We don’t need an excuse to talk to Kevin Smith, but his new book gave us one. Shootin’ the Sh*t with Kevin Smith: The Best of Smodcast includes classic banter from his podcast with producer Scott Mosier. Since they talk about any random thing, and the book is called Shootin’ the Sh*t, we just did the same thing with Smith. His wife was out to yoga and his daughter was at a playdate, so Smith was game for any crazy sh*t we could come up with.

Kevin Smith: The kid’s play date just got extended and I’m so happy. It’s crazy, it’s like wow, that’s awesome. The kid slept over at a friend’s house and now it’s just going to keep going, the play date. That is like porn to a parent. It’s tough. It’s a weird political landscape of play dates and what not, like who you can trust with your kid, which pretty much everyone in Harley’s class. All the families are cool and what not. But then there’s like how often do you impose upon them versus how often do you allow yourself to be imposed upon. Not imposed in a bad way but just like who hosts? We wind up hosting more play dates here and what not just by virtue of the shape of the house and what not, the size of the house and play space or whatever. So it’s always cool when somebody is willing to take our kid for a while. Then to have it extended is just like, “I am totally getting laid this afternoon.” Harley’s at somebody else’s and Jen just went off to Yoga and whenever she does that, she always comes home in a f****n’ fantastic mood so I am totally, totally getting laid. 

Crave Online: Well, I’ll have some sex questions for you inspired by the book. I must say, I was reading it while I worked out and I nearly fell off the treadmill.

Kevin Smith: You know what’s good, dude? Reading’s great so I would never discourage that but the beauty of the Smodcast is you can listen to it while you work out. But I hear that complaint often. I’ve read in the response threads of the Smodcast page, so many occasions of people out running and then stopping and bending over and just cramping because they were laughing while they were exercising. That always makes me feel good. 

Crave Online: Where did A Couple of Dicks come from? That wasn’t one of the projects you ever talked about on your slate. 

Kevin Smith: I wasn’t really in the directing somebody else’s script mode at that point. And then Jeff Rabinov had sent me the script. I didn’t know it. I thought I’d received it from the writers, the Cullen brothers who I knew from two years prior when I was in their Manchild pilot that they wrote and produced. So I saw a script for A Couple of Dicks and it said Rob and Mark Cullen, and I was like oh, the boys sent me their script. I guess they want me to just read it, give ‘em some thoughts or some sh*t. But I missed the cover letter which was inside. It was from Jeff Rabinov’s office going like, “I think this would be a great blend for you. Give it a read, let me know what you think.” I said, “If I would’ve wrote a cop movie, it would’ve been this.” I sent him an e-mail going, “Were you sending this to me with an eye towards rewriting it or something? Because I think it’s pretty funny.” And he said no, directing. And I was like, “Uh, I don’t normally do that kind of thing.” And he was just like, “Well, why don’t you try it?”  

Crave Online: How are they dealing with the controversial title? 

Kevin Smith: Warner Brothers were brilliant. The marketing people were brilliant inasmuch as they did due diligence. They went to the networks while we were still in production and they were like, “Hey, we have this movie called A Couple of Dicks starring Bruce Willis, Tracy Morgan. It’s a cop movie so Dicks refers to detectives. Are you guys going to have any problem advertising that? Are you going to give us a hard time about anything?” TBS and Fox I guess came back and said, “No, man, we’ll run all the ads you want.” 

Crave Online: What are you going to do to advertise on NBC, CBS or ABC? 

Kevin Smith: I’m like, “Hey man, change the title. It ain’t gonna change the content of the film or how the film impacts people and you may just f*ckin’ reach your audience. You may actually get to them. You won’t have any sort of advertising obstructions in your way and what not.” Warner Brothers was just like, “I know that you guys didn’t make this movie just to see it f*ckin’ die with a title that we can’t promote.” 

Crave Online: Is it really illegal to say Dicks, especially when it means detectives? 

Kevin Smith: I mean, sh*t dude, I’ve seen posters for Nurse Jackie that she’s holding a needle and it says, “Life is full of little pricks.” We all know what that means, man, and nobody’s f*ckin’ up in arms about it. It’s funny. It’s a double entendre, it’s a play on words. It’s not like Edie Falco is sucking her own boobs on the poster and it says, “Life is full of sucking your own tits” or something. It’s a word play. She’s holding a needle. It says pricks. Ba dum bum. We get it. Totally clever advertising. Great campaign. Why we can’t have, “Bruce Willis is a dick. Tracy Morgan is a dick. A Couple of Dicks, the job just got hard.” Sh*t like that. Why? It’s just words. It’s not like we’re putting on the poster a naked Bruce Willis with his f*ckin’c*ck hanging out, a huge Willis hog with the title written down it. It’s just ridiculous. And then Kevin Pollack wisely pointed out, the correct spelling of Dicks when you’re referring to detectives is DICS because it’s basically an acronym for Detective in Charge, isn’t it? I think the IC is in charge. So that’s DICS, so we sit there going, “Hey, maybe if we drop the K, we won’t have those problems.” So that might be a solution as well. I don't know. We’re working it out. We’re trying to hold onto the title because it’s a great title but at the end of the day, you can’t fight City Hall. The network’s like, “No, we’re not gonna let you run any f*ckin’ spots.” I mean, what did we go through all this trouble for.