Student pilot emergency lands on CA highway, then tries to hide drugs, feds say
A student pilot whose plane made an emergency landing on a highway in California, leading to the discovery of a package of cocaine, is heading to prison, prosecutors said.
Troy Othneil Smith, 36, from Oceanside, was sentenced to 2.5 years behind bars after pleading guilty to two counts of possession of cocaine with intent to distribute, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of California said in a May 21 news release.
One count was connected to the emergency landing incident and the other stemmed from a separate 2023 incident in which Smith sent cocaine through the mail, prosecutors said.
Smith's attorney, Ashby C. Sorensen, declined to comment in a May 22 email to McClatchy News.
Smith was flying from Arizona to California on Sept. 26, 2024, when the plane was forced to land, according to prosecutors.
The single-engine Piper PA-28 touched down a little before 2 a.m. on State Route 76 in Oceanside, McClatchy News previously reported.
Smith had a brick of cocaine in his backpack and tried to hide it from responding officers in the brush, prosecutors said in a sentencing memo.
Prosecutors added that evidence later showed Smith 'had his sights set next on piloting his own plane for drug distribution cross country.'
The flight instructor during the 2024 emergency landing 'was not knowingly involved in transporting drugs,' The San Diego Union-Tribune reported, citing prosecutors.
Sorensen wrote in a sentencing memo that Smith – a disabled Marine Corps veteran with three children – is remorseful and takes responsibility for his actions.
'Financial pressures and unresolved emotional trauma' were factors, the court filing said.
Oceanside is about a 85-mile drive southeast from downtown Los Angeles.
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In addition to discussing the necessary change to Dogma's credit block (now, minus Weinstein) he made for its resurrection, Smith recalled the momentary combination of critical and commercial muscle that led to it getting made, the influences (liturgical and cinematic) that inspired him during production, and its impact and legacy on his work and career. (For good measure, he also addressed Kanye West sampling Smith's dialogue for the 2024 song 'Back to Me,' and waxed philosophical about exhibition now that he owns a movie theater of his own in Jersey. Gold Derby: As heretical as George Lucas' Special Edition cuts may have been, when you were able to reclaim ownership of , did you think at all about any changes or new edits you might like to make? Kevin Smith: There was a question of, do we include cut footage? There's a sequence where Silent Bob sang the theme to Fat Albert, and there was another sequence about Azrael, the Jason Lee character. But ultimately, we defaulted on the side of "let's show them the movie they remember." When we go to home video and we do a steelbook and stuff, that's when we can absolutely integrate the scenes again — if folks want that. I'm personally always of the mind that, whatever went out, that was the director's cut, and I didn't want people to be sitting in the theater going, "I don't remember this." Quentin Tarantino called your previous film, , a great leap forward for you as a director. Did that reaction embolden you as you started making this film? Dogma was always more ambitious than the talent behind the film, i.e., myself. I started writing it before Clerks, and it was called God — very ambitious. It was the movie that I always knew we were going to have to do a bunch of stuff before this ever happens. You needed some money to tell that story. I remember when I shared it with Affleck, he came down here to Red Bank to hang out and then he was like, "Can you drive me home to Boston?" I was like, "No, you can take a train." He goes, "But I don't have nothing to do on the train." And I was like, "You got 60 pages of that Chasing Amy script you could read — that I wrote for you." And he's like, "Yeah, but that ain't gonna last me to Connecticut. What else you got?" So I said, "Well, I got this old script called Dogma that I wrote and it's 250 pages." When he got home, he called me up. I was like, "How was Chasing Amy?" He goes, "Guy falls in love with a lesbian? Great. But this Dogma movie, man, that's pimp. Can I be Bartleby? And I said, "The only way that movie gets made is if we cast a major movie star. There's no way they let you play Bartleby." So we went and made Chasing Amy and then we also co-executive produced Good Will Hunting, me and Scott Mosier, and that worked out like crazy. And since Ben and Matt wanted to do Dogma next, that was the only time I had enough juice and influence and cast to pull the trigger on that movie and have somebody finance it. And I'll never forget the first day we were shooting with Ben — right before we roll, he looks over at me and goes, "I guess I'm a major movie star now." It sounds like producing opened a lot of the doors that didn't. It was always going to be an uphill battle getting it made — never mind the content — just in terms of it was beyond my directorial abilities. We were supposed to do it for $4 million, but because Good Will Hunting had done so well, we were able to talk Miramax into upping it to $10 million. So, by that point, even though people like Quentin said nice things about Chasing Amy, having been to both sides of the spectrum, I never even believed the good stuff on Clerks. Thank God, otherwise, I would have been suicidal after the bad stuff on Mallrats. So, it was just me going, "We've got to go for it now, whether I'm ready for it or not." You had made your debut at a similar time as Quentin and other indie upstarts. Were you comparing notes at all? I'll be honest with you: a month before we made the movie, I called up Robert Rodriguez and I was like, "Would you direct Dogma for me?" I was like, "I'm not good enough to make this movie." And Robert's big advice was like, "Kevin, you got this. Just don't stand people against a wall this time." And thank God we had Robert Yeoman, you could do worse for a world-class DP, for heaven's sakes. Even a year later, I don't think I would've had the juice to do it. Thanks to the success of Dogma, then I had juice — and I chose Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back. I don't know if that's a waste of my chits, but I stand by them. You've got to understand, I had no plan. Somebody on the road during the Q&As was like, "What's your endgame?" And I was like, "Honestly, I just wanted to make Clerks.' I wish somebody had told me, this is the beginning of a 31-year journey. I would have been more prepared! But I've just been making it up as I go along, and in retrospect, that was the moment that put a lot of wind in my sails for the next 10 years. Because after Dogma, I started making movies that everyone hated. Not everyone but critics were just not in my corner as much. It was back to the Mallrats days. Rewatching , it occurred to me how much the beginning feels like where Bartleby and Loki are just going around killing people. Were there films, in either structure or substance, that inspired you as you were writing it? Oddly enough, there are movies that I'll point to and it'd be like, "That's a model for Dogma?" But they were the movies that made it possible. Number one and probably the biggest influence is a movie called Foul Play, with Chevy Chase and Goldie Hawn. The whole third act of Dogma is predicated on their third act, and that movie also deals with religion in a controversial way — which I didn't think we were doing. I didn't think we were making a controversial movie! It turned out to be, but I thought it was a pretty reverent flick. But going into it, Pulp Fiction was a massive model because we had just seen it in Cannes. In fact, that's when it went from God to Dogma, after I saw Pulp Fiction and I was like, "You can switch tones on a dime like that." I remember being like, "I can't wait to go home and redraft Dogma." So it went from being God to Dogma, it became more violent and also [had more] tonal shifts. So, it owes a lot to Pulp Fiction — the bravado, the bravery of what Quentin did with his storytelling in that movie. I'm trying to think what other movies ... A Man for All Seasons, the Fred Zimmerman movie. Honestly, I never knew this but Linda Fiorentino pointed it out when we were making the movie, she was like, "Kevin, structurally, it's absolutely The Wizard of Oz." And I'm not an Oz kid and I have nothing but appreciation for it, but it was undeniable when she said it, whether I knew it or not. Iconic Events The film offers a sort of 'legalese' version of scripture and religious beliefs. Roger Ebert had said, 'You don't need a catechism to see the movie, but it really helps.' It's crazy, this is a movie that unveiled a lot of Catholic school kids across my life. Roger Ebert was definitely one. Years later when I was on The Colbert Show, [Stephen] Colbert came in and started quoting the movie and knew it fairly well. But the weirdest person that ever reached out to me was a guy who was like, "I know your buddy Affleck and he gave me your email address and I saw your movie Dogma because of him. I thought it was absolutely wonderful, but I need to know what Jesuits you studied under because, clearly, this is the work of Jesuit teaching. Please get back in touch with me. Signed, Tom Clancy." How much of that approach was born of your own growing skepticism about religion? Interestingly enough, I've been watching it every night because I'm on tour with the movie, and what I love about the movie is it plays like a prayer, like a child's prayer — or a stoner child's prayer, to say the least. And I tell the kids every night, "This was the young me's version of expressing his faith." I'd sat in church my whole life and nobody seemed to celebrate their faith, they all seemed to be mourning it. This is my idea of what church could be: church with butt-f--king jokes in it. So, when I watch it, I see what the kid who made it, who wrote it and directed it was after, this was his prayer. And I remember making the movie and [George] Carlin, we're the third act and it's outside the church when all hell's about to break loose. So, right before we go, Carlin, a good old lapsed Catholic himself was like, "Hey, man, what is the plot here?" And I'm explaining the whole thing to him and he's looking at me the way an adult looks at a kid when a kid overexplains Star Wars. And finally he goes, "You really believe in all this shit, don't you?" And I was like, "Yeah, I was raised Catholic. You were raised Catholic, you don't?" And he goes, "No, I'm smarter than that." And so, that was the beginning of the end. I'm certainly not laying my lack of faith at Carlin's feet but, when the smartest person you ever met starts asking you questions like that, it was tough to hold up in the face of that scrutiny. You mentioned the inspiration of Tarantino and the bravado of . But so much of the violence takes place off camera. Not enough talent to pull off good violence. John Woo, once you see a John Woo scene, once you see even a Robert Rodriguez action scene, I'm like, "I can't do that." So, most of the movie, all the violence happens off camera because, well, I can't make it look cool. But it is a movie that purports to contain dialogue but, really, it's just a bunch of characters monologuing at one another, constantly expository. Everyone is explaining this movie to everyone else in the movie. As I watch it every night, I'm like, "My God, they're talking a lot," and that's because somebody always has to be explaining what's going on. I think, if I were to do it now, I wouldn't feel the need to overexplain things, particularly because we live in the age of information. But we were in a pre-internet age. I was like, "I'm really going to have to explain all this Catholicism stuff for people that don't know about it." But the audience largely wound up being people who are like, "Been there." You mentioned Robert Rodriguez's advice going into this. How have you felt your own visual style has evolved, and was this film an important exercise in that trajectory for you? Yeah. The camera moved more than it ever had previously in a Kevin Smith movie and so, because of that, today I can recognize like, "Oh, that's when I started taking seriously the craft of filmmaking." Prior to that, I was very Hal Hartley influenced, Jim Jarmusch — one shot, mise-en-scène, let's let all the acting happen in front of the camera to show off how good the actors are. And then you grow up and you realize, "It's more cinematic if I cut to somebody else and then cut back." Clerks or Mallrats, even Chasing Amy, they're more hangout movies. But Dogma is, from the jump, we're all rushing to get to a place and there there's going to be a third act and stuff. So, based on that alone, it also changed my storytelling. And even somebody who's the world's biggest Kevin Smith critic — and that would be me — can see I grew as a filmmaker. It's not like between that movie and now, I have become Chris Nolan. But I certainly started paying more attention and treating it more seriously. Once again, I wasn't prepared for the ride to go on that long so didn't know I'd have to learn my lenses or anything like that. Iconic Events You have a murderer's row cast in this, including Damon, Affleck, Carlin, Linda Fiorentino, Salma Hayek, Jason Lee, Alan Rickman, and Chris Rock. At the time or in retrospect, who was the linchpin you knew the rest of the movie could congeal around? Rickman was a huge get for us — and we didn't reach out for Alan. I never would have been so presumptuous as to think that Rickman would ever work with me. But I got a call from John Gordon who worked at Miramax and he goes, "You'll never believe who came in today: Alan Rickman." I said, "Hans f--king Gruber was in the building, man? Did he blow it up and shit?" And he goes, "No, we were trying to talk him into being in this new Merchant Ivory movie, but all he wanted to do was talk about whoever made Chasing Amy." And I was like, "Bro, he would be amazing as the voice of God. Could you imagine, Alan Rickman?" And so, we sent it to him, fastest yes I ever got from an actor outside of Jason Mewes. And when we had that guy, we were like, "What else is possible?" So, emboldened, I reached out for George Carlin. It sounds like he didn't sign on as quickly. We called his manager Jerry, I said, "Hey, man, I'm Kevin Smith. This is Scott Mosier. We made Chasing Amy." He goes, "I don't know what that is." I said, "We co-executive produced a movie called Good Will Hunting. We're making the new Ben and Matt movie, man, and we want George to be in it." And he goes, "You want George to be a comedian in a Ben and Matt movie?" I said, "No, we want him to be an actor, he would be playing a Catholic cardinal." He goes, "F--k, George will love that sh-t." So, I was supposed to meet George that night on Late Night with Conan O'Brien, we were both going to be on the show. So, Jerry was like, "Bring the script. I'll introduce you." But between the time I hung up and the night we were going to do the gig, [George's] wife passed away. So I told Jerry, "Here's the script. Give it to him when you can, no rush whatsoever. Please pass on my condolences." And the next day Jerry called up and he was like, "Can you meet with him Friday at the Four Seasons for lunch at noon?" I was like, "God, yes." And when he came in, I said, "I'm a massive fan." He goes, "I can tell, because I read your script." I was like, "What'd you think?" and he goes, "I kind of feel responsible for it." I was like, "Well, yes, you're a very big influence." He goes, "Influence? Kevin, there are some scenes I think I deserve co-screenwriting credit." Iconic Events However serious Carlin may have been, was it smooth sailing from there? I was like, "If you come do the movie with us, I'd be happy to talk about [screenwriting credit]." And he goes, "Well, we got a bit of a problem. … I'd love to do a movie that fucks with the church, but, as you know, my wife passed away recently." I was like, "I know, I'm so sorry." He goes, "Me too. She was a cool lady, I'm going to miss her. For that reason, I'm not ready to take off my wedding band. And I know I'd be playing a Catholic cardinal so I can't be wearing a wedding band in your movie. So we're at an impasse." He's going, "Then I thought, if I put a band-aid around my wedding band, then I could be in the movie. What do you think?" I was like, "This is the most beautiful shit I ever heard. You could wear as many band-aids as you want." And he came in and joined us, man, and gave us a killer performance. He was such a method actor, it was crazy, he treated it so seriously. When I mentioned I was doing this interview, my wife immediately said, "The greatest choice that he ever made was casting Alanis Morissette as God." Originally, it was going to be Emma Thompson. When we first got Alan Rickman, he goes, "Oh, my friend would have a blast doing this. Can I ask her?" I said, "Who's your friend?" He goes, "Emma Thompson." I was like, "Oh, my God, yes. Do you have other friends? Bring them all." So, for a red-hot minute, Emma Thompson was our God, so much so that there's a ShoWest Reel that has a cast list before we shot a single frame of film made up of footage from other movies and stuff — and at the end it says '…and Emma Thompson as God.' Emma Thompson eventually pulled out, and then I had reached out to Alanis because Alanis, early on, after I made Chasing Amy, I had asked her if she wanted to be in the movie and she went off to India. When she came back, she called me up and said, "I'm back from India. I'm writing an album, and I remember you asking me to be in your movie. So if there's anything left in the movie, I would love to come play with you." And I said, "Well, there's one small but crucial role that's left wide open: You play God." And she goes, "Why?" And I was like, "I always believed that God would be Canadian." So, she was absolute bliss, man. There's a photo I have of me and Alanis Morissette standing in front of Jay and Silent Bob's Secret Stash, I'm smoking a cigarette, and it's the most '90s photo I have. Iconic Events The characters all can't seem to agree on how to describe God as male or female. How strategic was that? Well, we always knew that God was going to be a female. If God starts the movie in the form of a male [played by Bud Cort], having the characters play fast and loose with the pronouns was by design because we knew, eventually, we were going to introduce God and it is going to be a woman. And it's so weird because people come out after me on what used to be Twitter, calling me woke and stuff. It's like, "Have you seen Dogma, made in 1999, or Chasing Amy made in '97?" A movie with God as a woman and talking about Jesus being Black could easily be accused of being woke. We made it in '98, but I started writing it in '92. Can you be woke in 1992? I don't know. What epiphanies about faith happened to you as a result of making the film? Or as a result of its endurance as one of your most beloved films? The endurance is the thing that is surprising and wonderful. I thought this movie was so inside baseball — and then you realize a lot of us play baseball, so it can be inside. Just like when I made Clerks, I couldn't understand for years, "I get that it's funny, but why are people liking it?" And it took me decades and I realized everybody has had a shitty job that they hate, so, that movie, you can identify with even if you've never lived a New Jersey life. And it's the same with Dogma. There's a universality to those of us who are members of the Catholic Church and, beyond that, even members of any faith whatsoever. And as my career has gone on, it's diminishing returns, according to some, so it's nice that Dogma is still beloved so much so that we could take it out and tour it. It is a beautiful little victory lap I wouldn't count on by any stretch of the imagination, but it's not one I deserve. The other Kevin Smith, the one who believed in all this, he's the one who should be taking this victory lap. But since he's not here, I get to take it for him. In your language and in your self-portraiture, there's so much self-deprecation. But you have had a successful career. Has it been tough to find a healthy balance in being able to go, "Well, not everybody likes everything I did, but I'm content with what I've accomplished over my 31-year career?" Yeah, absolutely. You get a lot of perspective along the journey and 31 years in, I've met so many people who tell me what my dippy movies mean to them. So, you realize that, as much as you diminish it, honestly how I feel is I got myself in on one of the greatest scams in human history, which is I get to stay an eternal adolescent and make pretend and that's my job. My father, if he was still alive, would be like, "Oh, my God, you beat the system." So, there's an element to it that keeps one absolutely young but, once you start this, you dance as fast as you can because, for the rest of your life, you will chase relevancy. I'm not a drug person, I used to smoke a lot of weed back in the day, but, in terms of things that can make one high in this life, having total strangers be like, "I'm invested in your life and your work and your opinion," well, you don't want to let it go. So, I understand that what I do has value. I diminish it a lot because it is frivolous, and I'm not a serious person. Forgive me for making a goofy pivot, but one person to whom the movie definitely seems to mean something is Kanye West. What a pivot that was, but go ahead. He samples Jay's speech about beautiful women in 'Back to Me.' I'm curious what you thought of the song as a meditation on the actual dialogue that you wrote? I didn't go that deep with it, I'll be honest with you. It came to my attention thanks to the internet, and the first thought I had was, nobody asked for permission. I guess you could just do that. Eventually, I think they wound up paying the people that own Dogma now, but look, it's always nice when the culture notices your work. The timing of this probably could have been better, but I never heard the song. I know Jason Mewes got a few bucks off of it, and that made me happy for him. Dogma was a scale plus 10 movie, so I bet you Jason probably made more of Kanye West using his clip of dialogue than he ever did on anything Dogma related. Iconic Events Notwithstanding Kanye, you have spoken about the Harvey Weinstein of it all several times in the past. How have you been able to reach a sense of peace or separation between what you've created and some of the people who you worked with who history has borne out in less positive ways? Back when the New York Times article happened and the world was introduced to the real Harvey Weinstein, instantly, I put out a tweet about it. All my dreams came true with Clerks, and so, suddenly, I had to know that as much as I benefited, so many people did not. I remember when it happened going, "I guess I have to give up all my movies that had his name on it." And I was prepared to do that in terms of, they're things of the past. But the movie don't belong to the filmmaker. Movie don't belong to even the studio that finances it. Ultimately, the movie belongs to the audience and the audience decides how they feel. So there has been no people being like, "I can't watch this anymore because that dude was involved at one point or something like that," mercifully. But as we head into Dogma, which was a movie that took a long time to wrest from his control, you try not to change anything, but we took his name off. That felt justified. I never thought I'd be the person that stripped somebody's credits from them, but I think he stripped them from himself. Iconic Events You've done a lot of four-walling for your movies over the last 20 or so years. What are your thoughts are about exhibition these days when theaters are struggling and there's so many things competing for audience attention? I play the hand I'm dealt, and I don't make very popular movies because I make Kevin Smith movies — so that means you've got to help. So I accompany my movies out in the world. Now, for that, I get to upcharge ridiculously. They're paying 50 bucks to go watch Dogma and me afterwards too. But you're getting a two-hour movie and a two-hour Q&A so I guess pound for pound, you're getting some money's worth and stuff. But it became a joy because you're in a room with the audience who are overly, vocally, loudly appreciating your work. Now, can every filmmaker do that? Absolutely not. Can most? Yes. Because at the end of the day, people are always curious about who's behind stuff. You just have to be willing to put in the time. Now, I'm an exhibitor as well. So as somebody with skin in the game, we went nonprofit because it's tough out there, really tough. The theatrical model from my point of view is still broke. I was doing some box-office updates last month and the week that The Minecraft Movie came out, we did 435 tickets in the five days ... we're open five days a week. Mondays and Tuesdays we're closed. So that included our opening weekend and stuff; 435 in an AMC in New York City is one movie theater. That was our entire week. So I can upcharge, I can fill a theater and stuff, but I can't do that for normal ass movies, so then I'm at the mercy of what the studios are putting out there, just like everybody else. So when it comes to showing actual movies that I have nothing to do with, it's hard out here for an exhibitor. This interview has been edited and condensed. 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