This weekend, one of the year’s best films will play in 38 theaters across the country, and most of the general public will not see it — indeed, most will never even hear of it. The film is Red State, a potent and unsettling hybrid of horror, action, and socio-political commentary that echoes the Phelps family and the Waco massacre. It is the tenth feature film from Kevin Smith, the foul-mouthed auteur who burst onto the scene with the legendarily ingenious low-budget effort Clerks and who has spent the years since sharply dividing film fans, critics, and Internet commenters. Red State is 180 degrees from anything he has ever done; his filmography to date has been firmly comedic, with occasional seasonings of fantasy, romance, and action. Red State is deadly serious… and seriously disturbing. It is easily his finest film to date, but most moviegoers will remain completely unaware of it, because Smith has undercut its success at every turn with his own hubris, greed, or ignorance. Or, perhaps, all three.
In many ways, Smith’s sinking of this film began with his last one. The 2010 Bruce Willis/Tracy Morgan buddy comedy Cop Out was a critical failure, scoring a meager 19% “fresh” on Rotten Tomatoes and earning Smith some of the worst reviews of his career. It was not the first time the filmmaker had received less-than-enthusiastic notices; his Clerks follow-up, Mallrats, took a pounding from critics, as did his 2004 romantic comedy Jersey Girl. But Smith had taken those fumbles in stride, roasting those films in the years that followed as vehemently as his worst critics. He even reprinted Matt Zoller Seitz’s negative review of Mallrats in his introduction to his Clerks/Chasing Amy screenplay book, to explain how that particular negative notice had inspired the Amy script.
So it was a bit of a surprise when the filmmaker decided that the drubbing of Cop Out — a throwaway star vehicle and his only feature directorial job to date that wasn’t a realization of his own screenplay — was where he was drawing the line. He went on an extended Twitter tirade attacking film critics, claiming that the “whole system’s upside down: so we let a bunch of people see it for free & they shit all over it?” and declaring that “from now on, any flick I’m ever involved with, I conduct critics screenings thusly: you wanna see it early to review it? Fine: pay like you would if you saw it next week.” For a filmmaker whose pictures (the early ones he built a career on, anyway) were consistently buoyed by enthusiastic reviews, this was an astonishing display of willful ignorance; Smith certainly wasn’t petulantly asking for admission fees to media screenings of Clerks or Chasing Amy.
It was also a stunningly short-sighted temper tantrum, considering that less than one year later, Smith had a new film to release into the marketplace. Yes, sure, film critics should be able to rise above Smith’s sour grapes and judge the film on its own merits. On the other hand, it can be difficult to form an entirely unbiased opinion of the work of an artist who not only has publicly deemed your profession irrelevant and offensive, but gone so far as to compare those who practice it to gang rapists. When Red State screened at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, it got some good reviews. It also, unsurprisingly, got some very bad ones — and, in all fairness, maybe those critics legitimately didn’t like the picture, with no ulterior motive. (Hey, it’s possible.)
It was at Sundance that Smith made his other big move, inviting distributors to Red State’s festival screening and announcing a live auction for distribution rights afterward. He then multiplied the event’s already-plentiful publicity stunt factor by buying the film from himself (for twenty bucks), afterward announcing his masterstroke: to self-distribute via “four-walling,” a rather arcane process of paying a flat rental rate to theaters, covering all costs, and pocketing all profits. But first, he would take the film out on a roadshow tour, charging an average of $65 per ticket in large venues for an early peek at the film and a post-movie Q&A (Smith’s stand-up-style speaking engagements have been a lucrative secondary income stream for years). He would not advertise for either the roadshow engagements or the later, more reasonably priced run — at least, he would not use conventional TV and print advertising, relying instead on his social networking presence and network of podcasts to market the picture directly to his fans.
While reaction to this plan was swift and mostly negative, some writers (including this one) allowed that it could work; Smith’s films usually top out with a $30 million gross, meaning that the same audience tends to turn out every time, so maybe there is a logic to marketing, at low cost, directly to them. But there was something disconcerting about the first of those roadshow engagements, at New York’s Radio City Music Hall. The crowd, more accustomed to Smith’s stoner-friendly “Jay and Silent Bob” comedies, laughed and cheered at inappropriate points throughout the unnerving film, and the post-screening Q&A was an embarrassment—more than a half-dozen of his cast members sat awkwardly onstage for well over an hour as an endless stream of Smith sycophants peppered their hero with praise, softball questions, and pitches for their own projects. Occasionally, star John Goodman was asked a Big Lebowski-related question, or prompted to recite dialogue from that cult classic. Neither Melissa Leo (who had won an Oscar less than a week earlier) nor beloved character actor Stephen Root (Office Space, NewsRadio) were ever asked a question — by either the audience or (and this is key) by Smith.
Sitting in that audience, one couldn’t help but wonder why Smith didn’t deflect a question or two their way, or maybe pose a couple himself, to make the event worth the time spent by his hard-working cast. But, in retrospect, that evening was a microcosm for the entire project. The Red State affair has been sunk by Smith’s attitude, whether conscious or not, that the production is less about the film than it is about him — so at every turn, he has done what is best not for the picture, but for his ego and his wallet. And that is why he made enemies of the critical community mere months before releasing a small film with no ad budget that could have benefited from positive reviews, and that is why he deliberately faked out independent distributors who could have given the film proper marketing and circulation and instead chose to embrace his inner huckster, and that is why Root and Leo and the rest of his cast spent 90 minutes on stage at Radio City looking at their shoes. And, most importantly, that is why Red State heads to DVD next month, following a week-long award-qualifying run in Los Angeles and this weekend’s “one night only special event” screenings, but no genuine theatrical release: because Smith made enough money soaking his fans that those time-consuming, troublesome four-wall engagements weren’t necessary. (This weekend’s screenings, by the way, are followed by an “interactive Q&A event” and podcast recording, and are thus priced at a hefty $20 a ticket.)
So yes, Smith won, and his KISS army won, and that is that. There’s only one clear loser here: Red State, a genuinely harrowing and well-made picture that has, at least as far as the general public is concerned, gone straight to video. Hopefully, there, it will finally find the audience it deserves. Hopefully, there, its creator will get out of its way.
Comments (21)
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Is Red State any good? I’ve subjected myself (as a paying customer) to at least half of Smith’s films and that was more than enough. The guy has the aesthetic of a 13-year old suburban white kid who thinks dick jokes are the height of hilarity and the world ends just outside the mall parking lot. Fanboys can cheer all they want but even Clerks was pretty crappy.
I loved it. It is a great movie. Someone must of remembered and leaked the screaner because it is easy to find and I live in Costa Rica.
I liked Red State a lot; my friend hated it (but he loved the Angelina Jolie version of Beowulf, if that helps). It is a break from Kevin Smith movies of the past, in tone and content. Truly new ground for him. And the performance by Michael Parks is perfect. (When has anyone ever said a Smith movie has a great performance in it?)
At the Q&A afterward I saw (in LA) he took one or two questions and used these as opportunities to ramble endlessly until he’d filled 60 minutes and the event was over. I like the guy, but this was a little wearing.
If anything, the Flavorwire review here is about (and part of) a movie industry that reacts often more to the personalities behind the scenes than to what is on the screen. Why are critics writing as much about Smith’s promotional efforts as they are about the movie itself?
The irony is that the audience would have responded better to the movie, and probably appreciated it more, if they knew in advance that it was unlike any of his previous films. If he didn’t have such contempt for film critics, Smith might realize that this is one of the purposes they serve.
A few points:
1) In every interview he’s given about Red State, Smith has explained that the marketing an ad budgets make up the vast majority of post-production costs, and that distributors basically use a film’s theater revenue to coger all of those expenses, meaning Smity likely would have made very little off of this even if it was sold to a traditional distributor.
2) As you mention, Smith’s films divide audiences and critics, and his fanbase is well established (and follows him via his site, SmodCast, and twitter), so he doesn’t need a full ad push.
3) Have you ever seen lots of ads for Kevin Smith (View Askew) films? Neither have I.
4) You think after a career of “View Askew-niverse” movies that made on average $30m, a major studio would spend tens of millions on ads and promotion for a horror/thriller from Kevin Smith???
5) When Clerks was made, critic screenings were for established critics. Now studios will bring in anyone with a blog to help “build buzz”. So why let a 22 year old rotten Tomatoes community reviewer see it for free when you can charge him? And if you’re not opening a film wide, why bother with press screenings anyway.
6) Smith has been personally crusading for award nominations for Parks, Goodman & Leo, so if fans didn’t ask them questions at the first of what have been dozens of screenings, I bet he’s making up for it.
7) Did you attend any other screenings or ask attendees about how other screenings’ q&as went?
8) By owning the film top-to-bottom, he has more control over how the dvd and on demand rights are sold / used. Red State’s currently $13 on directv on demamd, 2x the usual going rate. I bet that would be because he doesn’t have a bulk film rate w/ DirecTV like the major atudios do, so they jacked the rate on him. He’s probably making less on the deal than a studio would, but he pockets the full take.
9) How many people said the same things you said in this piece when music artists started self-distributing digitally, or thru their own indy label. Did people call them greedy, or foolish, because they didn’t distribute through Columbia or Sony (or whoever the big music houses are still left)?
I’m a distributor that was at the Sundance screening. I disliked the film and knew it wouldn’t make money, but I stayed a bit to see if an auction would actually take place. Of course, it was just a rant against me and my colleagues in the industry. Not for any particular reason, or with any basis, as many of us had actually bought and distributed his previous films, making him lots of money and launching his career. It’s really too bad he plays solely to his smodcast audience to the exclusion of everyone else, because he does have a genuinely interesting take on current affairs and culture. That being said, this particular film was poorly made, and to anyone who has picked up a newspaper int he last 5 years, it was reductive, repetitive and childish.
Sad to see this downward spiral AND silly attitude from Smith. Too bad.
I actually saw the film and Q/A in Springfield Ohio. I had no problem with the format and Kevin answered questions for well over an hour.
Seems to me this is nothing but whining from industry insiders who don’t like it when someone else changes the rules of the game.
Is anyone surprised when someone who writes about film gets their panties in a twist when someone like Smith doesn’t grovel @ their feet like a good little lap dog?
Good for Kevin. He’s doing it HIS way.
i really hated the movie and i’m surprised anyone would like it. terrific concept/idea but the execution was just awful, across the spectrum from the acting to the dialogue to the story arc to the direction of the action scenes – even the lighting was off. it seemed like a student project. i could go into a lot more detail but i don’t think there’s a point. i am not a kevin smith lover or hater – i saw clerks and dogma and a few more of his movies and i thought they were decent comedies, worth seeing but not exceptionally brilliant. but red state was objectively terrible in so many ways, i was actually surprised by how bad it was.
[...] its success at every turn with his own hubris, greed, or ignorance. Or, perhaps, all three.” [Flavorwire via Andrew Sullivan]· “Today I stopped tax dollars from being wasted on programs that don’t [...]
Well the film isn’t very good or remotely thematically coherent, no reason why his approach to distribution should have been.
As for Dist and other industry insiders and wannbes, you market horrible products based on spreadsheets and sequels.
Love it or hate it, Red State made money and showcased great performances by Parks and Goodman.
Please by all means, haters put up what you consider to be better more successful projects you were a part of and let us shred them like you tried to do here.
Kevin Smith made the movie he wanted to make and crowds felt satisfied with it. Frankly Im glad it wasnt all over my TV or internet in flash ads–theyre annoying and pointless.
@ThatKevinSmith proved you can make good movies without silly critics who create nothing and write like garbage and without studios that produce 90% drivel.
God Bless that man/
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I think this article is written out of fear. Fear that’s been mounting for years as “film critics,” at least the ones who really have no education or background in film or writing and merely started writing out of love of film and ability to program their own website, are becoming a thing of the past. I don’t know much about Mr. Bailey or his backgorund, but let’s use him as an example.
What if every filmmaker- or at least 75%- followed Smith’s lead and just did away with set visits, press screenings, junkets and the like. Where would that put you and other “critics” at? It would render your job more difficult and basically moot over time, as the position is becoming anyway. While I agree that some of Smith’s antics are over the top, thin skinned and ego driven, he won this round and articles like this one prove it. But the reaction from the press in general has been the exact same amped up to 11. Articles like this are soooo Sundance 2011.
The film has already made the investors money back, it’s a very good film and he did it all his way. Without guys like you, Mr. Bailey. So in what way has he sabotaged RED STATE? Because those who wait on us writers every written word before deciding whether or not to see a film might not have heard about it because *gasp*, the press didn’t get the word out?
It seems like the only thing that hurts about the film is you and fellow “critics” didn’t get early access, had to wait and likely pay and weren’t FIRST! out the gate with reviews. As a film writer for over 10 years, I hope Smith’s trend continues. I’m sick of sycophantic writers jumping on bandwagons to love or hate a film based on access and groupthink and are actually forced to work a little harder. A movie might not be as good as you thought when you aren’t treated to a set visit or junket.
Set visits and junkets are not for critics. They’re for entertainment reporters and feature writers, whose fluff pieces grease the promotional wheel for filmmakers by promoting their films. Established critics don’t do junkets or set visits. That’s for E!, Entertainment Tonight, Extra, etc. So that criticism isn’t fair. Press screenings, of course, are for critics…and others as well. But if you make this argument for film critics, then you have to make this argument for TV critics, book critics, music critics, video game critics and restaurant critics. It’s true that film critics are getting more irrelevant. Then again, when people visit Rotten Tomatoes and think “Moneyball got a 95%, so it’ll see it”, what is that 95% of? Critics, maybe, just to hazard a guess? So before you dismiss critics, without them there’d be no RT or Metacritic or sites whose criticisms help audiences find little movies that would otherwise escape their notice.
According to boxofficemojo, the film only grossed around $1,000,000 during the ‘roadshow’. How is this a victory for Smith? Sure, the hardcore fans will buy the DVDs, but no general release? That’s a bad sign for a film no matter how you rationalize it.
BTW I saw it tonight and it’s pretty horrible. This coming from an open-minded Smith fan — I’ve found something redeeming in just about everything he’s done. This was just a mess. Really. a disaster. Sorry Kevin… maybe you’ve picked the right time to retire form film-making.
What a condescending piece. Gather your skirts up in a tither why don’t you? What are you, the propriety police or something? Heavens, Kevin Smith won’t play the game!
And because Smith’s not a bullshit-schmoozola artist he’s a childish jerk, eh? He’s totally correct about his targets, btw.
And give me a break. Ever since Smith took on Tim Burton’s people for stealing his ideas the establishment suck-up side of the business has been all over his ass. It ain’t no coink-a-dink, either.
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[...] wanted to like Kevin Smith’s latest film, Red State, ever since first reading about it in this excellent piece by Jason Bailey about the weird, self-defeating distribution scheme Smith used to essentially sink [...]
[...] this was always Kevin Smith, and the contrived nonsense we see in a show like Comic Book Men, or the bizarre antics that Smith engaged in while promoting Red State, is just who Smith really is. We just didn’t [...]
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