Kevin Smith makes a career move

By Steven Zeitchik

Kevin Smith is changing.

If you watch "Zack and Miri Make a Porno," which opens today, there won't be much evidence of that. Apart from the fact that there's a woman at the center, the movie is a classic Smithian bromance, all pop-culture references and outrageous gags you're likely to hear repeated (and which of course originated) in the junior-high boys room. (The sweet uplift you've been reading about is there, but it's in the second half and not the movie's main deal).

But Smith is, make no mistake, evolving. The man who's always put the joke first and the idea second wants to reverse that order, if not upend the model entirely. It's a position he outlined, subtly but clearly, in a series of responses during a recent interview Risky Biz conducted with him at his Hollywood Hills home (which is filled with a giant painting of Mickey Mouse and frat-house kitsch like a foosball table, natch).

The simple logline is that he wants to direct more serious films. But his desire is more than that, a fundamental shift not only in what he does but in how he's viewed.

Exhibit A is his next project, "Red State" a political drama about a domestic terrorist that he feels strongly enough about he's wiling to make even without the backing of a studio -- the first time he's done that since his first movie, "Clerks," fifteen years ago.

He describes "Red State" thusly: "It's political, it has something on its mind. It's a bleak movie, it's dark, its not commercial. Everyone dies. It deals with religious issues. It's just a tough pill to swallow. It's not funny."

And with a kind of drive that's at once mid-90's indie and mid-60's auteur -- but certainly not a typical position for a man with a half dozen comedic moneymakers under his belt -- he's pushing on despite the commercial ambivalence.

"I imagine by now i should be like 'If enough people say it stinks, it stinks. And they're not saying it stinks. But they're saying its commercial chances are small. I should be saying 'F%&* it," if enough people say it, it's gotta be true'. But for some reason it pumps me a little but more. I really feel this is what I should be doing right now. So as soon as they say no, they're quick to be like 'But do you have a comedy' and I'm like 'Okay, I get it. I'm the comedy guy.' And I love doing comedy and I'll totally do one after but when I got into indie film, I didn't get into it saying I want to make comic movies. I got into it saying I want to make films."

(BTW, his anecdote about how the Weinstein Company passed is hilariously telling: "They did it like this. Classic Harvey and Bob.  Harvey read it, says 'horror movie, it should go to Bob.' Okay, Bob reads it, goes, 'This is nothing like any horror movie I'd do, so I don't know how to market it. So both of them have this plausible deniability.")

But it's not just enough to get it made -- Smith needs it to work, commercially and critically, for reasons having to do with his...soul.

"'Red State' will be a true indicator of whether or not I'm truly a filmmaker. because most days i don't feel like a filmmaker, I feel like the guy that makes the d@#k and fart joke movies. But if I can pull off a movie in a completely different genre where have no net to fall into in terms of like 'Quick, I'll whip out a c@%k joke or something like that, then maybe i'll feel like a filmmaker."

Of course in the interim Smith has another movie -- "Zack and Miri," whose performance will tell another story.

"If it doesn't do better than our best movie theatrically then we've f@#%ing  failed somehow," Smith says (that amount is Dogma's $31 million).

So what is the over-under on this as a mainstream success for Smith and a company-redeeming play for the Weinstein Company? Smith may have put it at $30 million but we'd say reasonable expectations should be in the $50-60 million range. That will help establish Smith as a mainstream commercial filmmaker -- even if it risks pigeonholing him further as a raunchy-comedy guy.

Comments

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Interesting pic to demonstrate his next film. I hope the election goes that way :)

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