One of several sponsored by Entertainment Weekly, this panel brings together four filmmakers who will be flogging their upcoming wares on other panels here this weekend: Judd Apatow (producer of Pineapple Express), Kevin Smith (Zach and Miri Make a Porno), Zach Snyder (The Watchmen) and Frank Miller (The Spirit).

According to the guide, it’ll be an evening devoted to “a free-wheeling conversation on the movie business, their upcoming projects, and what it means—to them—to be a geek.” But mostly, people are probably just anxious to get a seat for Kevin Smith’s annual stand-up comedy session, which begins in the same room immediately after, although if Frank Miller is yet aware of the drubbing The Spirit panel is getting online, things might get interesting…

Highlights:

–Judd Apatow is a) getting laid tonight, and b) has the studios by “a little bit of one ball.” But Kevin Smith, as his inspiration, can call him “bitch.”

–Kevin Smith admits to having gained weight since last year and laments that soon it will be so bad, “they’ll have to remove a wall of Comic-Con to get me out.” But he also insists he will be ready to die once he’s seen Watchmen, so that might not be an issue.

–Frank Miller is a cranky old man who doesn’t understand Google. But he’s pro web video!

–Zach Snyder gives details on the progress (or lack thereof) on a Watchmen video game, and explains why games based on movies are “not marketing, it can’t be an afterthought.”

Full transcript after the jump.

Questions from the floor

6:17 - That’s it. Someone walking out just said, “Kevin Smith is like the patron saint of Comic-Con.”

6:13 - Last question is from the host: “What did you guys think of Dr. Horrible’s Sing Along Blog?”
Smith: “I haven’t seen it, but I’m all for direct to online stuff. I think what Joss is doing is smart.”

Snyder: “Well, I like the bigscreen. I mean, the internet is cool, but I don’t like to watch a movie on my computer. I know it’s the future… but, I dunno…I like it when the lights go down and my brains get blown out.”

Miller: “I think any way you can get it out there, you should use. You find the way that fits you best and the censors haven’t discovered yet, and you cause as much trouble as you can.”

6:11 - “How do you feel about Judd and Seth moving in on your territory?”

Smith: “Oh, I’m a huge fan of what they’ve done so far. As far as their stuff being more popular than mine? That just makes my job easier. Now all I have to do is go in and say ‘We’re gonna do it like Apatow.’ and they’re all ‘Cha-ching!’”

This thing could have literally been the Smith Apatow Power Hour. Frank Miller and Zack Snyder are sorely neglected. Zack is laughing, but Miller looks bored and pissed.

6:10 - Someone’s asking if Kevin Smith would be behind a “reboot of Superman” and he’s railing about how bad the first Star Trek movie was, and hoping that the next Superman movie will be better than the first one, like Star Trek II was.

6:07 - “Will you be appearing in your own movies?”
Apatow: “Well, no… I hope you haven’t seen me on screen. I tried to be an actor, but I just couldn’t do it. I went for an audition for My Sister Sam, and apparently I wasn’t good enough to be on My Sister Sam. So I gave up acting.”

*someone yells something from the back of the room”

Smith: “I think that guy said ‘Suck my dick!’”

Smith: “I think I’m done with acting. I mean, I don’t know if you’ve noticed but I’ve been packing on the weight. I’m like 30 lbs. heavier than I was last year, and that was not a good starting point! At some point they’ll just roll me out here in some giant fucking wheelchair, and I’ll croak “Snootch to the Nooch!’ Then they’ll have to remove a wall of Comic-Con to get me out.”

6:06 - Frank is giving some long rambling diatribe about making comic books work. “It’s a matter of practicing your craft and seeing what works and what doesn’t.”

6:01 - “What was it like working on the 300 game, and are you guys doing a Watchmen game?”

Snyder: “Well, the 300 game that came out was a PSP game, and it wasn’t a huge, big game at all… it had no online play and no communities were formed… I don’t think. With Watchmen, they gave us a script for a game, and all apologies, but it was one of the worst things I’d seen, it didn’t have anything to do with the Watchmen, it was bad. For me… I play video games, and they are the “other hand’ in the entertainment industry, and right now they’re not talking to each other. A dialogue need to be established between filmmakers and game producers. It’s not marketing, it can’t be an afterthought.”

[For more on this, just turn to your friendly neighborhood SpoutBlog!]
5:59 - “Kevin Smith and Judd Apatow, you guys use a lot of each other’s actors…. are you guys planning on working together?”

Apatow: “As long as I get Ben Affleck at some point.”
Smith: “Brother, at this point you can just have him.”

Ouch to the Affleck.

5:57 - “Is the pirate story in Watchmen being animated and coming to the DVD?”

Snyder: “Yeah, the idea is that we’re doing an animated version. Gerry Butler recorded the voice of the sea captain, and he did a great job. We’re releasing that as a separate DVD, then we’ll be putting out an Ultimate Watchmen DVD, which will weave The Tales of the Black Freighter into the movie.”

5:55 - “Who inspired you?”

Smith: “Jim Jarmusch, Spike Lee, Richard Linklater…”
Apatow: “Well, Kevin Smith laid down the track for me.”
Smith: “Yes, bitch, yes! Say that shit in print!”

Apatow: “Also Hal Ashby, and Cameron Crowe…”
Smith: “Fuck those guys!”
Snyder: “I did my Star Wars thing so I’m good.”

Miller sort of shrugs and says “It would be a really long list, things like Gunsmoke and Astro Boy and Citizen Kane. I’m not even going to try and start that list.”

5:54 - “Will we ever see a Judd Apatow sci-fi flick or a Zack Snyder feel good family comedy?”

Snyder: “Yeah, I’m working on a family movie right now… so, okay no. I’m kidding. I have a hard time with PG.”

Apatow: “I don’t know how to move the camera… that seems to be my issue. I remember when I saw Dawn of the Dead, and about 5 minutes in I turned to Adam McKay and said “Did I just stumble into the coolest fucking movie ever?” which is always followed up with “I am not capable of doing anything like this, ever.” So no, you won’t see a movie with fairies or goblins in it from me.”

Then question man shouts out “PILLOW PANTS FOR LIFE!” and runs off.

5:52 - “Do you have a lot of improvisation in Zack & Miri?”

Smith: Smith: “We’ve had some ad-libbing in the movies since Dogma… but I think, and Apatow will back me up on this, Seth Rogen is one of the best improv guys around.”

Apatow: “Yeah, I’m just glad people think I wrote everything he says. Oh, and plus I think that guy has an erection.” (The question asker, not Seth Rogen)

5:49 - Now comes the questions from the floor. First up, Apatow says “Hey, I love that t-shirt!”… the kid is wearing an identical Ghostbusters shirt. Apatow: “I guess we both spilled coke on our shirts earlier.”

“So does the popularity of geek movies allow you to have more creativity? Or do the studios still have you by the balls?”

Snyder: “By the balls.”

Apatow: “I think I might have their balls. Maybe I have a little bit of one ball. I have one ball.”

Smith: “I got no balls to grab. So they got me.”

Questions from EW readers, from the EW host, courtesy of EW online.

5:46 - Smith: “We work in an industry where originality is not praised. It’s like ‘What worked last time? Yeah, do that shit again! Only for more money!’ I think geek culture is definitely here to stay. You can thank Quentin Tarantino for that.”

Marc: Have you all ever had any geeky fanboy moments of your own?

Smith: “Well, just backstage I met Zack Snyder for the first time, and he came up and hugged me. I hugged him back, but then he pushed back a little bit. It’s like, ‘Hey, it’s not that big a fraternity, fat boy.’”

Apatow, “Fanboy? Well, I once saw the star of Baa, Baa, Black Sheep, Robert Conrad, and I followed him around on a bike for five miles. Does that count?”

Snyder, “Well, I was shooting a commercial with Harrison Ford once, and I thought we were like buddies. So, I told him I had a Han Solo frozen in carbonite in my house, like full-sized. He said, ‘Yeah, you probably shouldn’t have told me that.’”

Miller: “I was on the set of Sin City, and the first time I saw Jessica Alba dance on stage, swinging the whip around, I burst into tears because I realized my dream had come true.”

5:37 - “What does Rogen taste like?”

Apatow: “I think you should ask Rogen what Apatow tastes like.”

Smith: “It’s funny, I tasted both Rogen and Apatow at the same time, and I was like ‘Hmm, that tastes semitic!’”
“Was The Dark Knight good for comic book movies?”
Snyder: “Was it? Well… I mean there’s no money left in the economy now. All the Warner Bros. people have it.”

“How much importance do you give to negative fan’s reactions online?”

Smith: “I live and die by it. I have no sense of my life, so I go online and read stuff all the time. Then I look in the mirror and I’m like ‘Shit, it’s not getting any better’ then someone online is like ‘You’re great’ and I’m like… I am? Yay!”

Apatow: “I’d just like to say… my wife is fuckin’ hot.”

Smith: “Dude, you’re so gettin’ laid tonight. You might have earned yourself a hummer on the way back.”

Apatow: “Do you check Google Alerts on your own name?”

Smith: “All the time, I have ‘em sent directly to me. Do you guys know about this? You can set up a Google Alert for your name so they’ll send you an update when you get mentioned. As a result I know a lot about the Kevin Smith who works in the Sioux City parks department. That guy is in the news a lot. Every now and then I get a news alert that says “Clerks guy still sucks,” so then I go back to reading about the other guy.

Snyder: “Yeah, apparently there’s a Zack Snyder who plays baseball…. baby where is that guy? Sorry, my wife is in the audience, she gets my Google Alerts. I think he’s in Wisconsin.”

Frank Miller: “What is this about?” *laughter*

Miller: “Oh, the internet? I just do things the way I want to do them.” He’s like the curmudgeonly neighbor. “GET OFF MY LAWN! GRR!”

The inane philosophical questions, the non-sequitor banter they inspire.

5:36 - Smith: “You know, part of why they made the San Diego Comic-Con was so someone would make the Watchmen movie. I swear to god, after I see that movie, I can fuckin’ die. Snyder, if you don’t have the footage, can you just act it out?”

Snyder: “Yeah, let me go backstage and I’ll just paint myself blue. Then these cups can be the Vietnamese soldiers…”

Smith: “Ooh, can I be Silk Spectre and you’re Dr. Manhattan?”
Snyder: “Okay, that’s just not cool.”

5:34 - Marc wants to know if Kevin Smith and Judd Apatow rely on audience testing and tracking. Apatow comes back with “Well no.. I’m usually tracking like, how much penis we can show in a movie. For Sarah Marshall” — people applaud — “Yes, thank you for applauding Jason Seigel’s penis.”
Kevin Smith: “Well, I tend to go with my gut. But my gut is prodigious, so that’s good.”

Apatow: “Well, I remember someone called me “a fart in the face of American culture” online, and that bothered me. But, then I looked at the username, and it was ‘DannyGlover’sDickBlood.’”

Kevin Smith: “It took me a long time to come up with that username.”

5:30 - Marc wants to know why some comic book movies go so wrong (”Ghost Rider,” he whispers)

Snyder “Well, the jury is still out on if that is going to be cool or not… but once we got Nixon back in the film, I started to feel better.”

Miller says, “Well, there’s a scene in The Spirit where he’s climbing up a big mountain, and he stumbles a little bit. When I saw that I was like, ‘We got it.’”

Frank is saying “I have a miserable life… I mean, I wake up and I’m like ‘I gotta do this stuff?’”

He’s now trying to be funny by saying “You know, I grew up as a comic book nut.” *Crickets* “I grew up reading Superboy!” *laughter*.

It’s a bit weird hearing him talk about work as a “veteran filmmaker” because he’s made half of one film, and The Spirit doesn’t look to be a great follow-up to that.

5:27 - They’re all answering the question “Why do you do what you do?”

Apatow tells us about the first time he had sex, he turned to the girl and said “Was it good for you? And she said ‘Well, it’ll get better.’ and then I knew.”
Snyder says “What’s the question? Why did I want to do this kind of material? What?” He genuinely looks lost.
“I’ll just come right out and say it. This little movie called Star Wars. It seemed super cool…. and I… that’s it.”

Kevin Smith: “It’s a good thing your visuals are so cool.”

Smith follows that up with “Wait, how many of you people were here for Watchmen this morning? Doesn’t it look superfuckin’ cool?”

The crowd is clamoring for Zack to show the footage again…as if he carries it around in a little bag.

The Intros

5:26 - And last, Kevin Smith… the crowd goes nuts for him. Marc introduces him as “Kevin Motherfuckin’ Smith” and boy, he’s gained a lot of weight. Holy moses.

Kevin says, “On the back of these namecards it says ‘Please be aware that many members of your audience may be under the age of 18.’ I’ll try to abide by it, but my vocabulary isn’t that large. I just wanna get my cock sucked, sir.”

5:25 - First out, Frank Miller. I wonder if he’s started to hear the bad buzz yet. Next, Zack Snyder, who is “filming the unfilmable.” Judd Apatow, the Tom Clancy of comedy is next, wearing a Ghostbusters t-shirt.

The Pre-show

5:24 - Marc Bernardin, a senior editor from EW is here to introduce everyone. He’s talking about how cool “Geek” is. “From comic books to action figures to tv to film to slave Leais, geek is cool.” Isn’t this like preaching to the choir?

5:23 - The house music continues, and there are giant ads for EW on the screens. Everyone nearby is cramming junk food into their mouths and checking out all of the schwag they’ve acquired over the past two days. The most popular item today: giganimous cloths Watchmen bags given out by Warner Bros.

5:20 - This panel will include Kevin Smith, Judd Apatow, Frank Miller and Zack Snyder. Sort of an odd combo.

5:19 - If you want to re-live the glory days of last year’s “Evening with Kevin Smith,” you can listen to the entire audio of the panel here.

5:17 - Here we are, waiting on the Entertainment Weekly: Visionaries panel. It’s anther packed house, and they’re pumping in some house music. Probably EW’s “Pick of the Week!”

Literally everyone in line that I spoke to said they were coming to to see Kevin Smith. Smith is on this panel, then his regular Friday night panel, which is from 6:30 until 8. That’s two and half hours of Kevin Smith, folks.