A few readers endear Kevin Smith to the Dish. One writes:
As an independent filmmaker currently wrestling with how to distribute my third film, I have been following the Red State distribution saga closely, and your quote from Mr. Bailey about this being all about ego couldn't be more wrong. Like the music industry,
Hollywood has a long history of screwing over the artists. There's even a well-known phrase for this – "Hollywood Accounting" – where film distributors cook the books to make it look like films don't make any profit; thus no royalties are ever due to the artists. But now new options exist for self-distribution, and that's exactly what Smith tackled.
We filmmakers have a choice now: Sell 100,000 copies through a distributor and get 50 cents per unit ($50,000) – if they're honest! – or do it ourselves and maybe sell only 5,000 copies, but make $12 per unit ($60,000). Now, imagine a guy like Kevin Smith, who already has a huge following. He can get thousands of dollars in free publicity just by standing on a street corner and talking. Smith – a filmmaker with clout and powerful agents who can negotiate better deals than us little people can get – still looked at the situation and decided doing it himself was the better option.
It will be interesting to see if Smith – not the film, but the artist – ends up making more or less from this experiment than if he'd gone through the Weinsteins.
Those themes overlap with our own desire to bypass the publishing industry in putting out The View From Your Window and The Cannabis Closet using print-on-demand. The other reader:
As someone in the Independent film business, I have to take issue with Jason Bailey's indictment of Kevin Smith. Smith can be a pompous blowhard, no doubt, but what he did with Red State was actually a fairly savvy marketing ploy for someone in his position. And, as Bailey admits, the film is in the black: His financiers made their money back plus profit, Smith has made money, and the DVD/streaming money will be pure profit. Let me explain.
The key here is that Bailey posits the existence of "independent distributors who could have given the film proper marketing and circulation", as if there is a burgeoning indie film market where people are making money with dark, chance-taking films. Let me tell you, there isn't. Indie film is struggling ten times harder than studio film at this point. There are a handful of key factors at play here: 1) Too many films are being made. 2) Attendance is down across the board. 3) Independent distributors are losing influence with theater chains, as the studios actively attempt to crowd them out. 4) Marketing departments are run by and staffed by idiots. Seriously.
Kevin Smith has made nine comedies in a row, and now he comes out with a horror film, a genre switch which is, for all marketing intents and purposes, impossible. The film has no stars. (Sorry, Melissa Leo, you were amazing in The Fighter, but teenagers in Asia don't care.) The film is political, at least obliquely. The idea that Kevin Smith or his investors would have been better off if he had sold to a distributor, lost control, and hoped for the best, is just flat-out wrong. The distributor/marketers would have spent millions doing terrible promotion, every penny of which would have been added to the budget, making it basically impossible for the film to get into the black.
Instead, Smith got tons of free publicity by acting like an asshole. (And the Sundance thing was an asshole move, no doubt.) He then took the film out to his dependable audience, and, because he hadn't ballooned the budget with a bunch of posters no one looks at, was able to make money on a totally impossible, quixotic, independent feature. As someone in the same business, I admire that.
(Photo: Director Kevin Smith stages a counter protest against picketers, including members of Fred Phelps's Westboro Baptist Church, at the 'Red State' Premiere held at the Eccles Center Theatre during the 2011 Sundance Film Festival on January 23, 2011 in Park City, Utah. By George Pimentel/Getty Images)
The Dish 