Kevin Smith’s Profound Thoughts On His Heart Attack

Earlier this week, Kevin Smith suffered a heart attack and was rushed to the hospital. Thankfully, following surgery, Smith made a recovery and has been discharged from the hospital. The director-writer has been opening up about the experience (he first shared the news with his fans via social media from the hospital), and he recently revealed his thoughts regarding his near-death experience. As thoughts of this nature can only be, they are profound and the filmmaker said that he’s lived a remarkable life, and if it was his time to go then he had no complaints.

I don’t want to say I feel like a dead man walking, but I do feel like I’m not supposed to be here anymore, and it doesn’t make me want to leave, but it makes me appreciate how … like, all right, let’s do everything. I was supposed to be dead in that room, no doubt.

On Monday, Kevin Smith tweeted that he had suffered a “massive” heart attack and that the doctors had told him he had “100% blockage of my LAD artery.” It could have been fatal, but Smith said his doctors had other plans and saved his life. The Clerks director now feels like he’s on “borrowed time,” and that he was “supposed to be dead in that room.” Obviously, he’s thankful that he didn’t go, and he’s making some lifestyle changes, such as becoming a vegetarian.

Digging deeper into the subject and his thoughts. Kevin Smith told The Hollywood Reporter that had his heart attack been fatal, he would have been ready to die. It’s a scary thought, but Smith felt that he had lived a great life full of “ups and downs” with a profession that most people struggle their whole lives to break into.

I felt like, ‘Oh, this is my time to leave the party,’ and I’d done enough, dude. I only ever wanted to make Clerks; 25 years later, I did more sh-t than I ever imagined. I’ve gone on so many fucking adventures, and heights and falls, plummets, up and down, everything, and I just felt like, ‘Well, the rest of your life, if you live, it’s just going to kinda be more of the same, and you’ve done this and be happy that you got to do it at all. You got to do some shit people fucking dream [about] or will kill themselves to try to f-cking accomplish or get in their own lives, and it came to you all so easy. So if this is the price you have to pay for all that ease, checking out before age 50, that’s — how can you argue with that? Don’t be shitty. Pay the bill. It’s time.

Kevin Smith has always been upfront and candid about his film career and life, and it seems his near-death experience has only made him even more honest about his filmography. The filmmaker recognizes how lucky he is to be doing what he always wanted to do and while his work may not always be well received, he has no complaints. Smith has a few projects in the works such as and a Jay and Silent Bob reboot — not to mention his podcasts — but it’s unknown when he’ll be well enough to get back to work.