Kevin Smith is a big fella. He has written and performed to the tune of his own overweight self-deprecation for over 15 years. He has even given Jason Mewes artistic license to poke fun at his bulging midsection in every adventure Jay and Silent Bob have shared together. Kevin Smith is fat. This is a fact. A fact Kevin Smith has never denied. But too fat to fly? C’mon!?
From Oakland to beautiful, downtown Burbank, Smith was scheduled to fly Southwest on Sunday after speaking at the Macworld Expo Conference. He purchased two seats for a specific flight, yet arriving to the airport ahead of schedule he was able to snag the final standby seat on an earlier departure.
According to Southwest at the time of the load-in, Smith was simply too fat to fly. A brief discussion ensued, and Smith demonstrated that he could get both arm rests down with his seat belt fastened sans extender. This leaves one to question: Was someone complaining? Perhaps a fellow passenger really hated Dogma? Even worse, maybe Smith squeezed in next to a lesbian who was irreparably offended in 1997, when Chasing Amy suggested that Ben Affleck could turn a gay girl straight. We’re simply left to wonder.
After being removed from the flight, Smith turned his focus to the contemporary form of celebrity counsel: Twitter. Within minutes, he had gotten everything off of his chest, thousands of fans with nothing better to do were outraged at the injustice and Southwest was left with only one option – tweet right back!
Southwest issued a personal apology to Smith, posted a short blurb on their website and rolled out the red carpet for the celebrity director. They put him on a later flight, and presented him with a voucher for 100 dollars. Every ounce of my being hopes he presented his voucher to a flight attendant and stated, “I’ll have as many snack boxes as this hundred bucks can buy.”
(Image via: AP)
