Tough Sh*t: Life Advice From a Fat, Lazy Slob Who Did Good by Kevin Smith Page B

I’d made a hero in my head. And not because he played a hero in the movies, but because he’d
made it
: Like me, Walter Bruce Willis was born at the asshole end of the showbiz universe, with no apparent means of entry and no Hollywood pedigree, and he
still
got through the gates. As David Addison, he gave me laughs, sure; but more important, he gave me
hope
—hope that maybe one day,
I
could be in the movie biz, too. But who we want or need people to be and who they really are tend to be miles apart—especially in the movies.
    It was some tough shit because I genuinely liked the Bruce Willis
persona
and imagined Bruce Willis might be cool, too. But at the end of the day, he wasn’t cool and he wasn’t a miserable person: He was just a movie star. We project identities onto movie stars, forgetting most are really just blank canvases across which some very cool performances can happen. I projected a personality onto Bruce and was ill-prepared to deal with the reality. While I’d read about Hollywood for years, I’d never worked with a bona fide movie star before(please don’t tell Ben Affleck I said that). Ultimately, the only thing that mattered, I guess, was if Bruce was good at
playing
a hero. And he was: always has been, always will be. The great pretender.
    You know who the
real
hero on
Cop Out
was? Tracy Morgan. Severely diabetic, Tracy was going through a particularly tough foot episode during the shoot, requiring him to wear a medical boot fixed with a draining device between every take. The hole in Tracy’s foot should’ve prohibited the guy from even working, let alone running around a movie set pretending to be a cop. Yet even with that, he gave 100 percent and beyond for the show. It was Tracy who kept the show going. Tracy—the guy who’d make everyone laugh while he was nursing a damaged foot you could see through. He, too, came to work with a legend and he, too, learned pretty fucking quickly that the guy he showed up to be in a movie beside didn’t exist anymore—if he ever did at all.
    It may not have played out in the finished film, but every day on the set of
Cop Out
, we’d watch a hero trapped in the wrong place at the wrong time try to do some good, running around with cut-up feet. But sadly, in
our
production of
Die Hard
, Tracy was John McClane, and John McClane became the flick’s very own Hans Gruber.
    To whom I say,
“Yippie ki-yay, moviefucker.”

 

CHAPTER SEVEN
     

___________________
Weed, Gretzky, and
Getting My Shit Together
     
    F or years, I’d made movies about stoners—all while having smoked weed less than ten times total in my entire life. I’d known exactly one stoner ever—Jason Mewes—and he hardly qualified, as he barely went green before dancing with Mr. Brownstone. Mewes may have portrayed a stoner, but in reality he was just passing through Weedville on his way to harder, scarier shit. We were a couple of frauds (or actors), yes; but it’d be those fraudulent flicks I’d made that would eventually put me on a set with the man who would become my ganja guru and place me on the pathway to enlightenment, bliss, calm, and creativity.
    Seth Rogen is a genius—there’s just no two ways about it. He’s a comedic genius who can write on his feet. He’s a life genius, too, as far as I’m concerned, because the dude cracked the code for me. Seth was the most productive pot smoker I’d ever met, and he never seemed remotely fuckedup. Here was a guy who could not only handle
his
high, he could handle your high, your friends’ highs,
and
your mom’s high—all while getting lots of shit done. I’d never known anyone like that before, and even though I’d always been pretty straight-edge, I found it appealing and somewhat enviable.
    I loved watching Rogen’s razor-sharp wit build joke after joke in the middle of the scene, while cameras rolled, with little prep, making every frame usable. But as much as he gave me on the
Zack and Miri Make a Porno
set, it