Why are all the extras pooping in their pants?

We’re getting closer to Christmas, and Hollywood has something for everyone to stuff in their stocking this week, assuming everyone wants The Bourne Legacy, Ted, or Ice Age: Continental Drift. If those titles don’t get you excited, there are plenty of other options that didn’t get the theatrical releases those films did.  We’ve got flicks with Jesse Eisenberg and James Van Der Beek.  We’ve got films about child sex-slaves and shaving and puppeteers.  There’s bigfoots and zombies and hipsters and hobbits.  There’s even a film so FilmDrunk-approved, its theatrical run was literally presented by FilmDrunk.

The DVDs:
The Bourne Legacy
Ted
Ice Age: Continental Drift
Why Stop Now
Backwards
Miami Connection
Trade Of Innocents
Mansome
Rehearsal For A Sicilian Tragedy
Dreams Of A Life
Insane Clown Posse & Twiztid’s American Psycho Tour Documentary
Night Claws
The Life Zone
Upon A Midnight Clear
Nesting
Codependent Lesbian Space Alien Seeks Same
Age Of The Hobbits
Osombie
Creep Van
Halloween Party

Streaming: Check out your choices here.

Can’t remember which flick has FilmDrunk’s coveted blessing?  Continue reading to find out.  Want to find out if the film about child sex-slaves and the film about puppeteers is the same film?  Continue reading. Want to know which films I fairly arbitrarily suggest you watch on Netflix?  Click the streaming link above, but be aware: one of this week’s DVDs is targeted at Juggalos, and you won’t know which one it is unless you continue reading without skipping right to the last page. Read the rest of this entry »

"Okay, listen up: Kevin's gonna need 10 Jack in the Box tacos, a box of Totino's Pizza Rolls, a bag of weed, and three pairs of fresh jean shorts -- the good kind!"

Trailer day continues here on FilmDrunk, with the new red-band trailer for Kevin Smith’s Red State and sh*t. Our favorite jorts-ensconced taint enthusiast (thanks, Chareth) famously told mainstream distributors to suck his weiner at Sundance, where he announced he’d be distributing the film himself, before screening it to a packed house that included Harvey Weinstein talking on his cell phone, whom Smith supposedly told to shut the f*ck up because “in every f*ckin’ tale of fathers and sons, there comes a moment where you step up and say ‘Today I’m a man,’ that kind of bullsh*t.”

What the hell were we talking about again? Oh right, movies. So Red State hits VOD on Labor Day weekend with special event theatrical screenings happening in October, and it looks… surprisingly actiony? Indie horror films aren’t really my “thing” (and might actually be the furthest thing from my thing outside slam poetry), but the entire last minute of the trailer is people shooting machine guns at each other. So that’s… uh… different. The titles also say it comes from “@THATKEVINSMITH”, which is Big Kev’s Twitter handle.

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I haven’t covered Kevin Smith’s great Red State experiment as much as I probably should have, for the simple reason that I’m really lazy, and Kevin Smith can’t so much as order a taco in less than 700 words.  He’s mostly likable, but my God, the man is exhausting.  In any case, the short version is that none of the studios wanted to make Red State, so Smith got it financed himself.  Then he invited studio reps down to Sundance to bid on distribution, where he promptly gave them one of these and said he was distributing it himself.  That way, he wouldn’t be subject to anyone’s notoriously-shady accounting practices or have their wasteful marketing expenses deducted from his bottom line.  If it seems obvious, the reason no one else had done it was that getting your self-distributed film into theaters where people can actually see it is next to impossible.  But when you have a jillion Twitter followers, a popular podcast, and can afford to front your own money to rent out theaters, and then charge people $40-plus for a screening and live Q & A, self-distribution suddenly seems plausible. …Sibilance.

Now it seems that the experiment has paid off, because, despite the fact that almost no one but the jortsingest, most hockey sweatery Smith fanatics have seen it, Red State is already turning a profit.

The film, which cost $5 million to make, saved $1 million from California state tax incentives, making the total investment $4 million. It then grossed about $1 million on the first leg of the tour, took in $1.5 million from a handful of foreign sales and is about to close a $3 million domestic distribution deal to release the film every way but theatrical. Do the math and Smith’s little experiment is now officially in the black, and it’s still six months away from theatrical distribution with another tour in the works. [SlashFilm's recap of info from Smith]

Say what you will about the combination of hubris and narcissism it may have taken to get it done, it’s still an achievement.  Smith celebrated in typical Smith fashion, writing an exhausting (but entertaining) 3,000-word blog post about screening the film for Quentin Tarantino, which I shall attempt to summarize below.

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UPDATE: I added the new trailer at the bottom.

At Sundance, Kevin Smith made headlines for faking everyone out at a screening of Red State, where, after inviting studio people out to bid on distribution rights, he bought the rights himself for $20, which I imagine he promptly spent on a new pair of baggy jean shorts from Ross.   (That’s the short version, anyway. For the full story, see Jay & Silent Bob’s Smoddy Red State Podcast parts one through 387). 

On Saturday, at Radio City Music Hall, the first of 14 planned locations across the country, a screening of Red State grossed $161,000. That would qualify it for the 10th-highest per-theater average ever, though it’s sort of cheating, considering the average ticket price for the 3,800 paying customers was around $43, and because the screening included an insanely thorough Q & A with the director himself, who told stories about each individual frame, including what he had for breakfast that morning and the contents of his bowels.

And if you’re looking to do more math (YAY, MATH!), Smith said he paid $60,000 to rent out the theater, and the movie cost $4 million to make.  Meaning he’d need to do about 40 of these shows to earn his money back, although that doesn’t include what he earned on his books, soundtracks, posters, monogrammed snuggies, and kissing booth.

Post-screening Smith took to the stage with most of his major cast members — including John Goodman, Melissa Leo and Stephen Root — fielding questions from adoring fanboys and even a few girls.
Goodman warded off applause for his earlier oeuvre, and Leo bantered with Smith over her own foul-mouthed slip at the Oscars (“I have a really hard time thinking that’s the first time that happened,” she quipped).
“Let this be a lesson to you that anyone can rent Radio City Music Hall,” Smith told the crowd, “even a fat kid from New Jersey.” [THR]

Yeah, yeah, you’re a regular guy, we get it, you can stop dressing like you’re going to a Candlebox concert now.  Asked whether the film itself was actually any good, one journalist covering the event quipped, “The who with the what now?”

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Oh yeah, like that's a novelty.

Every time I want to jump on the internets-hate-Kevin-Smith-now bandwagon, and it’s often tempting, I’ll hear him on some radio show and can’t help but think that he’s still a pretty likable guy.  And anyway, what’s so wrong with wanting to distribute his own movies?  He might take forever to get to the damned point (and sh*t), but it still seems like a perfectly worthwhile, not-necessarily-narcissistic goal (and whatnot).  That being said, when you show up on daytime TV talking to Joy Behar about your recent weight loss, that seems like a pretty clear indication that you’ve overshared.

The director and ‘Jay and Silent Bob’ star told Joy Behar about his 65-pound weight loss in a high-energy interview that led her to ask, “Are you on amphetamines?”

Ouch.  Damn, son, you just got asked if you were on drugs by a chick that used to work with Sherri Shepard.  Then again, I guess anyone would seem like a speed freak compared to those lobotomized lumps.
Sorry, back to the interview.  So, Kev, tell us, why the f*ck are you still wearing that butt-ugly hockey sweater?

Smith told Behar he “spent most of my life yo-yoing in terms of weight” and likes to wear loose-fitting hockey jerseys no matter what his weight is. “I call up Omar the tent maker,” he joked. “Get me a hockey jersey, and he takes all the rayon, all this material … and makes my jersey. It’s a whole team I’m wearing! I’m wearing twelve kids on my chest.”

Haha, great, that totally makes sense now.  I’m glad we had this talk. I can’t wait to see Kevin Smith eye-raping me at the checkout stand from the cover of his next People Magazine tell-all exclusive, “I LOVE SHANTS! Clerks director finally comes clean about his lifelong love of the relaxed fit, hatred of exposed leg skin.”

Anyway, here’s a new clip from Red State.  (Remember that?  Kevin Smith directs movies.)

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