Director Kevin Smith made headlines last year for allegedly being “too fat to fly,” but he maintains that he was bumped from the flight because it was overbooked and that he was an easy target because he was a very large guy. His weight wasn’t at a level where he would require two seats because he didn’t need a seatbelt extender and the airline has admitted as much. Smith revisited that whole controversy in an appearance on The Joy Behar show last night. He was visibly thinner and said he’s lost 65 pounds but admitted that he’s still wearing the tent-like hockey jersey he always does. (This occurred to me before he even said anything about it because the last time I covered a story on him I noticed that the photo agencies had pictures of him wearing that same shirt on several different occasions.) Smith was kind of apologetic about his weight loss and said that he still self-identified as a heavy person and wasn’t about to change his wardrobe at this point. The dude talked so fast that Joy asked him if he was on amphetamines. He might have just been nervous and hopped up on caffeine.

The not-so-friendly skies seems to have led to a much healthier Kevin Smith.

In the wake of getting bounced from a Southwest Airlines flight last year for being, to use his term, “a fatty,” the Clerks director thought it might be high time to lose somes LBs.

Sure enough, during a hepped-up appearance on CNN’s Joy Behar Show on Tuesday night, Smith revealed that he has in fact dropped quite a few pounds. If not his wardrobe.

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“I’ve spent most of my life yo-yoing in terms of weight, so it’s always been easier to wear a hockey jersey because, like, I’ve lost 65 pounds, but I’m still wearing the same jersey I wore before I lost the 65, but you wouldn’t know because it’s all air,” said Smith.

But the filmmaker, who was on to promote his upcoming movie Red State, admits he was a bit hesitant when it came to slimming down.

“I sympathize far more with heavier people than I ever will with thin,” he pointed out. “I’ll never be thin. Let’s be honest. I’ve lost 65 pounds, but nobody’s going ‘I wanna sleep with you!’ They’re just like ‘Keep going, you look better.'”

Smith proceeds to recount the whole Too Fat to Fly controversy in the typical rapid-fire fashion he often incorporates in his Q&A stage shows, which led Behar to jokingly ask: “Are you on amphetamines?”

“No,” Smith answered with a laugh. “I know I’ve got eight minutes…and I believe if you’re going to put me on television, I better be as entertaining as heck and I got to get as much information in as possible.”

[From E! Online]

You could tell that it bothered Smith that people called him “fat” when they reported that story, and he explained that it did hurt his feelings but that the news outlets justified it because he had called himself fat on Twitter.

The part where Behar asked Smith if he was on amphetamines was much funnier than E! explained it. Smith was actually suffering from verbal diarrhea and was about to stick his foot in his mouth. He said that he was always fat and didn’t get a lot of play in high school and college, except from “ladies like yourself who are like ‘you’re handsome,’ because you’ve been around the world and you know sometimes a fat dude has a lot to offer ‘if I can just get past the blubber.'” Joy had just called him handsome, but the way he explained it made it sound like she wasn’t that discriminating.

Smith is pretty damn funny and self deprecating, but it’s clear he’s got some issues around his weight still. I wish him the best and congratulations to him for losing the weight! If I were his wife I would burn that damn hockey jersey though, or just conveniently ruin it in the laundry.

Here’s Smith in that Puck U hockey jersey in June, August, September and November of last year in that order. I’m serious. His daughter is cute! Credit: WENN.com and Fame.