The Sci in Sci-Fi | StarTalk

Even though Kevin Smith is a huge pop culture fan and science fiction fan, he remains science-curiosity challenged. No. Yeah, yeah. I have evidence of that. Let's check it out.

You're talking to a man who, at age 46, is still not quite sure how the water works when I turn on the spigot. So, mysteries of the universe. I got one for you, ready? The refrigerator light. That one I get. There will be a button that pushes off. Oh, you found the button. That's where my science begins and ends.

It takes some curiosity. The faucet, like, it's not plugged into anything. And like, so, wait, this pressure is just waiting at all times. Like, isn't this a ticking time bomb waiting to go off? I realize I'm not smart enough. I'm smart about one thing: things that don't exist — comic books, movies, TV.

I wasn't even smart about it, I just liked that. That's where I invested all my time. Not even in sports, another unreal thing. I invested my life, early life, in cartoons and comics and movies and TV and fun things and sci-fi. And so it just worked out.

I don't know what I'd be doing right now if the world didn't fall the way it did, but it just worked out that right now, people are interested in those things, culturally. It's no longer pop culture, it is the culture. And because I was raised in it, I'm well-versed in it, suddenly there's this weird the universe aligns, as you know, in some times and some moments and it has given me a path that's like,

so I could literally just be a fan of things for a living? This is a job? And so that's kind of what I've — you know, I love making films and stuff. But really, that's only one half of my career. The rest of it is just spent mostly celebrating things that I enjoy, largely, of course, a lot of it centered around the unreal sci-fi.

That's where my sci ends, with a fi. You've made a brilliant career out of the sci. Well, I have used people such as yourself, communities that you represent, and explored ways to attach real science to it. And I have found that if you identify a fan base that has rabid interest in a thing and I find a way to attach something real to it, oh, my God, give me all of that that you can.