Because I expected an unpredictable experience, I intentionally selected a Beer a couldn't imagine drinking, so I picked a saison from Dogfish Head, one brewed with lavender, marjoram and bay leaves yet packing an 8.3% wallop. The combination of beer and movie, I figured, should create a surreal experience. It did, but back to the movie.

Tusk is the story of a shock jock podcaster named Wallace (played by Justin Long), a failed standup comic who has since made his fame in a raunchy, exploitative and mean-spirited podcast called The Not-See Party.  His companion in podcasting is friend Teddy (Haley Joel Osment). After podcasting about an unwilling YouTube sensation nicknamed the "Kill Bill" Kid, Wallace sets out to Canada to interview (read: exploit) him, but things don't work out and Wallace finds himself instead heading to a remote estate to interview eccentric traveler Howard Howe (played by Michael Parks - he was Jean Renault the drug runner in Twin Peaks). Upon arrival, things get weird, and then weirder. And it all involves walruses.

So what was so profound? First off, Fear with Beer is planning the release of a podcast, to debut sometime in October (I didn't know Tusk was about podcasters when I began). Second, I've toyed with personas, and came close to jettisoning my usual tone to artificially adopt a harsher one, and this movie, odd as it sounds, helped me refocus and readjust my perspective. Most of all though, it was how this movie ever came to be that inspired me.

In the extras on the DVD, Kevin Smith discussed how the movie came out of  SModcast #259, a podcast Smith hosted with Scott Mosier. The movie grew organically out of goofing around on the podcast, with listeners getting to hear the moment of movie conception, so to speak. While this probably wasn't a movie that logically should have been made or funded, it was true Kevin Smith, and brought him back into the movie-making world he had left. This was a sincere, true weirdo movie that only he could have made. Love it or hate it, it was unapologetically Smith, and in the extras he expressed how proud he was to again do something completely honest to his vision. Smith frankly discussed his journey that led him down lucrative paths that began to feel wrong for him. Throughout he expressed his gratitude for his opportunities, but explained how eventually he decided he didn't want to be something he wasn't and stepped away from the movie business ... until Tusk.