I think you are reading more into it than there is. Smith once vowed to never leave New Jersey. At some point he changed his mind. I heard him say his decision was based more on the fact that his kids can swim in the pool for 12 months out of the year instead of 3. Not so much because he is leaving his childhood behind and growing up.
Good point. Kevin was even there to help with the J-Lo break-up. He has remained close enough friends that J-Lo went to Kevin to see if he had any insights why her relationship with Ben was failing.
Jim
I’m sticking with what I said in the OP. Saying Kevin Smith is keeping it real because he hangs out with Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez doesn’t strike me as a persuasive argument.
I’m not saying Smith has gone all Hollywood. From everything I’ve heard about the man he’s a genuinely good guy and very unpretentious. But I think he has left his hometown behind. That doesn’t make him a bad person but I think he does feel that loss. And in Clerks II he was confronting that loss by having one of his characters consider doing the same thing he had done.
Raygun99 writes:
> Except running off to California to manage a car wash . . .
No, in the movie Dante was supposed to move to Florida, not California, after his wedding in order to run the car wash. Florida is where Smith’s wife grew up, incidentally. In one interview I read he said that his wife stuck it out in New Jersey for four years after they married. At some point though, he realized that she hated the weather there. He then decided that in California he could be both closer to the rest of the film industry and living in a climate that his wife didn’t hate.
But he still hangs out with Mosier & Mewes, he is extremely down to earth. He is geeky enough to post on the internet on message boards and his own blog.
His Evenings with Kevin Smith appear to show a pretty down to earth guy that does not take himself very seriously. I have never met him in person, but I have attended two Q&As. As celebrities go, I cannot imagine anyone more down to earth.
Jim
I met Mewes at a Q&A years ago and he was fascinated by the sign language interpretor. He constantly tried to get the guy to show him the sign for “fuck.”
Afterwards, the autograph/meet and greet line went nearly two hours over because Mewes was chatting up everyone about every little thing.
Seeing as how he’s still Kevin Smith’s best friend (and lived with his for a good long time), I can’t imagine Smith’s life feels much different than it used to.
And again, I want to point out that to Kevin Smith, Ben Affleck is just some dude who he’s known for nearly 15 years. He’s not a “hanger-on” or a member of Affleck’s entourage. He’s hanging out with a friend he’s known since his early 20s.
We seem to be arguing two different points. I’m saying Kevin Smith moved away from his hometown. And other people are protesting by saying Kevin Smith’s a great guy. I don’t see why they feel the two are incompatible.
I’m not saying Smith became some kind of asshole because he moved to California. But it was a major change in his life. For a long time - well into his adult life - Smith talked about how much he loved his hometown and how he planned on living their all of his life. But at some point he changed his mind on this and moved across country. I’m sure he had good reasons and is happy where he’s at.
But I’m also very certain that Smith misses New Jersey. He may visit there and see some of his old friends once in a while but that is not the same as living there. Smith left his hometown.
I think the fact that he made a movie in which such a large issue was made out of someone’s decision about whether or not they should leave New Jersey shows that Smith considers it a big deal. You can watch the movie and argue that Dante made the right choice by staying. Or you can look at Smith’s life and argue that he thinks Dante made the wrong choice. But I don’t see how you can watch the movie and argue that it wasn’t an important choice in Dante’s life (or Smith’s). Dante’s decision about whether to stay or go was the whole heart of the movie - I don’t see how anyone can feel it was a trivial issue and not worth thinking about.
I think that there is a tendency to make Smith’s work autobiographical. No doubt he uses elements from his own life as jumping off points for certain parts of the plot. That does not mean his life parallels his character’s lives. Smith left his hometown. I doubt the choice was as hard on him as it would be for you, me or one of his characters. He has enough money to move back if he didn’t like it. He has the money to visit every weekend if he wanted to. It’s just not the same. He may have used his own life as a seed for the script but thats where it ends.
I’m not sure moving to California was a big deal day-to-day change for Kevin Smith. As a man who blogs practically every moment of his life, it’s easy to compare Jersey Kevin Smith, living with his family, hanging out with his friends and watching a lot of TV is probably pretty close to the California Smith who lives with his family, hangs out with his friends and watchs a lot of TV.
A few of the friends may have changed (but Jason Mewes and Scott Mosier seem to live where Smith lives), but I’d imagine all that’s different is the weather (as others have pointed out).
On top of that, he’s a filmmaker, which means pretty frequent trips to the East Coast, because a lot of movie making goes down out there, as well. Not only is he wealthy enough that regular trips back home aren’t a hardship, they’re practically a requirement of his job. Dante, working in a car wash, isn’t going to have that sort of flexibility. If he had left his hometown, he’d effectively never see any of his friends again. That’s not a sacrifice Smith had to make when he moved to California.
No one’s saying it’s a trivial point or not worth thinking about - we’re just saying you’re coming to the wrong conclusion. You’re working too hard on the “Smith regrets his choice” argument. Dante isn’t Smith, though there’s an element of him in there (but there’s an element of him in a lot of his characters). He gave his character Dante a choice - move to manage the car wash but never become his own man, or buy his own store and run his own the life the way he always wanted to. The choice to move to Hollywood and become a big star just isn’t one that’s presented to everybody.
Personally, it would be no big deal for me. I’ve moved several times in my life and have no real connection to my hometown or any other place I’ve lived in. But we’re not talking about me. We’re talking about Kevin Smith - a guy who made a movie about how big a decision this is in a person’s life.
It’s like arguing that Fyodor Dostoevsky didn’t think committing a crime had an important effect on somebody’s life - except that he wrote a six hundred page long novel about how committing a crime had an important effect on somebody’s life.
As I’ve said, Smith probably doesn’t regret his choice. He’s done quite well for himself and he’d be justified in thinking that leaving New Jersey might have been the best decision he ever made in his life. And if that’s the case, then I think it affects the ending of the movie - Smith might have been saying that Dante was wrong to have settled down and he should have gone to Florida with Emma. He’s content but he’s given up on his dreams.
Except that it was never Dante’s dream to manage a car wash in Florida.
His considering that move I found symbolic of wanting to get out of Hicksville – which everyone consideres their hometown to be, unless its LA or NYC, someplace big like that – and running off to the Promised Land. If it’s not California, then Florida. Same same but different. But for the sake of the story ending, he had to wuss out and not leave.
If Jason Mewes ever comes to Bangkok, I could show him a good night out. I wonder if he’s ever heard of our blowjob bars??
I can understand wanting to go out in the world and DO something but never quite doing it. I WAS Dante Hicks for so long. I finally got the gumption to make the move, and it worked out well. Among some I knew way back when who also planned to make the Big Move from Texas, one the last I heard was a medical-supply deliveryman and still getting drunk in his spare time. But maybe Kevin Smith wanted to show that you CAN be happy even if you don’t make the move. Sort of like an alternate universe to his own existence. (Except he was Randall, not Dante.)
Hey, we’re talking Jersey, not Hicksville, for Jersey its …
Baby this town rips the bones from your back
Its a death trap, its a suicide rap
We gotta get out while were young
`cause tramps like us, baby we were born to run
BTW: I think some Chicagoans are going to object to your post also. 
Jim
This is nitpicking. I think somebody once wrote:
And I agree with this. Mainly because that somebody was me, back on December 5th of last year (see post #12).
The point isn’t that Dante Hicks had a lifelong dream of managing a carwash in Florida. But he did have a lifelong dream of getting out of his rut and doing more with his life.
Chicago? Hey, I said “or someplace big like that.” But I’ve noticed Jersey seems second to Texas in places people either love or hate to be in.
I’ve been told that “Born to Run” was once being considered for the state anthem of New Jersey. I have to admit that teaching 6-year-old schoolchildren to sing “'Cause tramps like us, baby we were born to run” does in fact appeal to me. 
I don’t think that it is. It’s directly germane to the theme of the movie, which is, “Do what makes you happy, not what people think should make you happy.” And that’s the portion of Dante’s character that I think is autobiographical to Smith. For Dante, what made him happy was hanging out with his friends and working at the Quik Stop. For Smith, what makes him happy is hanging out with his friend and making movies. I don’t think it’s a reasonable read of the movie to say that Dante has made the wrong choice by staying in Leonardo, and I don’t think it’s a reasonable read of Kevnin Smith’s life (to the extent that we can judge Kevin Smith’s life) to say that he regrets leaving Jersey and becoming a succesful indie film maker and comic book writer.