Product Description

Kevin Smith -- America's coolest geek philosopher and director of Clerks I & II and Zack and Miri Make a Porno -- is back: celebrating his 37th birthday in a hilarious take-no-prisoners performance in front of a packed hometown crowd. Join the fun as Smith reveals the hysterical true stories behind the making of Clerks II and Live Free or Die Hard, the inside scoop on Bruce Willis, Ben Affleck and Jason Mewes... plus Weird Doggy Love and The Jury Duty from Hemorrhoid Hell. Sold Out: A Threevening with Kevin Smith has 3x the raunch, 3x the hilarity, and 3x the charm!

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #4863 in DVD
• Released on: 2008-10-21
• Rating: NR (Not Rated)
• Formats: Color, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: Spanish
• Number of discs: 2
• Running time: 122 minutes

Customer Reviews

Solid Kevin Smith Q & A; A lot of Smodcast Material Repeated
I am a pretty big fan of Kevin Smith. I listen to his and Scott Mosier's Free Podcast (called Smodcast) fairly regularly. I own the other Q&A DVDs, and I have really enjoyed most of his movies.

When I got "Threevening," I was expecting that it would be a little bit more "manufactured" for DVD than the other DVDs solely based on the fact that it is the third installment and, obviously, now it is more of a money-making venture than the first Q&A DVD that paid off nicely. The first and arguably second DVDs seemed to be much more organic in the sense that the filming was of Smith doing a true Q&A format, actually answering questions (though, in a long and winding way) and conducting the events not to produce, market, and sell a DVD, but to actually answer peoples' questions.

When you watch "Threevening" it is pretty apparent that the events were organized (staged?) for the sole purpose of maximizing the profitability of DVD sales and not to genuinely answer fans' questions. It's very easy to picture a group of straight-to-DVD production company executives sitting in a room watching and re-watching the first two DVDs so that they can re-create in "Threevening" what made the first two DVDs sell so well and then give Smith a bullet-point list of things he needs to do during the show as per his contract with the DVD filming and production company. If the implied obviousness isn't enough, Smith makes a few references to the "DVD [being filmed]" in the DVD itself.

Also, instead of answering questions, he just seems to recite a prepared stand-up act (though, still funny) regardless of the participants' question. Of course, he adapts the very beginning and very end of the 10 minute stand-up bit to relate back to the question, but again, as I said, it's obvious that this is just a staged attempt to produce another profitable Q&A DVD in an easy format.

Finally, many (not all, but many) of the stories he tells in the Q&A are nearly verbatim from past Smodcasts or in his GREAT book "Silent Bob Speaks," such as the "Shecky" story and the "Anal Fissures" story. There are some elements that he didn't cover in the Smodcast version of the story, but all the funny parts are generally there. There are new stories in "Threevening," but if you have listened to the free-to-download Smodcasts, watching (and buying) "Threevening" makes you feel kind of gypped given that this old/free material dominates anything new.

With all this said, I still think Smith is very funny, and given that "Threevening" and the other Q&A DVDs are extremely long and entertaining, and still only cost about $14 shipped, this is a solid DVD and worth purchasing if you're a Smith fan.

If you aren't a big Kevin Smith fan but want to check him out, I would start with the earlier "Evening with Kevin Smith" DVDs and then move on to this one. You won't be sorry.

Good, but not great
I am probably the world's biggest Kevin Smith fan. I own everything he has released on DVD or in print. Given that, it is with a heavy heart that I say this one is not as good as the two previous incarnations. It's good, especially if you haven't read his books or listened to his smodcast. For the diehard, though, there is precious little new material.
One of the things that made his previous "Evening With..." discs so wonderful was seeing his interactions with the crowd -- beyond just the regular Q and A, such as dealing with hecklers, making phone calls to bosses, etc. There's none of this. No particularly interesting questioners, and not much (in 5 hours)in the way of movie making anecdotes -- most of the good stuff comes in the "special features" on disc 2. There's plenty of "TMI" (too much information) moments, so be warned. It's a decent disc, but if you had to pick, I'd go for Evening 1 and 2, in that order.

Okay, But I've Heard It All Before
I am a big fan of Kevin Smith's work. His films, for the best part, have been highly entertaining and hilarious. I also really enjoyed Kevin's My Boring [...] Life book and his subsequent live shows. More to the point though- I am a fan of Kevin's Smodcast, which for those that don't know is a free podcast and is now nearly 100 episodes old. With each episode being roughly an hour long, that is a helluva lot of Kevin. And therein lies the problem- A lot of these anecdotes have already been told, both on that show and in blogs. With Kevin now releasing a new book, culled from the best bits of Smodcast. That means that you may well have heard some of these stories up to four times including this DVD. First Kevin tells an anecdote about his dogs which goes on for the best part of an hour. That's right- THE BEST PART OF AN HOUR. And to be honest, it really wasn't that funny- oh, and he'd already done it on the aforementioned Smodcast.

See, the biggest problem for me here is that the Q and A portion of the show is basically non-existent now. Barely any questions from the audience get a straight response. Instead what Kevin does is twist it in order to do another pre-prepared piece. Why he doesn't just tell the audience to sit down I don't know. The majority of those lining up to ask a question were stood up for HOURS. And they still didn't get their questions answered.

There is some good stuff here, mostly on the second disc. The Bruce Willis bit is very interesting, though it is taken nearly word-for-word from Kevin's book My Boring [...] Life, which took the story directly from one of Kevin's previous blogs. It just makes me wonder what happened to Kevin somewhat fiercely attacking some of those big Hollywood names? This isn't dreadful, and if you have never heard Smodcast or read any of this guy's blogs, you will be highly amused, in parts. But for the rest of us- well, maybe Kevin just need to shut up for a little bit.