A Dogmatic View of the Red State of Distribution

Kevin Smith announced his retirement from directing at Sundance this past Sunday night after screening his latest movie, a horror film called RED STATE. He has one more film to shoot, but then he intends to “retire”. He has decided to self distribute RED STATE and do a roadshow tour of the film, selling himself and a Q&A as a part of the ticket price. There’s also a promise to help promote and distribute fresh filmmaking talent.

This move was unexpected on one hand, but unsurprising on the other. It makes sense. His last several movies have bombed at the box office. As I described in a previous blog, COP OUT was a chance to get out from under the thumb of the Weinsteins, and that ploy failed. Kevin Smith lived (and died) by the Weinsteins. If they didn't like the project he was going to make, there was nowhere else to go. He tried MALLRATS (Grammercy/Universal), and more recently COP OUT (Warner Bros) out from under the Weinsteins, and both bombed at the box office. Now he's been consistently losing box office for the Weinsteins. Looking at his career purely from a mathematical standpoint, he's a risk to invest in. The costs of his film go up and their return on investment goes down. In other words, he's paying the price for being unconventional.

Self distribution for Kevin Smith makes sense. He has an enormous fan base… by the standard of indie film, but apparently has not been able to cross over into the Studio System’s definition. Almost always profitable, but the studios want more than to spend $9 million and make $30 million. They want to safely invest $50 million and make back $120 million or more. Except the Weinstein’s because that kind of gamble could sink them like New Line or MGM did. So what is a modestly successful, very notorious filmmaker to do? Put the movie out his own self.

What a lot of Kevin Smith fans don't realize is that his bold statements and total transparency on sets, as well has incredibly scathing and detailed descriptions of Hollywood in his podcasts/college speaking/DVD's are NOT appealing to their productions. When the big studios sink millions of dollars into a movie, they want control of every part of how that movie is leaked to the public. Kevin Smith tells everyone everything. Combine that with stories like he did of head of Warner Bros. and Tim Burton on Superman Lives, and you have the makings of a Hollywood Pariah and hero to the underdog.

We all related to Kevin Smith because he represents a generation and a movement in indie film, but his actual success within the industry is not very high. He never scraped out of the indie cult hero and into mainstream with a crossover hit. It's hard for our perception to see that since he has successes that most of us dream about; works with actors that win Oscars, etc.

Now he’s in that purgatory between famous and infamous. He has the time to interact directly with fans via TWITTER and FACEBOOK, but can’t really relate to their lives, struggles, or concerns. It’s not as easy to make pop culture references when you are one. Maybe most of the early devotees related more to the author when the guy writing characters talking about Star Wars wasn’t going to Skywalker Ranch to mix his movies.

As a fanatic for his movies in the 1990's, I can say without a doubt the last 10 years have yielded only a single movie I liked, CLERKS 2. I hated JAY & SILENT BOB STRIKE BACK, JERSEY GIRL, ZACK & MIRI, and even the CLERKS ANIMATED SERIES.

Some of this “retirement” might be coming from Kevin Smith’s issues with reviewers. When COP OUT received bad reviews, Kevin Smith went on a tirade about how it’s unfair because reviewers see the movie for free. Whilst I agree in principal that you have a radically different view of a movie when paying (I disliked TRON LEGACY more because it wasn’t worth $31 for 2 people), that’s not the same as accepting that many people may not like the movies he makes.

Kevin Smith's Big Business

I am a fan of Kevin Smith, the filmmaker not the dead actor from Xena Warrior Princess. His story of making CLERKS was inspirational for an entire generation of filmmakers, me included. The legend of making a film for $26,976 on credit cards lives on, but of course I have never used credit cards to make a film.

Kevin Smith’s rise to fame (at least with fan boys) happened in an era of the 1990’s where those circumstances do not exist today. There are so few movies with no name stars and the ability to look past surface to find substance is practically nonexistent, PARANORMAL ACTIVITY notwithstanding, as in those odds are so astronomically against repeating versus the annual sales and eventual theatrical release of no name star movies from Sundance every year during the 1990’s.

Now, Kevin Smith is about to release his first feature film from a major studio outside of one owned by the Weinstein’s since the 1995 release of MALLRATS, which was released by GRAMMERCY PICTURES, and indie division of UNIVERSAL, and sadly, as great as that movie was, it bombed at the box office.

I have a hypothesis as to why Kevin Smith is directing a movie called COP OUTwith Bruce Willis and Tracy Morgan without his consistent producer Scott Mosier and without having written the script himself. He has to, if he wants longevity. The percentage of people who know who Jay & Silent Bob is pretty low compared to Bruce Willis and John McClane. A Hollywood movie reaches more people than a typical Kevin Smith movie, as much as the circle of friends I know are well versed in Askew language arts.

First off, given Kevin Smith’s penchant for being open and honest, especially on the college lecture circuit, this is apparently considered a crime in Hollywood. No one tells secrets, and even fewer tell the truth. The way he told stories of Prince, Jon Peters, Die Hard 4, Ben Affleck, and Tim Burton have probably made him a high risk to work with on bigger budgeted movies. Hollywood movies have sunk on bad press or any kind of negativity, and heads have rolled. Given the podcasts (or smodcasts if you prefer), Twitter, Facebook, and MySpace updates, not even taking into account his own site(s), Kevin Smith has very few secrets. This is the bane of a Hollywood Studio’s marketing department. They want total control over the films they produce and pay for. Kevin Smith has been unbelievably quiet about anything to do with his current feature, as in no dirt of any kind. Someone wants to play nice with the big studios, and that’s NOT a bad thing or a slam.



Secondly, after the financial loss of MALLRATS at the box office (even though it has more than made up for that via home video/DVD sales in every form), no other studio by Miramax (under the Weinstein’s) and the Weinstein Company (also under the Weinstein’s) would touch him. Bob and Harvey saw the potential in a long term relationship with Kevin Smith. They also saw a cult following which equated to a high profit, low investment opportunity in most of his films.

The downside is that given the circumstances, Kevin was locked into a near permanent situation with the Weinstein’s. Other companies are too afraid to take a chance on him both because of his honesty and volume, and the box office take on his last several movies. Even Clerks II made a profit, but the big studios want more than a profit ratio; they want to make tens of millions in profit. So that left Kevin Smith in a situation where if Bob and/or Harvey Weinstein didn’t like a movie he wanted to make, it probably wouldn’t get made.



After acting in LIVE FREE OR DIE HARD, and earning favor with Bruce Willis, combined with The Weinstein Company’s major decline in cash and production, these circumstances opened the door for COP OUT (formerly titled A COUPLE OF DICKS). Working with a more typical Hollywood budget, a lot less creative control, and yet with all the responsibility if it doesn't do well, Kevin Smith is now working for WARNER BROTHERS, and depending on the box office, may or may not get to continue making movies.

It’s my guess that this is Kevin Smith’s chance to get out from under the thumb of the Weinstein’s and insure he has a filmmaking future beyond View Askew, and might never have to be Silent Bob ever again…

But it is use a hypothesis. I will keep any opinion I have over the trailer to myself. I’m not a film critic.