Kevin Smith has publicly paid his respects to Prince, after the late music legend’s tragic passing on Thursday at age 57. The “Chasing Amy” director reflected on the impact of the icon’s music on his life, and the unreleased Prince documentary he made over a decade ago.
Smith had famously discussed the Prince doc on his first “Evening with Kevin Smith” DVD, where he touched on the origins of the film, and his unsuccessful attempt to use “The Most Beautiful Girl In The World” in “Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back.” Instead, he got a few weeks working on Prince’s unreleased documentary. Watch below to see how a simple question from an audience member turned into a 30-minute story.
Smith wrote on his Facebook page:
The music of #Prince was essentially the soundtrack to my life. My first girlfriend introduced me to his work, so any teenage heavy petting session was scored by the lusty purple pipes of his Royal Badness. #1999 and #PurpleRain were some of the first albums I ever bought. In 1989, his #Batman soundtrack never left my rack system. When we made #Clerks in 1993, the Love Symbol album was on a constant loop in my car’s cassette player. @samosier & I were almost killed on the Turnpike in the pouring rain when our car momentarily slid under an 18-wheeler as we were funking out to ‘My Name Is Prince’ (we sang only ‘The Morning Papers’ for the rest of the way home).
My wife & I flew to Minnesota for the Rave Un2 the Y2K concert at #PaisleyPark at the turn of the century, solely as fans. Less than a year later, I’d meet and work with the icon himself when I returned to Paisley Park to shoot a documentary with Prince during his Rainbow Children album listening party. I was lucky to have spent any time with him at all but I was far luckier just simply being alive in the Prince era.
His music moved me, his lyrics captured my imagination, his journey from musical Minnesotan to worldwide superstar inspired me. I honestly thought I’d die before Prince – so it’s sad to think there will be no new music in which he could sing us his point-of-view on the rest of his unique and legendary life. But having spent time at Paisley Park with the prolific Prince, I know there’s a vault full of unreleased tracks we’ve still yet to hear.
I told a long story about my week-long experience of working with Prince on the first Evening with Kevin Smith DVD – a story that would go on to help solidify my reputation outside of filmmaking as a raconteur. So as much as I got from Prince as a fan of good music, he also helped to shape ol’ Silent Bob’s second career as a talker. I cried today because I realized what a role model Prince always was to me: an Artist with a capital A who was not afraid to bite the hand that fed, never hesitated to reinvent himself, and was always entertaining on any stage. Today we lost one of the greatest Artists who ever lived. RIP, purple genius. Nothing compared 2 U…
