Kevin Smith Stars in ‘Die Lard’

Clerks director Kevin Smith isn’t exactly a barbells-and-protein-shakes kind of guy, so he was a little surprised to be cast in the latest Die Hard movie, which is holding its own this week against Transformers in the movies-guys-drag-their-girlfriends-to segment of the box office. “They had to rename it Die Lard,� he says. Luckily for Smith, his role as a computer-hacking mastermind working from a “command center� in his mother’s basement didn’t involve jumping from burning helicopters or fighting a villainous Asian chick, in an SUV, hanging in an elevator shaft. “I’m in the one scene in the movie where there is literally no action. No gun even makes an appearance. What’s it like to be in an action movie? I honestly don’t fucking know.� Smith says Bruce Willis tried to make nice on-set — even if he wasn’t always convincing. “One day, he came over and said, ‘We’re going a little slowly. I just wanted to apologize because I respect you as a filmmaker.’ And I thought, ‘This dude has never seen a single one of my movies. He probably doesn’t know who the fuck I am.’� —Bennett Marcus and Jada Yuan