at the Alex Theatre in Glendale, California. Instead of escorting him to the closest emergency room, knowledgable first responders took him to Adventist Health Glendale, one of the nation’s best cardiology hospitals.
Smith became emotional toward the end of his presentation. But most of his delivery was raunchy self-deprecation. Here are 13 of his most-memorable quips.
- “I used to fucking drink a lot of milk, but I’m vegan now. I used to be happy, now I’m a fucking vegan.”
- “I put my hands up, to try to facilitate easier breathing…[The firefighters are] looking at each other like, ‘Why is Silent Bob celebrating a touchdown?'”
- “I was like, ‘Why the fuck did you [call an ambulance]? This is going to be embarrassing. They’re going to get here and take one look at me with a flashlight and be like, ‘He just smoked too much weed.'”
- “This was nearly 50 pounds ago…[The medic] grabs my hockey jersey, and lifts it up, because she’s going to put the wires on me, and every titty I had fell out.”
- “Six firemen came over, stuck their hands under me, and lifted my fat ass like I didn’t exist, and put me in the other chair…It was the most fun I’ve had in 10 years. Oh my God, it was so pleasurable. Nobody picks you up when you become an adult, and I was a pretty heavyset adult, nobody fucking tries.'”
- “They knew I threw up…so I guess somebody put two and two together and came up with food poisoning, and I think that’s what they told the audience…I’m sure most of the audience was like, ‘He’s been poisoning himself with food for years, why is tonight any different?'”
- “Another guy walks in with a plastic bucket, and he’s got a shaver in the bucket…He goes, ‘OK, you’re going to the OR…In order to get to your heart, [the doctor]’s going to cut into your groin and go up through your femoral. So basically, we’ve got to shave your groin. So can you take off your jorts?'”
- “He goes, ‘You need to take your underwear off, too’…And I was like…’I’ll pull the underwear to the side, and then you get in there and give me a virgin smoothie.'”
- “I was like…'[The doctor] just told me for the first time in my life, I’m having a heart attack. And if you make me take my underwear off in front of all these people, I will have a second fucking heart attack, and that’s going to be on you, because my dick is fucking small.'”
- “I start lying. Even though I’m fucking drugged and I’m almost dying, I have the presence of mind to craft a fucking story to try to keep my hockey jersey on…’This is my lucky hockey jersey, and I need it if I’m going to have this operation.’ And I was just desperate to hold onto it to cover my dick…Nobody in the room had the presence of mind to be like, ‘If it’s so lucky, why are you having a fucking heart attack?'”
- “While this is going on, they’re pumping me full of fentanyl, so I’m in this weird twilight state. And I’m chatting up a fucking storm, talking to everybody and whatnot. Like at one point, I was singing…The doctor goes, ‘What’s that, is he moaning, or is he singing?’ And the guy who shaved my crotch goes, ‘I think he’s singing the theme to “Degrassi”?’ And I was, because I’d never faced an operating room before.”
- “I was raised Catholic, and it never once occurred to me to start praying to God like, ‘Save my life, Jesus!’ Because I’m sure Jesus would be like, ‘You made “Dogma,” [flips off the room] go fuck yourself.”
- “I had no fucking regrets, but…I thought, ‘Oh man, I wish we had 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,’ and I was like, ‘I can’t go out on that one!'”
