Podcasts are well on their way to taking over radio's place as the third dominant form of media, and nothing is more indicative of this than the big names currently working on the podcast landscape. Two of the biggest names around are writer-director Kevin Smith and his production partner, Scott Mosier, the men behind indie movie classics ""Clerks"" and ""Chasing Amy,"" with their online banter show, ""SModcast."" Particularly for Smith, podcasting has been a natural fit, considering many of his scripts are often hailed (and sometimes chided) for their highly stylized dialog, much of which takes place in conversations between surrogate characters for himself.
Smith and Mosier have taken their act on the road recently, recording their ""SModcast"" live in front of audiences across the country. They recently stopped in Madison for a pair of shows at the Majestic Theatre, with Mosier taking the opportunity to talk with The Daily Cardinal about the tour, the dirty minds of its hosts and how they got their start.
""When we met in film school in Vancouver we were both not very good students, and we would just sit around and bullshit all the time,"" Mosier said. ""Kevin called me and said we should do a podcast, just to give us a reason to sit down and bullshit. That's what it was born out of and it very quickly reignited that same mode of conversation we had back then.""
If the ""SModcast"" is any indication, it looks like Smith and Mosier's main mode of conversation is to be as gloriously vulgar as possible. The two raconteurs cover topics ranging from good rates for sex to what a theoretical Nazi-ruled America would look like to masturbation techniques—and that's just a single episode.
""If you listen to them all we go [to] some pretty weird places,"" Mosier said. ""There's not a set of guidelines, we don't have a blackboard off to the side saying what is this shit we can't talk about.""
According to Mosier, that adds to the show's improvosational feel.
""It doesn't seem like we hold back very much, and as far as what direction we go it's just completely spontaneous, so who knows where we'll end up at any given moment,"" he said.
The crudeness is fully on display at the live ""SModcasts,"" which Smith dubbed ""Live Nude SMods,"" despite the lack of literal nudity.
""I think the nude part is more of a threat,"" reassured Mosier. ""If you don't fucking laugh, one of us will get naked.""
But with the show's spontaneous nature, it's still a possibility according to Mosier.
""Every show is completely different, because it's all off the cuff. It's all improvised, you're watching it while it happens."" Mosier went on to describe the duo's preparation process, or lack thereof. ""The most preparation we do is Kevin telling me he's got a really great news story he's going to read me. But he doesn't tell me what it is. We've just found that part of it is him reading it to me on the stage to let people hear my reaction to it.""
Those reactions compose much of the show. At their first Madison ""SModcast,"" many of the laughs were earned from Mosier's reactions to news stories about a French prisoner mistakenly eating his cellmate's lung or a topless maid service in Nebraska, as well as Smith's extrapolations on the stories. The show is well-served by this dichotomy, with Smith as the jester and Mosier acting as his straight man, almost like a duo on a sitcom—which as fitting, because like a successful sitcom, the ""SModcast"" has inspired successful spin-off shows like ""Tell ‘Em Steve and Dave"".
""I guess we are the ‘Happy Days' of podcasts,"" Mosier said. ""I would say that I'm the more naïve one out of the two, so I would put Kevin as The Fonz and me as Richie Cunningham.""
Of course, Smith and Mosier have successful careers outside of podcasting and other projects at hand, with Mosier saying that Smith's next movie, the horror film ""Red State,"" will likely begin production this year. But sometimes an even more interesting project is just sitting around and shooting the breeze, which is something Mosier has fully embraced.
""With the shape of the show we've done a lot,"" he said. ""Some of it has changed a little, but at its core we just thought: Well, let's sit down.""
Apparently, a lot can come out of just sitting down and talking.
