MY GENERATION BELIEVES WE CAN DO ALMOST ANYTHING.

Nothing--and everything--prepared Kevin Smith to become, as he has been called, "the King of Gen X cinema." The son of a postal clerk in Highlands, N.J., he recalls an uneventful childhood "in a white-trash town. I watched six hours of TV a day. I read comics and went to Mass on Sundays. In high school, I worked as a busboy. On weekends, we'd hang out and make crank calls and go drinking. Defining moments of my generation? When Fonzie jumped over the shark tank in Happy Days."

After a semester of college and four months of film school, Smith found himself...

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