Kevin Smith Plans to Ditch Hollywood, Redefine 'Indie'

Kevin Smith has a plan to bypass what he sees as a messed-up Hollywood studio system that ineffectively spends a vulgar amount on advertising dollars, mostly on films that aren't very good. He harped on the point -- and made headlines -- with a recent spot on the 'WTF with Marc Maron' podcast, citing his job helming 'Cop Out' as a majorly unsatisfactory experience in the big-budget world.

Let's face it: Smith is at his most vocal when he's been wronged. And nobody, according to Smith, has wronged him more than the mainstream film industry which turned him from indie maverick to, well, the director of 'Cop Out.'

Now the 40-year-old director is making the biggest, funniest stink he can, all the while proselytizing at Sundance, on Twitter and in the press that he's ready to bypass the Hollywood filmmaking and distributing style altogether.

Vulture reported that Smith practically stole the show at Sundance, pulling off fake protests, setting up elaborate hoaxes and delivering profanity-laced speeches, all to show how Hollywood's movie-making business model is irrevocably broken. In light of the dysfunction he sees, Smith has vowed to break the bond between filmmaker and film industry. You might ask yourself how exactly Smith expects to make movies without any studio support. The answer is an ambitious self-distribution plan the director dubs Indie 2.0.

Smith is betting he can successfully take his new film 'Red State' on the road, plotting a 15-date national tour set to feature Q&A sessions with Smith. People will plop down roughly $50 a ticket for the special screenings. In lieu of a traditional marketing campaign, Smith plans to rely on his legions of fans to stir up national attention and widespread interest in the movie.

Smith predicts he'll earn back about $1.5 million of the film's $4 million budget, according to Fast Company. Once he's shown the success of this DIY business model, Smith plans to deal directly with exhibitors to ensure a national release on Oct. 19, the 17th anniversary of his debut, 'Clerks,' hitting screens.

Early on Jan. 25, Smith dove into one of his frequent tweet-a-thons, promising to chronicle his efforts to distribute 'Red State' himself. "During the next 10 months," tweeted Smith, "we're gonna educate you on what everything costs, what we earn, what we get to keep, the costs of posters, toilet paper -- the Harvey Boys will open the books & let you follow along with good ol', simple too [sic] understand, real world arithmetic. We'll show you all the money that's coming in on one of those thermometer graphics, with the $4 million total we're aiming to hit long before the October 19th general release."

Smith has already demonstrated that to the best self-branders/fan-collectors/buzz-creators go the spoils. In his mind, movies are just another of his ventures that work by the same strength in numbers -- see: 1.7 million Twitter followers -- premise. It doesn't matter, really, if those numbers are page views, Facebook friends or podcast listeners. Empowered by the numbers he pulls in and their growing value in a digital society, Smith told the crowd at the Sundance premiere of 'Red State' that he'd be putting the movie out himself without "spending a f***ing dime on marketing."

In the past, Smith has also shown interest in using his SModcast network as a way to allow fans to fund his future projects, as well as to finance the next Kevin Smith, still living in his mom's basement somewhere. While "crowd-funding" has become a buzz word in the music industry, it hasn't generated as much talk within the indie film world. Smith would like to change all that, as he blogged last

February:
Our plan is to put anything we make into a fund that would, in turn, finance other (cost-sensible) flicks fans want to see. And from that? Build a People's Studio. Simply have any interested/frustrated/desperate party put their script on our website, open for all to read, during a "pilot season" of sorts. Script that gets the most votes, gets the loot. That flick gets made and sold, all the loot goes back into fund for next round. If there's enough loot from 'RED STATE' sale to do so, idea would be to fund two low budget flicks a year. Ultimate dream: Indie Movement, v.3.

Smith has said he plans to direct only two more films: hockey flick 'Hit Somebody' and a third 'Clerks.' After all, why deal with Harvey Weinstein when you can become Harvey Weinstein?

Kevin Smith Slams Bruce Willis in Interview

Director Kevin Smith has an opinion of Bruce Willis, and he's not holding back.

According to the Daily Mail, Smith recently went on the 'WTF with Marc Maron' podcast and slammed Willis' committment and attitude while shooting 2010's 'Cop Out,' which Smith directed.

Smith claims the actor neglected to promote the film, contributing to the movie's lackluster performance in theaters. 'Cop Out' grossed just $44 million in North America.

"It was difficult," Smith said. "I've never been involved in a situation like that where one component is not in the box at all. It was f***ing soul crushing."

The director continued on his rant, adding that Willis was difficult on set and refused to pose for promotional photos.

"I had no f***ing help from this dude whatsoever," Smith said.

Though Willis wasn't on his best behavior while shooting 'Cop Out,' the opposite can be said about his co-star Tracy Morgan, according to Smith.

"He's a f***ing dream," Smith said of the '30 Rock' actor. "Tracy Morgan, I would lay down in traffic for. Were it not for Tracy, I might've killed myself or someone else in the making of that movie."

Westboro Baptists Picket Kevin Smith's Movie, Smith Leads Counter-Protest

An otherwise pleasant opening weekend at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival ended with a small band of gay-hating zealots getting shouted down by a crowd of local high school students, with some help from pot-stirrer Kevin Smith.

Considering that Smith has cited Westboro Baptist founder Fred Phelps as an inspiration for his new horror film, “Red State,” which was making its world premiere Sunday, it’s hardly surprising that eight members of the church showed up at the Eccles theater to express their displeasure. In fact, the church has been talking up its protest for weeks beforehand, and Smith has been planning his retaliation for just as long.

"Red State" tells the story of three horny teens who respond to an online ad allegedly from a middle-aged woman interested in group sex. Instead of the time of their lives, the kids find themselves confronted with a terrifying monster that thinks its doing God's work
The church, which made a name for itself by having picketing military funerals with signs reading such epithets like, “God hates fags,” showed up around 2 pm at Eccles carrying signs and chanting, but were quickly swarmed by some 200 kids from Park City High, the school that is home to the theater.

"To me, it's offensive. It's unnecessary to shove it down people's throats," Grant Sanderson, a senior at the Park City High School told the Park Record.

A few Westboro folks showed up a couple hours later, shortly before the 6:30 premiere, where they were met by a smaller crowd carrying absurd signs of their own, saying things like, "God Hate Crowds," "Thor Hates Straights," and "God Hates Mewes" (a reference to Smith's frequent collaborator Jason Mewes). Smith himself gleefully grabbed signs and carried them with him on his way into the theater.

“This is just a beautiful preaching opportunity,” Westboro Baptist's Shirley Phelps-Roper told the Los Angles Times. “Kevin Smith can keep mocking and scoffing but we’re just going to climb on his back.”

The whole thing sounds like a publicist’s dream.

Sundance: Kevin Smith debuts bloody 'Red State' and Severs Relations with Hollywood

Seventeen years ago at Sundance, a chubby New Jersey convenience store worker broke into Hollywood.
Sunday night, he broke out of it.

Kevin Smith, who became a hero to aspiring filmmakers everywhere by selling his comic book collection and maxing out credit cards to create 1994′s Clerks, premiered that film at Sundance and sold it to Harvey Weinstein’s Miramax, which turned it into a cult-hit that spoke to a generation.

“Cult” was the operative word Sunday as Smith premiered his latest movie, the bizzaro horror thriller Red State, about a gay-hating minister (Michael Parks) who goes on a blood-drenched rampage against an equally murderous squad of federal agents, with some sex-crazed teens stuck in the middle. In addition to Red State being a film about a cult, Smith also announced plans to leverage his own cult-fanbase to break out of the studio distribution system and put the film out there for audiences on his own.

Though Smith had promised via Twitter he would auction the film to a distributor live from the stage after the premiere, it turned out to be a joke. When the auction started, he immediately “bought” the $4 million movie himself for $20, and announced he would use Twitter (where he has 1.7 million followers) his popular comedy podcast, a 15-city roadshow tour, and word-of-mouth from fans to release the picture himself.

“What we want to do is, like, ‘Yes, anybody can make a movie,’” Smith said – at the tail end of a nearly half-hour long speech. ”We know that now. We know that because I’ve made ten, you know what I’m saying? That means anybody can make a f—ing movie. What we aim to prove is that anybody can release a movie now as well. It’s not enough to make it and sell it now, I’m sorry.”
He compared laboring to make a truly independent film and selling it to a studio distributor to having a child and giving it to someone else to raise.

Smith said the one thing he can’t do in-house is get the movie onto screens. So he put out the invitation for theater owners to cut a special deal with him, which he pledged would be better terms than what they get from studios. “We want to partner up, man,” he said, taking a shot at his last movie, the critically slammed Warner Bros. comedy Cop Out: “We won’t screw you over. We won’t be like, ‘You gotta f—ing take this piece of s—. If you want The Dark Knight, you better take this piece of s— Cop Out.”

His plan is to have the movie in theaters nationwide Oct. 19, the anniversary of the Clerks release. He didn’t make the project sound especially inviting to potential exhibitors, however, saying he would not do any advertising or interviews to promote the film, instead relying on his fanbase to spread the word. The ecclesiastical irony was not lost on many in the audience. “Kevin Smith intends to market Red State, a film about a church-cult, directly to his fans.The irony of ‘preaching to the choir’ is piquant,” tweeted James Rocchi of MSN Movies.

Smith apologized to studio scouts in the audience who may have thought he was sincere about selling the film. Then he joked: “I’m not that sorry. It’s a film festival — come see a movie…. I will say this in my own defense, a lot of you work for studios and s—. Studios make movies. Movies have trailers. So you guys make a lot of trailers; you’ve lied to me many times.”

His next project is the hockey film Hit Somebody, which he announced would be his last film as a director. After that, he said he wanted to focus on his fledgling distribution company, helping other indie filmmakers get their films to an audience without going through Hollywood.

Or would his becoming a successful distributor actually make him just another part of Hollywood?

To put it in one of Smith’s beloved geek-friendly Star Wars metaphors, is he defying the Darth Vader of studios — or simply joining them to help rule the indie movie galaxy?

Footnote: About six members of an anti-gay extremist church used as the model for the religious group in Red State showed up outside the theater to protest, but few festival-goers paid attention to them besides a few dozen counter-protesters carrying goofy signs. Smith marched over himself with one that read: “God Hates Fat.”