Getting kicked off an airplane for being too fat turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to Kevin Smith. At first, of course, he was humiliated. "It felt like they stripped me of all my accomplishments by reducing me to 'fat guy in a little chair on a plane,'" says the indie-film director and comedian, known for such mid-'90s slacker classics as Clerks and Chasing Amy. He figured he had two options: "Crumble, wither, die, and go away. Or fucking rise, man. Rise above it." And rise he has. Ever since Smith was famously ejected from a Southwest Airlines flight in February 2010, he has taken back the power he lost that day and used it as fuel for an extraordinary career reinvention. "That moment was a kind of leap-off moment," he says. "That was where things really started to drastically change."
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