Did Kevin Smith Have a 'Red State' Implosion at Sundance?

Deadline say so…

Kevin Smith lost some cred with indie distributors last night when he hosed the teams that came to the premiere of Red State looking for an acquisitions title. Instead, they were subjected to a bogus auction that opened and closed with his $20 bid and announcement he would self distribute. Before he got to this sham climax, Smith spent 15 minutes shitting all over those buyers in the crowd, the ones watching films all day and pulling all-nighters to broker deals. His rant made Smith seem like a tortured, angry guy.

[youtube exm22OReBmA nolink]

—–

Smith introduced the film with a vulgar opening monologue, low-lighted by a spectacularly tasteless joke made at the expense of the young female producer standing next to him. After the movie, Smith reappeared. Wearing a hockey jersey, he introduced Wayne Gretzky’s stick, for some reason. Despite this hockey-themed beginning, Smith was oblivious to the fact we all simply wanted him to drop the puck and get on with the auction. Instead, Smith launched into his 15-minute long diatribe that betrayed a misunderstanding of the indie theatrical distribution game. He gave a simplistic and incorrect evaluation of the business model. Smith said if he sold his $4 million Red State, a distributor would need to pay $20 million in P&A, and would then need to gross more than twice that $24 million just to recoup (Smith seemed to forget that P&A triggers ancillary revenues that often provide the profit margin). He made it all sound shady.

The Hollywood Reporter pretty much backs that up…

“What we need to prove is that anyone can release a movie,” Smith said from the Eccles stage as part of a long and profanity-laced speech after the movie ended during which he championed Harvey Weinstein as an inspiration and mentor. “Indie film isn’t dead, it just grew up. It is just indie film 2.0 now. In indie film 2.0, we don’t let them sell our movie, we sell our movie ourselves.”

The film will go out via Smith’s SModcast Pictures with no marketing spend, though he said that he will talk to “any smart exhibitor” about potentially showing the movie.

“We are going to make our money back by going out on the road and going city by city,” said Smith. The tour will begin March 5 at Radio City Music Hall in New York City and make a stop at Midland Theater in Kansas City one week later.

In his more than 20-minute speech, Smith lambasted movie studios for a system he said is unfair and outdated and too focused on advertising. Smith said that he had never intended to get into the business of the movie industry — noting that he’s simply a “fat, masturbating stoner” — but the state of the industry essentially forced his hand.

“It’s too much fucking horseshit. I just want to tell fuckin’ stories,” he said.

The planned auction wasn’t the only element of the Red State screening that had generated buzz. Pastor Fred Phelps’ anti-homosexual Westboro Baptist Church carried out its planned protest of the film. Smith has been open about Phelps being the muse for the film’s villain, Pastor Abin Cooper (Michael Parks). The Topeka, Kan.-based church is known for its extreme anti-homosexual ideology; in the film Cooper heads a fundamentalist church that carries out murders of those it considers sinners — chiefly gay people.