Kevin Smith took to YouTube this afternoon to give an update on his quest to self-distribute and self-promote his new film Red State. Smith hinted a great deal about the future of independent cinema, the dearth of new ideas at the studios, and tried to give us hope that what he is now doing others will be able to follow and do right.
What is Red State? See the trailer below or a higher rez version here at Smith’s Smodcast.com.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GAOL1CNpnUQ
Smith was full of typical Smithian verbosity. But he created as a metaphor of what he’s doing with Red State his origins as an “indie” filmmaker. He was incredibly inspired by Richard Linklater’s Slacker. Which meant he saw it and said, “That was great, and I can do that! If we just change this one little thing. . .” And so he made Clerks. And so whenever someone says that Clerks inspired them to make movies he wants to smack them, as they’re looking at his movie and saying “I can do that!” So Smith hopes that by doing this with Red State someone else will come along and be able to improve it.
Smith rightly said he has always had a core audience that allows his films to make about $30 million and that’s it, regardless of the budget and the marketing and the subject matter. So, given that, why should he try to make a film that he knows is going to piss a LOT of people off and is not likely to make a lot of money?
Smith said he was inspired by Trent Reznor and Radiohead, who self-distributed their music simply because they knew their fans and knew how to get the music to them via the internet. So why can’t Smith do the same thing with his film, and pair it with his successful Q&A’s that he already does?
Speaking of, I recently watched via Netflix streaming Kevin Smith’s most recent video of his Q&A called “Too Fat for 40.” In this, he talks about how he became a stoner in his late 30’s. As part of his new stoner ethic he would just get high and watch stuff in his media room. So he started watching this incredibly long series done by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) about the history of hockey. He was inspired by Wayne Gretzky, especially the advice his father gave him to not go where the puck was, but where the puck was going to be. And that’s why Gretzky’s the greatest hockey player of all time. It occurs to me, is Kevin Smith trying to go where the puck is going to be? Or is that what he thinks he’s trying to do?
In a similar vein, he was also asked about his advice for someone trying to break into the industry. His advice? Don’t. The studios now only want what’s safe, what’s easy. If you have something new and fresh to say, there’s no way anyone at the studios want to make your film. He also disagrees that Youtube and piracy is hurting the film industry. He thinks if someone wants to watch Clerks on Youtube, they’ll probably buy the DVD: piracy isn’t hurting the industry- it’s helping the artist find new people to watch their stuff.
But in the words of Jay, “We gots to get paid! Where’s our motherf$%^ing movie check?” So can a filmmaker make money through self-distribution? Smith announced that the tour was already going to turn a profit, even if he didn’t sell any more tickets. He explained that if he sells 1,700 seats at Radio City Music Hall, everything else is profit. Of the 15 dates he has booked to show Red State, 12 are already sold enough to break even, and he’s only done promotion via Twitter. No millions of dollars in marketing wasted by a studio, who might not understand your movie anyway and may cut your trailer to not even represent your vision of the film. [Aside: a good corollary to this discussion is had on the Big Movie Mouth Off podcast, episode 9, discussing the Super Bowl trailers]
Smith also talked a little bit about his time at Sundance, but rather than recap that, you should just watch the review Big Movie Mouth Off did of Red State from Sundance:
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ce3uekt_Fak
He loved the reception he got at Sundance and was glad how the movie worked. Smith wanted to do a film where he did everything different than all of his other movies. No hockey references (he’s saving those for his next film, which will be all about hockey). No Jason Mewes, even though he begged to be in it. Smith pointed out that some jackass getting up in the middle of a screening and yelling “Snooch to tha nooch!” as soon as Mewes came on screen would’ve messed up the vibe he wanted to create. (and boy does he know his audience)
He also briefly talked about his current run on Batman, “The Widening Gyre” and how he wanted to write comics waaay before he wanted to be a filmmaker. So, there’s always that career to fall back on. Except I’m not hearing so many good things about The Widening Gyre. But I’ll leave it to my cohorts at The Monitor Tapes podcast to review that.
Overall, this is an interesting discussion. Can independent cinema work based on this? Or is it just simply that Kevin Smith has enough of a cult of personality around him that it could only work for him?