UPDATE 3: The Competition is now CLOSED – Sydney winners have been organised, Melbourne winners will be notified by me via email. Thanks for entering guys!
UPDATE 2: Hey guys, the MELBOURNE screening now has FOUR Tickets remaining, Get in guys!
UPDATE: Hey guys, The Sydney Screening tickets have been won! But if you’re in MELBOURNE; we still have 5 tickets to give away, so get in quick!
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SYDNEY Winners: Glen, Melancholy Jubulance, John, Stina and James – You’ll be notified by email! Thanks for entering, I can’t wait to share this special film with you. Thanks again to Curious film!
Hello all! Thanks to Curious Film we’ve got a really exciting giveaway! Tickets to super advanced screenings of Kevin Smith’s eagerly anticipated (and amazing!) ‘RED STATE’ – check out my review here. Read more…
As you may know; Kevin Smith’s ‘Red State’ has been my most looked forward to film of 2011 for a long time now – just check the related post section for more articles. Read more…
UPDATE: So obviously this never came to pass. We updated the site based on comments Smith himself made during a ‘plus one per diem’ podcast. It was ultimately wishful thinking on his part I’d say. The latest word is that Smith is trying to find room in his already very busy schedule. ‘Red State’s’ official release date across Australia is Oct 19th. We’ll update you with information regarding Smith and A Red State tour as soon as possible.
So I was listening live to Kevin Smith’s radio station SIR, and Kevin Smith dropped the bomb that ‘Curious Film‘ has picked up ‘RED STATE’ for Australian release on September the 22nd! Read more…
Here at Damn Good Cup we eagerly await Kevin Smith’s Psychological Horror/ Return to independent roots: ‘RED STATE’. For more on the film and Smith check out our ‘Related Posts’ section at the bottom of the page.
Here is an excerpt from Smith talking about ‘Red State’ from the stage of the Sydney Opera House earlier this year:
“When I started writing that (Red State) the wife was like; “hey man, why the fu*k are you doing another fu*king religious picture? They are just going to get pissed off at us again; throw bricks through our window like they did on Dogma.” And she was like; “you can’t, you just can’t, stop dealing with religion”…
…I mean, the thing is our villain… Our villain’s name is Aven cooper… and his family, and it’s kind of our very own fringe- extremist and conservative church if you will. And it’s a stepping point for what the whole movie is kind of about: What happens when conservatism goes to a ridiculous degree, or something like that: where people take judgement into their own hands or something like that. So um, it is not entirely different [to Phelps], but at the same time my wife and family are concerned because they can kind of see [Phelps] in it… but I really just wanted to use it as a jumping-off point more or less…
…I don’t know, it just got to me. I saw it as some big problem which got me to writing Red State. It is the meanest, nastiest thing I have ever written in my life. I mean there are a couple of titters in it ,or something like that, but it is just dark and mean and ugly, and nobody…there is not even a like-able character in the bunch…and nobody wins. So it’s kind of like a commentary on America I guess: A little snapshot of this tiny corner of america, that if we are not careful about will infect the entire land, so that’s kind of what I want to do, I wanted to go after it and I needed a guy to play Aven Cooper, who is the main bad guy, the reverend if you will, and I wrote the role of Aven Cooper for a guy named Michael Parks”…
I transcribed the entire ‘Red State’ discussion from the Sydney Opera House, and you can check it out here:
Note: Offensive language in side. Swears have been censored.
Film-maker Kevin Smith visited the Sydney Opera house recently (8th and 9th August 2010) and spoke at length about a variety of topics; telling long and entertaining stories. Many we have heard before on Smodcast or previous Q and A’s, but there were a few things that I had not heard him talk at length about before. So I recorded those sections on my iphone during the show for this website.
Over the next week or so I will transcribe Smith talking on a variety of topics, from Twilight: Eclipse, Comic Books, , and a long, long piece of life advice told to an eleven year old boy in attendance, I have already transcribed him talking about Fred Phelps and his upcoming film: ‘Red State’; which you can find also on the site, but for now here is Smith talking about his relationship with Harvey Weinstein and their time together over the years. Enjoy:
SMITH:
I didn’t have a falling out with the [Film Producers] the Weinsteins’. No. After ‘Zack And Miri’ I was really fu*king ticked; because I felt ‘Zack And Miri’ was our best one yet, and our best shot at success. And the ad campaign just kind of sucked. They could never really figure out how to sell that movie; they just got kind of scared and unsure. They were like: “Well, people are going to flip on the title so let’s just take off that title on the TV spots.
We watched a TV spot that said ‘Zack And Miri Make A Por*o’ and then ten minutes later we saw another TV spot that said just ‘Zack And Miri’. and it looked like a completely different movie. I mean, my mom might go and see ‘Zack And Miri’, but she wouldn’t go see ‘Zack And Miri Make A Por*o’…because people were just differentiating between the two. I don’t know. It wasn’t very inspiring. At the end of it, we were all just kind of disappointed.
With the partnership, we were kind of coming to the end of it anyway. They were having some kind of big problems in terms of what was going to come financially next year, and they were also interested in getting [Their previous production company] Miramax back, and I was like; “You know what, I just need to separate for a little while, go someplace else’, just to kind of do my own thing and whatnot.
Sometimes you spend so much time with someone that just eventually you’ve got to separate. You have got to try something else. I mean, for lack of a better description: In film, Harvey Weinstein was my father, you know what I’m saying… And so at a certain point everyone has got to step away from their father and see if they can make it on their own and sh*t.
So that went on, and I thought: “This is the best time.’ I thought after ‘Zack and Miri’ I’ll just let my deal nullify and not reopen it and sh*t like that. I’ll just go and be by myself. And it would be better for them financially to pay me to leave instead of paying a certain amount every year just to keep me there. And so with that money I paid for my office. They cut me my freedom and whatnot.
You know, they passed on [Smith’s upcoming film] ‘Red State’ about a year before, so I knew I wanted to make ‘Red State’ next, and I knew it wasn’t going to be there anyway. I didn’t leave because I was mad at him or anything like that, I mean, you can’t be mad at people who meant that much to you. I owe Harvey Weinstein my whole life, you know what I’m saying.
Harvey Weinstein picked up my flick [‘Clerks’] and starting playing it in cinemas. He introduced me to the world. I can’t be mad. You can never forget a thing like that.
He is a larger than life colorful character and sh*t, and I’m proud to say I’ve known him over the years and whatnot, but at the same time I got to go out and prove something. You know for years all I’ve ever gotten money for a [Smith says the following in a voice resembling a stuffy judgmental critic] “fu*king Kevin Smith movie” was from “fu*king stupid Miramax and fu*king Harvey Weinstein”.
So I left the party thinking: “I want to see if what they say is true”. Will I be able to find a career somewhere else? Or is my whole career based on the charity of Harvey Weinstein?
So by being away from him, I got to kind of go out there and test my levels as a film-maker, and as a business man as well. I didn’t really have to do much business with the Weinsteins, it’s not like they ever cared about any of that sh*t.
John Gordon, who was Harvey’s assistant for years, and years, and years…he’s the guy that’s originally responsible for Harvey picking up ‘Clerks’. He went to the Sundance Film Festival in 1994 with Harvey, and Harvey asked him: “Well, whats good this year?” and John was just like: “I like ‘Clerks’ man, that moved me”. And then Harvey went and watched fifteen minutes of it and walked out and was like: “They are busting my balls on smoking, fu*k this!” He is a huge smoker and sh*t. If he had waited two minutes he would have seen that I was a huge smoker too! But he couldn’t make it past the Chewlies gum representative, he was like: “This guy’s lecturing me, I’m outta here” and he left.
So John gordon at Sundance said: “You’ve really got to see it, give it another shot”. So he came again and watched the whole thing and fell in love with it and sh*t. So John Gordon is my producer now, and Scott [Scott Mosier; Smith’s long time producer] is not going to be the producer on ‘Red State’. Scott is pursuing a film career of his own at this point, as well as working on a animated series for Disney.
So john gordon jumped on for producer, and Johns like: “We’ve got to form a company, what should we call it?”. “Well dude, we should call it what we are. We are ‘The Harvey Boys’. Harvey raised us. He is kind of our dad.
So Harvey called me the other day, in regards to this other thing; ‘minimum salary turn around’ or something, and I told him. I was like: “Hey”, and he was like: “How are you guys doing?”, and I was like: “We’re going to do ‘Red State’”. He goes: “Whats’ ‘Red State’?” And I said: “You know, you passed on it; about a year ago, two – three years, you know?”. And he goes: “Oh right, who is working on it? Scott?”, I said: “No, it’s John Gordon”. He said “John!? You and John Gordon?!…Oh well there goes the neighbourhood.”
I said: “We named our production company after you”, and he said: “What do you mean?” I said: “We’re calling ourselves The Harvey Boys” and there was dead silence. And I was like: ‘Is he going to be mad?’ and he goes: ‘Thats just so fu*king beautiful’. I was like: “You think?” and he goes: “I feel touched Kevin. I’m honored”. I said :“I thought it would be nice to name ourselves The Harvey Boys after you” and he was like “I got to go”…and his voice was cracking, we got to him a little bit.
And so we’re still very friendly. What I love about Harvey Weinstein is that Harvey is budgetary. I mean he would often tell us, and I never quite understood until recently: “Don’t worry kevin, we are in the book”. I said: “The comic book?” or something like that. He said “No. The book, book”.
I mean, he told me right before I left that: “You know Kevin; I know you’re really scared about Judd Apatow, and you think nobody likes you anymore, and that he is going to replace you, but I’m just here to tell you that Judd is very successful and he will probably work till the day he dies, but Kevin, you and I: They are going to write books about us, don’t you understand that?”. And I was like: “Why would anyone write books about us?”.
And he was like: “Because you made ‘Clerks’, and I sold ‘Clerks’”. And I was like; “I guess that’s kind of cool.” He is like: “‘Clerks’ is Mutherfu*kin’ ‘Clerks’”. He could give me props that made me forget that I haven’t made a hundred million dollar grossing movie. So as much as at times he was a major pain in the ass to deal with, sometimes he made you go crazy…he was still always a father figure to me. I mean, he always looked out for us, he always let us do exactly what we wanted to do.
The other beautiful thing about Miramax, for those fifteen years, was that I would go in there and he would say: “What do you want to do?” and I would say: “I want to do this movie where a dude blows a donkey while this chick tells this guy that she loves him” and he was like: “Okay”.
He was always very frank about stuff. like he would say: “Kevin, I’m an old man, and this is a young mans’ world, we make movies for the young, so you do what you have to do. We don’t know what to tell you to do; other than than to do it”.
He was a huge movie lover, but you know, there is another side of Harvey that a lot of other film-makers had to deal with, but I never had to because of that: “I’m an old man, this is a young mans world” kind of thing. There were other movies man, where he was all over them; telling other directors what to do, they called him “Harvey Scissorhands’ and sh*t. But for me, not at all.
Once in a while he would give me a note…but that was the thing about Harvey, one day he could be like a bull with a horn, but the next day he would forget about it. So I don’t know… I never think of fighting with Harvey or anything like that, It’s just I think it’s time I stood my own.
Me and John we left the studio. We want to do a movie or two and then come back. Just to say: “We went off and did it by ourselves man!”. So that’s kind of our frame of mind at the moment.
Film-maker Kevin Smith visited the Sydney Opera house recently (8th and 9th August 2010) and spoke at length about a variety of topics; telling long and entertaining stories. Many we have heard before on Smodcast or previous Q and A’s, but there were a few things that I had not heard him talk at length about before. So I recorded those sections on my iphone during the show for this website.
Over the next week or so I will transcribe Smith talking on a variety of topics, from Twilight: Eclipse, Comic Books, an amazing story about working with the Weinstein Brothers, and a long, long piece of life advice told to an eleven year old boy in attendance, but for now here is Smith talking about his own death, Fred Phelps and the Westboro Baptist Church and his upcoming film Red State.
Enjoy:
KEVIN SMITH ON DEATH:
SMITH:
The report from my forties is this: I think about death all the time. I went to sleep for about two hours before the show tonight and I had a dream about resting a cell phone on Schecky’s (one of his dogs) head and because of that she died, and the very next scene we were in jail, and I was being executed for the murder of Schecky, and I was like: “God, I’m facing death and sh*t”…and then I got up and I was relieved because I’m like; “thank god, I’m not going to be dead.”
But then at the back of my head… the voice at the back of my head is like “but you’re still going to die one day”, and then I was like: oh my god that dream is kind of how I live my life - always worried for when the needle is coming for me to end my life and sh*t like that, I have so much sh*t to do and not a lot of time to do it in…and people are like: “why don’t you lose weight? That will help” and I’m like “why don’t you chill the fu*k out”.
I just don’t have the time to do it all in. It’s weird I was born in 1970, so I can do round-off math very easily, I was always thinking ‘in the year 2000, I’m going to be 30 years old…so now we are beyond that. We are in year 2010, the future of that: Buck Rogers: Fu*K Rogers. So I think about all that a lot.
ON FRED PHELPS, WESTBORO BAPTIST CHURCH AND RED STATE:
SMITH:
When I started writing that (Red State) the wife was like; “hey man, why the fu*k are you doing another fu*king religious picture? They are just going to get pissed off at us again; throw bricks through our window like they did on Dogma.” And she was like; “you can’t, you just can’t, stop dealing with religion”.
And I was like: These people are sooo fu*king fringe.
Number 1) It’s not based on them at all, they are kind of a jumping off point. and number 2) this isn’t a fu*king religion. The Westboro baptist church: Its 25 fu*king people. Like, it’s not a big Church that we have to be afraid of, they are not into violence as much as they are meticulous. I mean they picket and they sue people all the time. so I was like don’t worry about the family, if anything worry about our wallets. but you don’t even need to worry about that - I don’t even think that’s going to happen because if you see Red State, I don’t think there is anybody in the world that is going to go “that’s based on me!” because it’s fu*king horrible.
I mean, the thing is our villain… Our villain’s name is Aven cooper… and his family, and it’s kind of our very own fringe- extremist and conservative church if you will. And it’s a stepping point for what the whole movie is kind of about:
What happens when conservatism goes to a ridiculous degree, or something like that: where people take judgement into their own hands or something like that. So um, it is not entirely different [to Phelps], but at the same time my wife and family are concerned because they can kind of see [Phelps] in it… but I really just wanted to use it as a jumping-off point more or less.
And it kind of intrigued me; the idea of: people who are so fundamentally religious, that they will say deplorable things…I mean, Fred phelps and the Westboro Baptist Church… for those who don’t know; [Phelps] is the shining individual of the United States; Kansas particularly, who came up with the ‘God Hates Fags.com‘ slogan, website and movement if you will. That is his claim to fame; that website.
Fred Phelps has a real problem with gay people; in a big bad way. So he essentially came up with this campaign where he maintains, that politically speaking; God will strike down every, quote, unquote: “queer” or “fag” as he says, for having sex with people. They have placards, and they go to funerals…like the first one they went to… it made national headlines; I cant remember his name; the kid who was killed in Wyoming…his name escapes me?…Matt Shepherd.
Matthew Shepherd was killed in Wyoming years ago. It was a hate crime, couple of dudes pulled him in a bar, he went outside with them, thought they were also gay, I don’t know, then they beat the sh*t out of him at a nearby fence, and he died.
Died in wyoming.
Two days later his parents found out that there only son was killed in a hate crime, they decided to bury him, and as they were laying him to rest, Fred phelps and his gang showed up with placards and started picketing the funeral, and the placards they had, said sh*t like: ‘Matthew Shepherd burns in Hell’ and ‘This is what you get for being Gay’ and sh*t like that.
So as these parents were having the worst moment of their lives; putting their only son into the ground, there is Fred Phelps and all these quote/unquote “Christians”, telling them with signs, and they can see, because they are very close, that there son is burning in hell. That summarizes how much of a sick, horrible, individual this man is.
You know he has his belief system, but it’s one thing to not like gays, but it’s another thing to take it to the degrees this guy has. It is just deplorable, he has taken it beyond reason, picketing dudes funerals who died in the Iraq war…He would start going to soldiers funerals and while they are being buried by the families; they are there holding these picket signs that say: “God hates America” and “This is god’s punishment: That’s what you get.”
There is always a talk, a fag talk in there…and they usually have this placard, that looks like you know; the sign in the street of a person crossing, but in a stick figure body. They have one stick figure bent over, and then there is another stick figure fu*king it from behind, and then there is this Ghostbusters ‘NO’ sign through it.
My friend Malcolm Ingram, [film-maker] the dude I talked about earlier. Is gay as the day is long, but very butch about it. Malcolm isn’t swishy, you could never tell he was gay. Most people are like; ‘Malcolm’s gay?!” he comes off as a real butch dude, talks real: ‘Fu*K Baha!”; ‘lets go out and get a beer man!’, ‘Did you see fu*king Avatar? Avatar sucked dude!’. Very fu*king opinionated. He never really comes across..unless he gets really drunk, then he can be a bit of a queen or something, but generally speaking he is kind of butch. Even when he is like “I’m going to suck a dick!’ you are like “just please don’t hit me”.
Malcolm, for [his documentary] Small Town Gay Bar, went to kansas and interviewed Fred Phelps; because Fred Phelps has some kind of tangential involvement with the bar that Malcolm depicted in his documentary. So he spoke to Malcolm and Malcolm put him in the documentary, and it is some of the most fascinating sh*t…because [Phelps] believes everything he says, and he’s not just saying it to be confrontational. He believes in his heart of hearts, that God and Jesus hate us all so much and can’t wait to kill us. You might might be like “I think you are thinking of Darth Vader dude!’
So I was like; Malcolm, how did that interview go? and he said “Well it was pretty weird, we talked for a few hours” and I was like “Get outta here! Can I see the footage?” and he said “Yeah”. He sent me a disc of the raw footage, and I watched it by myself in a dark room, and I don’t mind telling you that it was so unsettling that I had to turn the lights on and sh*t.
I went and brought a few of the dogs in, because he just sits there and talks so calmly, and patricianly, and he is well educated: as a lawyer and sh*t, and he’s calm, rational, everything he was saying wasn’t with slobbering at the mouth. The sh*t he is saying is so fu*king backwards, so filled with hate, you sit there and go ‘This is how Hitler happened’ this guy can sit there and talk, this guy can sit there and snake charm, he doesn’t sound like a maniac, he just lays his points out.
Malcolm talked to the Phelps family as well. Zack Knutson, the guy; the guy in Clerks 2; the guy who s the mule; he shoots a lot of the documentaries for us; like he shot the Clerks:Snowball documentary, the fat doco on the clerks disc. The Clerks 2 documentary. The one on the Chasing Amy disc: Tracing Amy. And so for Red State , since I was going to go up to kansas to do a show a few months back, to Zack, I was like ‘hey man, we found out that we are going to get picketed.
All of a sudden there was a notice online that the Phelps family, the Westboro Baptist Church, were going to come and picket my performance. And the reason the gave was that they call me a ‘fag enabler’ and I was like ‘I like that man, I help fags get laid, you know, I enable that sh*t… I’m your pusher man”.
So they labelled me a fag enabler and set out to let me know that I was going to hell; and because of that they are going to be outside the theater picketing me. So Zack was like: “Dude we want to go and shoot footage”, and I said why bother man? I don’t think those pickets are that interesting, I think they are kind of tame and sh*t. But he’s like ‘We’re going out anyway”.
He went out and taped an interview with, I think, Megan Phelps, and afterwards I asked him “how was it?”. And he said ‘It was really sad; they were all just so sweet and really really nice when they talk to you, but they…they just have these talking points, and they will get to them.”
He is going: “We didn’t even talk about you” I was like ‘Really?’ and he was like “yeah, and they know who you are, but their big issue wasn’t with you, they just used you to get outside and talk to the press.” I was like “what do they want to talk to the press about?” and he said “Easter”. I was like “Easter?” and he was like “Yeah, they don’t believe in the Easter Bunny either”. I said “Really?” and he said “Yeah they are really mad about it you know” and I was like “But only kids believe in the Easter bunny” and he was like “But dude, it’s Fred Phelps”.
So yeah, they are a weird bunch and sh*t like that, and it just kept rolling over and over in my mind, I live in a very Gay community; my brother is Gay, married to a guy for 13 years at this point, like I said, he is as gay as the day is long. Me, I always felt that I was one c*ck in the mouth short of being gay myself. So the movie isn’t about [Phelps], but it is inspired from him and those people: That other side. The fu*kfu*king people that want to stop you from being yourself just because they don’t like you, or for some such sh*t.
I don’t know, it just got to me. I saw it as some big problem which got me to writing Red State. It is the meanest, nastiest thing I have ever written in my life. I mean there are a couple of titters in it ,or something like that, but it is just dark and mean and ugly, and nobody…there is not even a like-able character in the bunch…and nobody wins. So it’s kind of like a commentary on America I guess: A little snapshot of this tiny corner of america, that if we are not careful about will infect the entire land, so that’s kind of what I want to do, I wanted to go after it and I needed a guy to play Aven Cooper, who is the main bad guy, the reverend if you will, and I wrote the role of Aven Cooper for a guy named Michael Parks.
From here Smith went on to tell a story about how playing From Dusk Till Dawn in his living room nearly got him arrested by the police. Which I won’t bother typing up as you can see it told almost the same on a recording from the San Diego Comic Con earlier this year, which I have embedded here if you are interested:
continued on in:
Come back to damngoodcup.com in a few days and you will find some more Kevin Smith at the Sydney Opera House.
For more on Phelps you can visit www.bloginterviewer.com at:
Kevin Smith took time out recently to talk independent film with indieWIRE.com.
Kevin Smith has been a hero, inspiring many independent film-makers since the release of his self funded flick ‘CLERKS’ in 1994, and all of us here at DGC are huge fans of everything his; from his films, to Smodcast and the endless Q and A’s of which there cannot be enough of. Smith has been known to talk endlessly and leaves no stones unturned, he is entertaining, hilarious and just downright fascinating – even if you are a fan of his or not. On one side of the scale is the micro budget indie ‘Clerks’ and on the other is last years Studio Bruce Willis film ‘Cop Out’… It’s an interesting career for one, which he talks about in great detail with Eugene Hernandez from indieWIRE. They cover topics from his time with Miramax, to being heralded as ‘the king of indie cinema’, to his development and ultimate resignation to making studio pictures.
His comments come at an interesting time I think, considering that Smith is about to embark on his 9th picture: RED STATE, a supposedly incredibly bleak film, that had struggled to get financing for several years now – to the point where Smith briefly considering having his own fans fund it via donations to his websites, but thanks to the success of the Warner Brothers film he directed: ‘Cop Out’; Smith managed to secure funding for ‘state’.
The film is set to begin shooting in August and stars ‘From Dusk Til Dawn’ and ‘Kill Bill’ actor Michael Parks (the sheriff character- pictured above). It has a reported (from Smith himself at the 2010 comic con) $2 Million dollar budget…and is as ‘Independent’ as it gets. For the ‘Clerks’ and ‘Chasing Amy’ film-maker the picture is an interesting step. Known for his comedy; it seems left field to make what he calls a ‘psychological horror film’ apparently completely devoid of comedy and soul shatteringly devastating. To me this is what makes the project so interesting.
Not much is known of the plot, but it surrounds a Fred Phelps style preacher, and is somewhat about how fundamentalists misuse Religious beliefs. Smith during his recent comic con panel related the Michael Parks character to ‘Hannibal Lecter, without the mask’…other characters and casting details are unknown at this point. I do however remember a smodcast from way back in which his producer and hetero life mate Scott Mosier called the script endlessly bleak, and difficult…at that time, which was about 2006, the film got rejected by almost every studio and for a while it looked like it was so bleak, so depressing; that no studio would touch it. Now after ‘Cop Out’s’ success, Smith was able to secure private funding from what he says ’2 different sources’ both completely un-movie related. And Independent Cinema almost means ‘independent’ from the studio system – of which RED STATE seems incredibly so.
With all of this I for one can’t wait for RED STATE – and that brings us back to the indieWIRE interview:
In the interview, which I highly recommend you check out over at www.indiewire.com, Smith discusses the state of Independent cinema today, and offers some kernels of advice for upcoming filmmakers:
EXCERPT:
“So, when indie film came along, surprising and fresh, and this is, ‘Oh my god, I can’t believe what this guy said’ and ‘Did you seen that scene with the needle in that fucker’s heart?’ or blah blah blah. And its exciting and people talk about it ad then it gets purchased by Disney. And Harvey and Disney maintain a pretty great relationship for many years, but that’s the beginning of the end. You can see it right there.
The moment indie film became a commodity.It was only a matter of time before people lost interest. I mean like you’re seeing it now, Blockbuster Video has been with us for 20 years and I would imagine that Sears, Coke, Cadillac, that those… that was a company I’d see at the moment I left this plane of existence As I died that Blockbuster would be there. Funeral sponsored by Blockbuster. And Blockbuster is on the ropes. They’re about to go away.
This business has drastically changed.
You know, everyone got real fat and happy for a while, and then suddenly, nobody put away for the winter. I don’t know what to call it but the good times are over. Really, really over. Which is—you know—a shame, but the good news is, I mean, you can look at my own career or anybody’s career, the best work always comes out of lean desperate times.So, as much as I’m like man I don’t envy any filmmaker trying to break in right now, you are going to see the most amazing shit happening right now because you’re talking about people who are running – there’s no hope left – so they’re running on pure passion. And when you’re working on pure passion, come on what are you going to turn out? Memorable, breathtaking, groundbreaking work.
I think that’s just on the horizon. You can feel it because people are starting to get frustrated. You’re seeing box office grosses as they slip, you know what I’m saying? TV becomes far more entertaining and way more creative, you know. And they’ll keep you involved for a story that keeps going that doesn’t feel like a bullshit sequel because it’s serialized. So, you can watch it over many years, so it’s like anything else.Indie film also got dopey and fat and I’m a part of that as well. We were making stuff, but that’s the thing you get hung with—the indie title —and suddenly people are like, ‘Well that’s not an indie film’ and I’m like, ‘Well I’m not an indie filmmaker, I don’t know what to tell you!’But, they don’t know what to call this stuff, but I’m just glad it existed. I’m glad there was that moment, because otherwise I wouldn’t be here.”
END OF EXCERPT
It’s a fascinating read, If you are a fan of Kevin Smith or just a fan of Independent cinema I highly recommend checking it out.
Heres the link: http://www.indiewire.com/article/eugene_hernandez_the_world_according_to_kevin_smith/
2010 marks the 17th anniversary of ‘Clerks’. After that film was made, Smith became a studio film-maker. Now 17 years later he’s returning full circle with RED STATE.
2010 also marks Kevin Smith’s 40th Birthday.
Kevin Smith will be doing two Q and A sessions at the Sydney Opera House on the 8th and 9th of August, tickets (as of 29th July) are still available for the 2nd show. Damn Good Cup will be present at both shows and will hopefully be posting some video and the latest news from the man.
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