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This may be gobbledegook to most of you, but it is all over the coverage of the Sundance Film Festival, and it's getting on my nerves and I have to rant.
I'm a little bemused by the outrage coming out of Sundance over Kevin Smith's Red State stunt.
For anyone who's not aware, Kevin Smith (Clerks, Chasing Amy, Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back) made a film called Red State. He explained to the internets that this was a horror film, kind of like The Exorcist, only the church was the bad guy. He did not market the film at all, except to release a short teaser trailer and some posters, all on the internet - no traditional marketing whatsoever. He made a pretty big deal (on Twitter and his podcast) about taking it to Sundance and auctioning off the distribution rights to the movie.
In actuality, judging from the reviews, the movie is not as Smith has sold it in the trailer or posters, which I'm sure is the first time that has ever happened in the history of both filmmaking and advertising. (*sarcasm sign*) Summaries coming out of Sundance describe it as a very thinly veiled indictment of the Westboro church and call it preachy (LOL you'll get that when your main character is a preacher) and talky and whatever. The movie, however, is secondary to the "circus" that happened after the premiere, where Smith gathered distributors and the press into a room for the Big Auction and proceeded to sell the film to himself for $20, adding that he was planning to do a tour with it (starting at Radio City in NY and taking it to similar venues around the country) and that this was the business model he was adopting for this and his next (and apparently final) film, Hit Somebody.
Big deal, right? Who cares? I certainly don't, except that it means I'll probably have to pay more to see Red State (before it becomes more readily available in October - still fuzzy on what that means), which ... whatever. I mean, yeah, he was dishonest about his intentions, but again, I fail to see how this is a new thing. Well, apparently a great number of internet critics care, because you'd think Smith ate a baby on stage last night from a lot of the reactions I'm seeing to this stunt. In particular, Drew McWeeney has basically pulled a Christian Bale and is done with Smith professionally, which might have more meaning for me if he didn't regularly throw tantrums about stuff that, while I'm sure it's annoying to him, strikes me as just part of the rough and tumble of the movie business. (Seriously, I think EVERY SINGLE TIME that someone has broken an embargo and early-reviewed a film, he has made some passive-aggressive remark and rolled around in pissy Twitter comments like a dog in a smelly thing.)
I don't know. Maybe this is some huge deal that I'm not getting because I'm not an "insider." All I see is some bloggers foaming at the mouth and giving Smith and his movie a lot of free press (while adding the utterly meaningless refrain of "I'm done writing about this guy" - yeah, done except for THIS ONE LAST THING). So, go Kev, I guess!
I'm a little bemused by the outrage coming out of Sundance over Kevin Smith's Red State stunt.
For anyone who's not aware, Kevin Smith (Clerks, Chasing Amy, Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back) made a film called Red State. He explained to the internets that this was a horror film, kind of like The Exorcist, only the church was the bad guy. He did not market the film at all, except to release a short teaser trailer and some posters, all on the internet - no traditional marketing whatsoever. He made a pretty big deal (on Twitter and his podcast) about taking it to Sundance and auctioning off the distribution rights to the movie.
In actuality, judging from the reviews, the movie is not as Smith has sold it in the trailer or posters, which I'm sure is the first time that has ever happened in the history of both filmmaking and advertising. (*sarcasm sign*) Summaries coming out of Sundance describe it as a very thinly veiled indictment of the Westboro church and call it preachy (LOL you'll get that when your main character is a preacher) and talky and whatever. The movie, however, is secondary to the "circus" that happened after the premiere, where Smith gathered distributors and the press into a room for the Big Auction and proceeded to sell the film to himself for $20, adding that he was planning to do a tour with it (starting at Radio City in NY and taking it to similar venues around the country) and that this was the business model he was adopting for this and his next (and apparently final) film, Hit Somebody.
Big deal, right? Who cares? I certainly don't, except that it means I'll probably have to pay more to see Red State (before it becomes more readily available in October - still fuzzy on what that means), which ... whatever. I mean, yeah, he was dishonest about his intentions, but again, I fail to see how this is a new thing. Well, apparently a great number of internet critics care, because you'd think Smith ate a baby on stage last night from a lot of the reactions I'm seeing to this stunt. In particular, Drew McWeeney has basically pulled a Christian Bale and is done with Smith professionally, which might have more meaning for me if he didn't regularly throw tantrums about stuff that, while I'm sure it's annoying to him, strikes me as just part of the rough and tumble of the movie business. (Seriously, I think EVERY SINGLE TIME that someone has broken an embargo and early-reviewed a film, he has made some passive-aggressive remark and rolled around in pissy Twitter comments like a dog in a smelly thing.)
I don't know. Maybe this is some huge deal that I'm not getting because I'm not an "insider." All I see is some bloggers foaming at the mouth and giving Smith and his movie a lot of free press (while adding the utterly meaningless refrain of "I'm done writing about this guy" - yeah, done except for THIS ONE LAST THING). So, go Kev, I guess!
aggravated