Once again Kevin Smith has pulled out his knives and pointed them towards critics and the media. The self made writer-director has a very clear case of sour grapes once again and will refuse to promote or preview his upcoming horror film: Red State. Smith recently released a statement saying that Red State will not be previewed for critics and neither will he appear on any news stations to promote the film. Stating he’ll only do business tours to help the film be sold.
This is of course not new for Kevin Smith. His first outburst against critics came when his film Cop Out was first shown and it (quite rightly) got royally slated by the critics. He took the critical world to task for seeing films for free and then, in his words, “shit all over it”. He claimed that to fully respect the films they watch, critics should have to pay for them.
Of course Smith just has a huge chip on his shoulder after his past two films were not received with the warmest of critical praise. But to refuse press and advance critical screenings for a film which is such a sharp departure from his usual spiel with no distributor, his refusal of the press could spectacularly backfire. If it is a good film there will be no critics there to support and the chance of distribution will remain small.
This is also very rich coming from a man who used to rely on critical acclaim and was not wholly against taking shit films to town when he filled in for Roger Ebert on At the Movies. He just needs to accept that he appears to have run out of ideas and everything he is now doing is becoming tiresome. Maybe Red State will change that. Who knows? Read his full statement on this matter below.
I’m not press-junketing at all, anywhere. In fact, I’m not doing any press outside of maybe a business piece or 2 to help sell the flick if needed, & radio (LOTS of radio). That’s what http://smodcast.com/redstate/ is about: I’m providing all the information needed to write a story, if that’s what you’re looking to do. It’s INSANELY detailed, and by the time we’re done, I’ll have pre-answered all questions about Red State – thus negating the need to speak with me about it.
From nearly 20 yrs experience, I know this much: folks are gonna write WHATEVER they want, whether I sit down with them or not. So I’ll just furnish all the information I’d normally serve up one at a time to a small, jaded audience that doesn’t really give a shit unless there’s someone famous in the room, to a much larger, APPRECIATIVE audience that would actually enjoy & benefit from hearing the same information. And thus far, it’s been working out great.
Folks that wanna write about Red State pull from the podcasts, folks that don’t wanna but have to (so as not to seem behind the curve or a day late & dollar short in this information-is-currency culture) are doing what they lazily always do: pulling from the OTHER blogs that actually did their homework. Sometimes, their Google searches take ‘em back to the earliest stories (like back when Dermot Mulroney was sort of briefly mentioned once) & it shows up in their current posting, exposing their sloppy work ethic (which, they’ll accuse me of having in MY work, without a hint of irony).
So rather than subject all involved to a painful waste of resources, time & money, I’m doing the RedStateOfTheUnion Q&A’s. It’s kind of like an audio press kit. We’re even transcribing them now, for the SUPER lazy writers who’ve already bitched about having to wade through 12 hours of audio so they can write knowledgeably about a subject. Nobody needs to talk to me anymore anyway, as anyone who’s curious can always know what I’m thinking 24/7 right here on Twitter. Besides – the REALLY interesting story in Red State isn’t me; it’s Michael Parks. Or John Goodman. Or Melissa Leo. Or the ENTIRE cast. Or s’about how @ThatDavidKlein CRUSHED it.
Red State will premiere in Sundance, and Smith hopes the film will be released in March 2011.
