"FatGate"...A Real Cop Out

I love Kevin Smith's movies...all of them: Chasing Amy, Mall Rats and even Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back which I didn't think was his best work. Think of Christopher Moore as a teenage boy making movies, and you get the idea . Totally hilarious in that vein. But the first (of many) time I saw Dogma, I was hooked. I laughed so hard at his take on organized religion that I think I sprained my spleen. Having Selma Hayak, George Carlin, Chris Rock, Ben Affleck and Matt Damon in a movie promises something, and this one vaulted into my top five right away. Quirky, yes, but when a major character (Silent Bob: played by Kevin Smith his own self) gets only one line in the movie, it's just too much.
Kevin Smith is the man. Now, he's playing his role as a fat man...a guy too fat to sit in one seat of an airplane. True, he was asked to leave a Southwest Airline flight over the weekend because he'd bought only one seat while his, uh, girth would seem to require more. Obviously, the airline did not know who he was, or they would have made some kind of accommodation. The resulting firestorm has erupted into something like this: (a quote from today's Los Angeles Times follows)

Wanna tell me I’m too wide for the sky? Totally cool,” Smith tweeted Saturday. “But fair warning folks: IF YOU LOOK LIKE ME, YOU MAY BE EJECTED FROM @SouthwestAir.”

The response from many of Smith’s followers has been unequivocal.

On Sunday, one named @chaseronio likened the director to no less than Martin Luther King Jr. in a tweet: “Ur the MLK of fatties."

“I have a Dream,” Smith twittered back with deadpan aplomb. “And two lunches (meatball parm & Trix). And a couple of Twinkies. And a Diet Coke.”

-- Chris Lee(reporter)

So, how is this self-promotion? Smith has another movie coming out soon: a thing called Cop Out. so? I hear you ask. Well, Kev has done this before. Just prior to releasing a different movie, he claimed to have broken a toilet...just by sitting on it. It made for great press, and an appropriately humbled Smith indicated a desire to do something about his weight. Apparently that "something" was to continue to talk about the toilet issue so that he was on people's minds when the movie arrived.
If you've seen any of his movies, you'd get this. Kevin Smith is an original thinker who is considerably left of the center line. The fact that Southwest Airlines has not officially apologized...twice...only adds to the story.
Watch for Cop Out in theaters soon! (or theatres, if you are in England)