Tough Sh*t: Life Advice From a Fat, Lazy Slob Who Did Good Read Online Free PDF

I called him out on it once, on Twitter, and to his credit the guy tweeted the following:
    “Didn’t realize the upset my words caused. Looked back at what you said and I concur. Ignorance on my part. Apologies.”
    Regardless, Neil Patrick Harris must’ve loved
Jersey Girl
: It was my first Mewes-less movie. It was also the second flick I’d have to bend over and take it for from the critics. Ben gave the best performance of his career, George Carlin got a bunch of screen time, and little newcomer Raquel Castro broke hearts—but nothing could save my first non-Askewniverse flick from the backlash beast that was Bennifer.
    T hankfully, we followed
Jersey
Girl
with
Clerks II
—my favorite of the bunch. Made for five million (a nearly five-million-dollar increase from the budget of
Clerks
),
Clerks II
was more than just a reunion flick or a trip back to the well, as I called it: It was the last good time. After that, filmmaking would change for me. After that, I’d realize my timeas a cinematic storyteller was coming to a close. Because the tough shit is, sometimes you can start out doing what you love, and then doing what you love starts to become work.
    Twenty years is a long time to do anything, let alone make movies. I’ve gone further than I ever dreamed. The plan back in 1991 had been to make
Clerks
on credit cards, hoping someone with money would see that we knew how to make a film and in turn reward us with a budget to do a next one. That was
it.
Imagine your plan was to walk down to the convenience store to get some chocolate milk, and while there, you were gifted with an entire milk production facility to run, complete with chocolatizer for all the milk. “
You want chocolate milk? You
got
chocolate milk, kid!
” And from that moment forward, for twenty years, chocolate milk became your life: the making of, sampling of, bottling of, vending of, marketing of, balance sheets of …
    And while you love it all, this unexpected gift of a thriving chocolate milk concern, every once in a while, in the midst of it all, you think, “How’d I get
here
? All I wanted was some chocolate milk.”

 

CHAPTER FOUR
     

___________________
Miramaxkateers and Shit
     
    T his is important to put right on front street: Nearly everything I’ve achieved in life since 1994 I owe to Harvey Weinstein—the larger-than-life (
not
a fat joke) half of the legendary Miramax siblings who mainstreamed indie film. And to show my gratitude, I made his ideals my own and fought his holy war against the studio infidels and heathens, sometimes even at his behest.
    Now here’s the tough shit: Miramax was owned by Disney at the time—the most studio-est of the studios. So in essence, I was an indie filmmaker owned by a mouse in short pants.
    Miramax was the premier destination for indie filmmakers in the early ’90s. Harvey and Bob Weinstein, concert promoters in Buffalo, dipped their toes into the movie biz and discovered art-house gold, distributing such envelope-pushing modern classics as
The Piano
and
The CryingGame.
Their winning ways with non-popcorn fare caught the attention of the Walt Disney Company, and in 1993 the family-movie mavens purchased Miramax, lock, film stock, and barrel, keeping Harvey and Bob as coheads of the indie film distribution company they named after their parents, Miriam and Max. It wasn’t charity on Disney’s behalf: With a corporate wolf’s war chest under his indie sheep’s clothing, Harvey took underground film to mainstream multiplexes while producing a string of Oscar winners and pop-culture landmarks. Disney buying Miramax and the subsequent run of cinematic gems (and dreck) that would follow was the biggest boon to art patronage since the Medici family.
    Harvey picked up
Clerks
at the ’94 Sundance Film Festival, after its fourth screening and Q & A. The flick had built up amazing buzz over the course of its first three public exhibitions, and at its last fest run at the Egyptian Theater,