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Maybe you’ve already heard about this, but there was some big news (get it? You’ll get it) this weekend when director Kevin Smith was forcibly removed from a Southwest Airlines plane for being too fat. Yikes! It turns out those hockey jerseys were more concealing than we could have ever known! From People magazine:
Kevin Smith’s most famous role is a guy who rarely speaks. But he’s got a lot to say – much of it profane – after being kicked off a Southwest Air flight because he didn’t fit comfortably into the seat.
“You [messed] with the wrong sedentary processed-foods eater!” Smith, whose next film, Cop Out, comes out Feb. 26, posted on Twitter.
It was one of many Tweets recounting the actor/director’s humiliating expulsion Saturday from the Oakland-to-Burbank, Calif. flight. Southwest said in a statement airline officials had called Smith to offer their “heartfelt apologies,” but also stated his removal was for the “safety and comfort of all customers.”
Ouch. Safety and comfort of ALL customers. When Kevin Smith sits around the plane he really NEVERMIND. We don’t need to finish that joke. We do need to finish reading this article about the time Kevin Smith was forcibly removed from a Southwest Airlines plane for being too fat:
Smith, 39, originally purchased two tickets “as he’s been known to do when traveling Southwest,” the airline noted, but when he decided to fly standby on an earlier flight, only one seat remained. Although he had been seated, he was asked to leave.
“If a customer cannot comfortably lower the armrest and infringes on a portion of another seat, a customer seated adjacent would be very uncomfortable and a timely exit from the aircraft in the event of an emergency might be compromised if we allow a cramped, restricted seating arrangement,” Southwest said.
Smith, who played Silent Bob in his Clerks movies and who has battled his weight for years – “I know I’m fat,” he confesses – was given a $100 voucher and arrived in Burbank on a later flight. But he was in no mood to accept an apology.
“I broke no regulation, offered no ‘safety risk’ (what, was I gonna roll on a fellow passenger?)” he Tweeted. “I saw someone bigger than me on THAT flight! But I wasn’t about to throw a fellow Fatty under the plane as I’m being profiled. But he & I made eye contact, & he was like ‘Please don’t tell…’”
After landing in Burbank, Smith wrote, “Don’t worry: wall of the plane was opened & I was airlifted out while Richard Simmons supervised.”
Smith added that while the ordeal was embarrassing, his “Jersey Girl training” (the 2004 flop starring Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez) was helping him cope.
Womp womp. Jersey Girl jokes!
Here’s the thing: I am sure the whole situation was embarrassing for everyone involved. I am sure that other passengers on the plane were embarrassed, and that the crew was embarrassed, and that Kevin Smith was extra embarrassed (because of how much of him there is!). But also, if you are already in the habit of buying two tickets every time you fly, a) go to the doctor (RUUUUUUUUUUUUNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN) and b) don’t be surprised that apparently you really do need two seats? Like, you can relax with the fake populism, Kevin Smith. “It is insulting that Southwest Airlines would enforce a policy that I specifically spend extra money to help them follow.” What? So the airline had to give him a $100 voucher and executives had to apologize to him? Why? “We are so sorry that you dress yourself like a 15-year-old and Twitter incessantly about your wife’s taint.”
I am just so sick of these Hollywood fat cats throwing their weight around! Someone could get hurt!
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I don’t think that’s fair at all. He usually buys the two seats just because he doesn’t want to sit next to someone else, not because he’s too large for the seats.
That just makes him fat AND unfriendly.
That’s just his cover story. Or should i say a muumuu story, because a muumuu covers you when you’re fat. NAILED IT! (Like fat kids being goth and all “I don’t like people FIRST!!!”)
He needs to ease up on all the munchies after he smokes
Slick new look you have there, DS3M. I especially like the green writing.
New year, New HTML tags to learn, or something.
so he made Cop Out. it all makes sense now!
This is the funniest thing Smith has been apart of since Clerks.
Why God!!! Why couldn’t this have been Kirstie Alley…Why!!!
So he can tweet but he can’t fly?
Sorry
They’re still working on a “Big Eat, No Tweet” rule.
Luckily the airline employees remembered to offer him some of those peanuts and pretzel snacks during the ordeal, or shit would have started getting real.
Why doesn’t he just travel in first class/business class like normal fat, rich assholes?
Southwest does not have a a separate set of seats for first class/ business class. If you buy a business ticket, you just get to board the plane before everyone else.
Here’s a fun fact: I’m so poor I’ve only ever flown Southwest. So I don’t think first class exists, because I’ve never seen one.
I know this, I’ve flown South West a couple times. They essentially treat you like cattle and its awful, everyone knows this and everyone knows they have this asinine fatty policy. I guess my point is if you’re a wealthy celebrity complaining about a budget airline treating you like a second class citizen and you normally avoid this by purchasing TWO seats, why don’t you fly a normal airline and spend a trivial additional amount to have a comfy seat and a bit of respect. Don’t try to “slum it” or whatever to retain some cred. Let that extra seat be available on SW for someone who maybe can’t afford a higher fare. This whole scenario would be like if I walked into a soup kitchen and complained about their service then bitched about it on twitter.
I feel like I should make a “We’re gonna need a bigger” crack here, but, then again, that would be kind of a Jersey Girl joke.
“‘We’re gonna need a bigger’ crack” is what Kevin Smith’s enormous asscheeks said. Because he is so fat!
Actually this is b.s. As noted above, he doesn’t buy the second seat because he is so fat, he buys it because he is
a misanthropeshy. Southwest’s people were just being douchey, as ordinary people placed in positions of authority tend to do.Wait… Kevin Smith was treated poorly by angry, underpaid “douchey” workers?
The only think worse than this that I can think of would be finding out your girlfriend sucked 37 dicks.
Unless she brings you lasagna at work. Then this is definitely worse.
Is that Hebrew at the bottom of your avatar? I think the last word is “what” but I can’t read the first one.
finally, somebody’s stickin it to fat people
I see Gabe has been studying up on his Big Book of Puns. Fat work Gabe!
his “Jersey Girl training” (the 2004 flop starring Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez)”
Haha. Wrong Ben Affleck flop, People. That would be Gigli. Oh shit, did I just correct People magazine with my encyclopedic knowledge of Ben Affleck movies? Um…WILLIAMSBURG!
No, that’s right. Jersey Girl came out in 2004 and had Ben/Jen. Gigli was 2003
I thought Jersey Girl was Ben and Liv Tyler. And I also thought my brain is about to eat itself for dedicating this much of its energy expenditure to Ben Affleck trivia before lunch.
jlo was supposed to have a much larger role in jersey girl. but they cut most of it out after everyone hated gigli so much
She died at the beginning! It was really hard.
Jen’s in it, though. She gives birth to his kid and then dies.
While it is true that Jersey Girl starred Ben Affleck and Liv Tyler, it is also true that every flop should be considered to star the comedy duo of Affleck & Lopez.
i heard Kevin Smith flies all over the country hoping the plane will crash and transport him back to 1995. the extra seat is for bizarro Kevin Smith.
This is almost as good as the story about how he broke a toilet seat in half with his gigantican.
He tells that story himself and (I assure you) it is quite hilarious. His movies are uneven, but he is an entertaining interview/speaker.
As someone who has been sandwiched between two fat people on a plane before, and had to suffer like a body in a fleshly coffin, I have no sympathy for Mr. Smith. He looks morbidly obese in his photos. As Jay might say – flee, fatass, flee!
….or blowing a guy for half an hour (minus your shirt and bra) for sold-out concert tickets only to find out they were selling extra tickets at the door. that would probably be worse.
shit. that was supposed to be a reply to itsahotdog!’s comment. (go ahead and downvote)
Being born and raised in NJ I always thought I was just supposed to like this guy. The last few years have made me really think outside of the box… And by box I mean a $6 snack box that includes Old Wisconsin beef salami, Kettle Classics all natural potato chips, Peterson?s sea salt mixed nuts, Glacier Ridge Farms white cheddar-style cheese, Venus Stoned Wheat crackers, Kettle Valley all natural wild berry fruit twist, and Pepperidge Farm Nantucket dark chocolate chunk cookies.
Please tell me you had an actual gift basket of food to reference for this, because otherwise I will have to worship you as a god/goddess of fictional Hickory Farms mall kiosk products.
Not to break the 4th wall, but I just Googled “In Flight Snack Box”
If Oceanic followed these same guidelines, Hurley would never have gotten to the island.
You guys, I think it’s really brave of Kevin Smith to “confess” that he’s fat (“‘I know I’m fat,’ he confesses”). We would never have known it if he hadn’t said something, yet he was man enough to come out and admit it. He gets big ups from me for that!
Maybe Kevin Smith should be Chasing Amy’s Kitchen meals, a low-fat alternative to whatever the hell Kevin Smith shoves in his face.
Wow. Twitter once about your wife’s taint and the whole internetgum hates you. Note to self: keep the grundle on the downlow.
Grundle on the downlow is pretty much LESSON ONE in life, right? Skip playing ball and chew slowly–straight to keep quiet about the schwamp.
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Everyone needs to stop apologizing after their bad jokes… make them, be proud, and bare the potential fury of a downvote. Be strong monsters!
You’re like our own CopperCab.
Team Southwest.
this article and comment thread are making me feel shitty! if i wanted to do that, i would visit the rest of the internet. poor form, videogum.
I’m going to agree. It’s a pretty funny story, and who cares about Kevin Smith’s feelings (he is a super millionaire that needs no pity) but there is nothing more lazy and hack-y than fat jokes. A rare miss, monsters.
There are many things lazier and hackier than fat jokes, foremost among them being displays of righteous indignation directed at fat jokes.
Well I never!
If the rule was “All fat people must purchase two seats” and Smith had violated that rule, and then went on the tirade, then it would be appropriate to think he’s an asshole and make fun of his outrage.
But he followed the rule, except went on standby were he couldn’t get two seats together, and then was publicly shamed after he was seated despite being able to demonstrate that the rule probably shouldn’t even apply to him, and then actually ejected from the flight from being too fat (and sassy, probably). It happened to another lady on the flight, and as he correctly mentioned, she probably didn’t get an apology or a voucher because she doesn’t have fans or a Twitter account people read.
If the rule is that you should be able to put the armrests down, wear a seatbelt without an extender, and not have any fleshy bits infringing on your neighbor, and Kevin Smith could show that, then Southwest were just being assholes and he doesn’t deserve to be mocked. Or shamed, and Southwest, given how many stories there are like this, clearly has not figured out a tactful way to enforce this rule (which probably should have been the first thing they figured out when they decided to enforce it).
I mean, if Southwest ejected him because his wheelchair was taking up too much space or something, people would be outraged. But it’s funny if he’s fat, I guess. Ha ha, fattie fat guy ate too much food and didn’t get the recommended 30 minutes of exercise 5 days a week.
I dunno about that wheelchair comment. I think if the airline had rules against wheelchairs blocking the aisle people would be comfortable with the rule. I mean, I wouldn’t feel self-content knowing that a wheel chair was blocking the emergency aisle in the event of some emergency landing/crash situation.
People’s feelings only matter to a limited extent. I personally think we as a society care way too much about people’s feelings.
I figured someone might question the wheelchair bit because a disability and a slow metabolism are separate things, but I didn’t expect that the idea would be that Kevin Smith or another fat person is actually blocking everyone from being able to reach safety.
I’m pretty sure Kevin Smith is agile enough to escape in the event of an emergency and would not prevent other people from doing so. If this were a reasonable argument, then I think the rule would be no fat people on the plane at all. Nor would they allow the elderly, small children, people in casts, amputees, asthmatic people, people with heart conditions, or anyone without Olympic level fitness training who might block the way of a faster moving person.
But that probably won’t happen, so I say just go ahead and trample them in your rush to exit the plane.
For the record:
Kevin Smith:
Guy who legitimately is blocking the exit:
Excellent visual aids! I think the airplane DID use the ‘blocked emergency path’ explanation to defend their policy. To that end, I think the wheelchair situation would play out the same way. I’m pretty sure airlines make wheelchair-bound travelers store their wheelchairs during flight. I think I am basing that on the season premiere of LOST.
We all know how this is going to play out, right? Kevin Smith joining forces with a “fat advocacy” group to take over the title of World’s Worst Everything?
Now I’m in a bad mood because I’ve been reminded of the exsistence of fat advocacy groups.
I laughed so hard at this, and I have been ralphing all morning.
That explains how you’ve kept your girlish figure.
if anyone cares to/feels compelled to waste another hour of their lives on kevin smith, his smodcast about this ordeal is highly recommended: smodcast.com
things you didn’t know: kevin smith was not the only fatty called out by southwest that day. he witnessed one fatty larger than him on the same flight not get ejected, and another one on the other flight get told that they needed to by kevin smith’s extra seat because she was taking up space in his “fatty expansion area.”
yea, i listened to it all. SO? SO? SO? suck it, nerds. i’m no fatty sympathizer, but this is clearly out of hand on southwest’s part. they need to upgrade to bigger seats (more comfy for skinnys!), drop the policy or make it more clear before people get on the plane and get publicly humiliated:
You guys! I’m flying tomorrow! Good thing I’m only a little doughy; I’ll just have to settle for angry tweets about the assholes at customs:
“Customs can suk my Balz! How long was that wait? How many moronic ?’s are you going to ax me? Does this make your penis feel huge, Paul? Fuk U”
At first glance, I thought he must have been extra douche-y to the SW staff. At second glance, I thought “Maybe it’s just California.” At third glazzzzzzzzzzzzzzz….
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I thought in the other comment threads we had established that Monsters don’t appreciate “hey fat person = funny” jokes. But it’s cool to say terrible, hateful things about fat people, as long as those things aren’t jokes? I don’t get it, Monster pals. Fat doesn’t indicate stupid or lazy or morally bankrupt. Fat’s just fat.
Kevin Smith: doing his part to erode what little was left of America’s nonexistent sense of shame since 2010.
This guy shouldn’t be allowed to fly because of those shorts, amirite u guyz?
Also, he has gained weight since the Superbad premiere. (Bigger JNCOs)