Killing Kevin Smith, Answering the Unanswerable, more.

The big cigarette tax story is due Wednesday morning, so tonight I wrote a draft of it. Some sources I really wanted to talk to never got back to me, but I guess that's the kind of thing you have to get used to as a journalist. You make your best effort to contact all the people you think would be useful, then when your deadline is approaching, you do the best with what you have. I think the draft came out fairly well, although I will have to revise it a bit tomorrow night. It's too long, for one thing, and I think it might be a little jumbled in parts. Hopefully I'll be able to trim some stuff that's not really necessary, make it more streamlined and clear, and then I'll be all set.

Tomorrow I have to do this multimedia project where two classmates and I are going to interview a couple people, take some pictures, get audio recordings of the interviews, and then put everything together into a slide show with the audio playing over it. I'm a little concerned about this because I've never done anything like it before, and I don't think any of us are very familiar with the equipment or software we'll be using, but we'll figure it out. I think most people in the class are in the same situation we're in.

So, to explain the bizarre title of this blog post: Last week in the news writing class, we talked about writing obituaries, and we were given an assignment to write an obit for someone who is still alive and is either a celebrity or some kind of public figure. We were encouraged to choose someone we like, or someone we at least find interesting, to make the assignment more enjoyable. After thinking about a couple of people that I decided would be too difficult, for various reasons (Stephen King, Charles Barkley), I eventually settled on Kevin Smith. I got the assignment back today, received an A on it, and thought some of you might be interested in reading it. So here ya go:

Kevin Smith, the writer and director of such films as “Clerks,” “Chasing Amy” and “Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back,” died in a one-car accident July 14 near his home in Los Angeles. No one else was harmed in the crash. He was 37.

Smith became the poster boy for rags-to-riches success in the world of independent film with the release of his 1994 debut, “Clerks.” The aspiring filmmaker sold his extensive comic book collection and used credit cards to raise $27,000 to shoot the comedy about two friends working dead-end jobs in New Jersey. The film won awards at the Sundance and Cannes film festivals, grossed over $3 million, and caught the eyes of Bob and Harvey Weinstein, who signed Smith to their production company, Miramax.

The director’s films, filled with profane and often vulgar content, consistently stirred up controversy. The late movie critic Joel Siegel got into a verbal sparring match with Smith in 2006 after Siegel walked out of a press screening of “Clerks 2.” He found the film offensive and walked out about 40 minutes into the screening, loudly declaring that it was the first time he had walked out of a movie in “30 (expletive) years.” Smith quickly responded on his web site; he blasted Siegel and said getting a bad review from him was “a badge of honor.” The two men later continued their argument on the syndicated radio show Opie and Anthony.

Smith also embraced controversy in 1999, when his fourth film, “Dogma,” was being protested by Catholic organizations. He found out that a Catholic group was gathering to protest the film at a theater in Eatontown, N.J., near his hometown. Smith made a couple of picket signs and went to protest his own movie, never revealing his identity to the other protesters. “I’ll never understand the folks who can’t simply dislike something” without going to protest it, Smith wrote on his web site at the time.

Over the years, the director developed a cult following of devoted fans, partly because he was always eager to interact with his audience. He frequently gave speeches and did question and answer sessions at colleges, some of which were compiled on the DVD, “An Evening With Kevin Smith,” and its sequel, “An Evening With Kevin Smith 2: Evening Harder.”

The director also interacted directly with fans on the message boards of his web site, www.viewaskew.com, and wrote a very candid blog about his life at www.silentbobspeaks.com. In his blog, which he called “My Boring-Ass Life,” he discussed both his career and his experiences as a husband and father in intimate detail.

Smith met his wife, Jennifer Schwalbach Smith, in March of 1998 when she was a reporter for USA Today and was assigned to write an article about him. The couple married in April 1999.

In addition to writing and directing all his films, Smith had some experience as an actor. Most notably, he cast himself as Silent Bob, a reticent but wise dope peddler, in six movies. He also played a supporting role in the Jennifer Garner romantic comedy “Catch and Release,” and had a small role in the Bruce Willis blockbuster “Live Free or Die Hard.”

Smith was born in 1970 and grew up in the suburban New Jersey town of Highlands. His home state always remained close to his heart, even after he moved to Los Angeles. All of his films are set partly or entirely in New Jersey.

Although none of Smith’s films were true blockbusters (his two highest-grossing movies, “Dogma” and “Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back,” each made about $30 million), he had a significant effect on the industry. The “Clerks” success story gave hope to legions of would-be indie filmmakers, and Smith was at least partially responsible for making Ben Affleck and Matt Damon household names. Smith served as an executive producer on their breakthrough hit, “Good Will Hunting.”

“I cried when I read it,” Smith said of the “Good Will Hunting” script in the 1998 interview with Schwalbach.

Affleck appeared in almost all of Smith’s films, and starred in “Chasing Amy,” “Dogma” and “Jersey Girl.”

“I owe everything to this guy,” Affleck said of Smith in 1998.

Smith also had a very close relationship with Bob and Harvey Weinstein, who founded Miramax and now run the Weinstein Co. The Weinstein brothers financed all Smith’s movies after “Clerks.”

“Kevin is one of the great young directors who has been an integral part of Miramax’s growth,” Harvey Weinstein told Daily Variety in 2003.

Fittingly, Smith was once again surrounded by controversy at the time of his death. His final film, “Zack and Miri Make a Porno,” is slated for release in October 2008, and is not yet rated. The Motion Picture Association of America wants to give the movie an NC-17 rating. At the time of his death, Smith was fighting for an R rating. “The MPAA is gunning for us, I think,” star Seth Rogen told MTV last month.

Kevin Smith is survived by his wife, Jennifer Schwalbach Smith, and their daughter, Harley Quinn Smith. He will be buried in a ceremony at Bay View Cemetery in Highlands, N.J. on Thursday, July 17. The ceremony will not be open to the public, and the family requests that mourners do not send flowers.

So that's that. To get to the other part of the bizarre title for this blog post, last Monday I started a new thing where I answer an unanswerable question or respond to some sort of well-known saying (last week's was "It's better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all," which I conclusively proved false). I have decided to make this a weekly feature, at least until I run out of ideas. According to my computer, it is technically no longer Monday, but 12:12 AM on Tuesday is close enough for me.

This week's unanswerable question: Which came first, the chicken or the egg?

Answer: The egg. I have put a lot of thought into this-- probably more thought than anyone really should, and here's my reasoning. If you answer "the egg," the argument against it is usually that the egg couldn't come first because a chicken egg must be laid by a chicken. And if you answer "the chicken," the standard argument is that a chicken must have hatched from a chicken egg. Quite the conundrum.

But I believe that evolutionary theory conclusively proves that the egg came first. Here's why:

New species are created a little bit at a time, over millions of years, as the gene pool of one species slowly develops mutations and ultimately turns into something different. So the way I figure it, at one point in time there were a number of birdlike animals that closely resembled chickens, but were not chickens. Now imagine an animal that is as close as it could possibly be to a chicken without actually being a chicken. For the purpose of this discussion, we shall call it the Prehistoric Cluckbeast. Now, the Prehistoric Cluckbeast is right on the tipping point of being a chicken. So say one of these theoretical birds lays an egg that contains a slight mutation. This tiny mutation is the final piece in the puzzle-- the chicken has been created. Several weeks later, however long it takes for a chicken egg to incubate, the world's first chicken hatches. But the hen who laid the egg is not a chicken. It is a Prehistoric Cluckbeast. And, presumably, the offspring will not immediately be recognized as a chicken, but will instead be considered a deformed Prehistoric Cluckbeast and will probably be mocked and ostracized by its peers. But it is not a fucked up Prehistoric Cluckbeast. It is a chicken.

So there you have it. Egg came first. No arguments.

All right, kind of tired and I've got a big day ahead of me tomorrow. I do have other news to tell you-- I am currently in the application process for a number of TA and research assistant jobs, and I recently invented two recipes for a couple of damn fine hamburgers-- but those stories can wait for another day. Peace.

-Nick