He lost touch

I'm still waiting for his Fletch film.

Once he did Jay and Silent Bob, I was done. Clerks 2 was his best movie since... tusk is a close second.

Beyond his obvious Peter Pan Complex, I think part of his problem is that he never understood why Clerks was popular. It seems he thought it was popular due to the dick and fart jokes but it wasn’t (at least not completely). It was popular for the slice of life aspects of the movie. He never went back to that.

I’ll always have a soft spot for Smith because he made Chasing Amy amongst several other early classics, plus he’s one of the most gifted orators I’ve ever listened to - his hypnotic power to make the most trivial and crude stories utterly engaging is matched by few.

It’s interesting to compare him to Richard Linklater, who is also Gen X but he’s a true artist. The key difference between them is that while Linklater’s reading a book, Smith is eating his wife’s ass.

I’ll always fly the flag for Smith but one does suspect he’s running on fumes. Perhaps his recent brush with death via a heart attack will inspire some more meaningful work.

'Chasing Amy' wasn't about his experience dating a lesbian. He never dated a lesbian. It was about his experience dating a straight woman who was way more sexually experienced and traveled/cultured than he was, and he felt inadequate and insecure in that relationship, so he lashed out at her and ruined it.

You're right though, in your general point about him. He had a very unique voice when he first made his mark, and made movies about his personal life experiences. 'Clerks', 'Chasing Amy', 'Dogma' and 'Clerks 2' are his only real films, as far as I'm concerned. Those were the only ones that felt like they were personal to him, and like he actually had something to say.