Kevin Smith, whose homemade 1994 flick Clerkswas part of a resurgence of US indie cinema, is back with a film that mocks Christian fundamentalism. In the end he had to self-distribute, he tells TARA BRADY, as he mourns the passing of the Weinstein wave
KEVIN SMITH is going out in a hail of bullets (both literal and metaphorical). Red State, the big man's latest work, is a politically charged grindhouse film that takes pot shots at the nastiest manifestations of the US's Christian right. The subject matter is controversial. Yet most of the chatter surrounding the film has concerned the director's aggressive taunting of the old movie establishment (big, bad Hollywood) and its more recent, allegedly funkier offshoot (the Weinsteins and their erstwhile imprint, Miramax).
At the Sundance Film Festival, Smith declared he would be auctioning Red State off to the highest bidder. Then he bought the picture himself for $20 and announced he would be self-distributing. It’s all part of an apparent withdrawal from the movie mainstream. Ladies and gentlemen, Kevin is out of here.
"I just can't do studio movies," he says. "I did Cop Outand that was fun. They said: 'Do what you like.' But only if I did it their way. I can't do that. Unfortunately, that's like being hit on by the most beautiful man in the world. I wish I could oblige. But it's not in my make-up." Oh come on. Cop Out, a noisy 2010 comedy, didn't really feel like a Kevin Smith original. But he can still, surely, find a space for his more characteristic projects. Retirement seems a bit drastic.
“Look, I just don’t have much more to say on film. And I want to go out the way I came in. I could keep going with this ghost career of just hosting films. I want to actually make them. I don’t want people to forget the good stuff I did. If I want to tell a story now, I can just get up on stage or shoot a stupid pilot.”
Smith – bearded, fitting snugly into a voluminous hockey shirt – has not changed much since he stumbled into the limelight with 1994's Clerks. The story behind that film is one of the key creation myths of the indie-boom years. Made for less than $30,000, financed through the sale of Smith's comic books and maxed-out credit cards, the picture was picked up by Miramax, the company founded by Bob and Harvey Weinstein, and went on to take $3 million in the US.
More importantly, it helped persuade a legion of film hobbyists that they were capable of making their own features.
"It's like what they said about the Velvet Underground. Almost nobody bought their first album, but virtually everyone who did went off and formed a band. I think the same was true with Clerks."
The most amiable of evangelists, in recent years Smith has taken to touring the world with a series of spoken-word shows that crackle with positive energy and righteous anger. He bounces. He rants. He chuckles. To paraphrase an ancient metaphor, conducting an interview with him is like trying to sip water from a fire hose.
He is amused about current representations of his beloved native New Jersey: "They call that show Jersey Shore, but they're not from New Jersey. Jersey is now identified with a bunch of New Yorkers. But at least we still have Bruce Springsteen."
Raised in an Irish Catholic household, he is properly outraged by the recent activities of the church: “I love God, but I hate his fucking cheerleaders. If you’re a pederast get out and go to jail. Sickening, isn’t it?”
But his main subject is the degeneration of the contemporary movie business. After the success of Clerks, a film about two guys chattering in a convenience store, Smith went on to develop a series of pictures that demonstrated you could make successful projects on your own terms utilising relatively humble budgets. Mallrats, Chasing Amyand Dogmawere supposedly part of a campaign to break the Hollywood stranglehold. The chief revolutionaries were – for a few seconds, anyway – the brothers Weinstein.
“It’s not 1994 any more,” Smith says with a sigh. “I wrote this five years ago, and Harvey said: ‘Bring it to Bob – it’s a horror movie.’ Bob said: ‘Bring it to Harvey – it’s an art film.’ Hey, it’s a $5 million movie. You’ll make this back in your sleep. They just couldn’t see it. That was 2007. Right then and there I knew it was all over.”
The business of independent movie- making, as any of Smith’s Sundance contemporaries might tell you, is simply not what it used to be.
“When I came into the business Disney bought Miramax for $60 million. Last year they bought Marvel Comics for $4 billion. That’s how things have changed. Look what they got out of it. They just dumped Miramax. There’s no money in art house.”
The decline of Miramax, the imprint that brought Tarantino to the masses, is one sign of the way Hollywood has fallen back into old habits. Another is the neutering of the Sundance Film Festival. In the early 1990s, that event still managed to discover deserving nonentities and make them superstars.
“This year, Harvey, whose brother brought me in, calls up our producer and asks him to move the screening because he wants to watch a Jets game,” he says with a weary shrug. Unsurprisingly, Smith and the festival organisers were not going to oblige.
“He came for the first 10 minutes and I open the curtain and he’s talking to his assistant about this fucking Jets game. I had a real blow-up and throw-up moment. I opened the curtain and said: ‘Shut the fuck up!’ He looked like he was going to punch me. I said: ‘You know this is wrong – talking during the movie.’ He said he had family issues. Well, I listened and it was all about that fucking Jets game.”
On the more substantive issue, Smith goes on to explain that Sundance no longer offers films that can inspire genuine amateur filmmakers. One of this year's big hits, Our Idiot Brother, starred Paul Rudd, Elizabeth Banks and Zooey Deschanel. "No kid is going to look at that and – unlike with Clerks– say, 'Hey I could do that."
Happily, Red Statemarks both an advance and a return to basics. The film does feature a few movie stars – John Goodman, for one – but it exhibits the raw chaos of an old-school indie shocker. What's this? Red Statefeatures a Christian cult that looks and sounds very like the notorious Westboro Baptist Church? A brave or perhaps foolhardy fellow, Smith explains that he made contact with the cult, which famously pickets the funerals of soldiers, brandishing signs saying "God Hates Fags!" He found himself torn when the family of a serviceman sued the organisation.
“I felt that, however evil these guys are, you’ve got to hope they win. That’s the thing about free speech. You want them to be able to say what they have to say – however disgusting. What do you do with monsters? You put them on screen and dress them as clowns. That works nicely.”
And yet there is so much generosity in Smith’s work. The film makes sure to poke fun at bigots on both sides of the fence. However vigorous the director gets, he never turns nasty. For all the cussing and dope-chuffing, there’s nothing in a Smith joint that could traumatise, say, his own 11-year-old daughter.
“She can watch whatever of my films she wants,” he says mistily. “She’s mostly bored by the sexual stuff. My great hope is that, in 10 years’ time, she’ll say she saw one of my films and thought it was great.” He takes a rare breath. “And I hope she doesn’t mean it ironically.”
