Initially, this wasn’t meant as a blog post. It started as something I was going to pitch to film sites as an essay idea but then just wrote it up as a writing exercise. I liked it enough to throw it up here. It’s also timely, as Kevin Smith will turn 50 on Sunday. Your regularly scheduled “Life in Asia” content will return next week. Enjoy.
In the past few months, I’ve been getting back into screenwriting and filmmaking. Covid-19 has obviously made it difficult to do any kind of production but I’ve been doing a lot of writing and, at least, planning for some future shoots. With that in mind, I realized that Kevin Smith, a writer and filmmaker that has inspired me multiple times to pursue this path, is quickly coming up on his 50th birthday. Even, if you aren’t a fan of his films, if you are trying to become a filmmaker, there are worse models to try and emulate than Smith.
Clerks was one of the first films that I saw that made me want to be a filmmaker. Made for a budget just over $27,000, this was the first time that a feature film seemed like something that was possible to make. Smith often talks about how seeing Richard Linklater’s Slacker at a midnight screening made him want to go to film school and become a filmmaker. He did and just four years later, he released Clerks. I think I saw it for the first time in early 1995 and, like Smith after seeing Slacker, it started me on the path to becoming a filmmaker.
I came of age in that golden age of indie filmmaking that was the early 1990s. I watched films like Clerks, Slacker, El Mariachi, Reservoir Dogs, Gas Food Lodging, and Dazed and Confused seemingly on repeat. I read about these upcoming directors in Premiere and Filmmaker Magazines and explored the catalogs of the directors they said had inspired them. I was convinced that soon it would be my face that would be gracing the covers of these magazines.
I did go to film school in Pittsburgh. I was the last class through to actually shoot and edit everything on film, which cost a small fortune to make even five-minute student films. Once I graduated from film school, I worked on a few projects that were coming through Pittsburgh. I was too broke to move to LA and I also thought that in Pittsburgh there was a decent enough film scene and it offered the chance to be a bigger fish in a smaller pond. Plus, Smith, Linklater, Robert Rodriguez, and many other of the filmmakers I admired had come from and were working outside of Hollywood.
I knew the odds were stacked against me but I thought success would somehow come easy. I expected that soon I would write a script that would be good enough to raise a little bit of money so that I could shoot it locally, place it in festivals, and cause a bidding war among distributors. The first few screenplays I wrote were terrible. I was trying to write like Smith, or Tarantino, or Linklater. Sometimes all three at once. Besides that, while I knew the amount of luck involved in not just making a film but getting a distribution deal, I never really accepted it as reality.
Smith would be the first to tell you that he was incredibly lucky that the Village Voice’s Amy Taubin happened to catch a screening of Clerks. Her review was what helped it get it into Sundance and eventually picked up by Miramax. Had she not seen it, Clerks could have been just another great low-budget film that hardly anyone saw. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of those out there. One of my favorite films is an ultra-low-budget film called, You Are Alone, written and directed by Gorman Bechard that was on the festival circuit in 2005 but most people I talk to have never heard of it.
All wasn’t for naught in Pittsburgh. I found some likeminded collaborators and we worked on some projects together. Shorts, no-to-low budgets, documentaries; I worked on several different projects with a lot of good people. I even did a little work in front of the camera appearing as an extra in a couple of bigger Hollywood films but also acting in a number of local low-budget films. The Flint Journal even reviewed one of my performances as “exuding every-man charisma.” Beat that Daniel Day-Lewis!
I also worked on developing a few projects that I thought could be good enough to raise a decent budget. I flew out to LA a few times for some meetings that I hoped would lead to something. We came close to getting a few things made. Really close in one or two cases. This should have inspired me. It should have told me that my hard work was on the verge of paying off. I should have doubled down and kept up the press. Instead, I had the opposite reaction. I became frustrated that people weren’t recognizing my “genius” or at least the genius of the projects I was proud to be working on. Looking back now, I realize how foolish I was.
Smith would inspire me as a filmmaker again in 2011, when his horror film Red State premiered at Sundance. Never mind that the film was a well-directed, Westboro Baptist Church-inspired horror film that showcased a new side of the up-until-now comedic filmmaker, it’s what happened after the screening that me double down on my Kevin Smith fandom. Normally, every filmmaker dreams of selling their film after a successful screening at Sundance and when Smith took the stage after the screening, many assumed he would be making a pitch for a distributor to take a chance on a well-known comedic filmmaker working in a new genre. Instead, Smith turned the tables.
He bounded to the stage in a hockey sweater and wielding a hockey stick, honestly, both are pretty on-brand for Smith. Slash Film has a great recap of this, as well as the video here, but at the podium, he auctioned off the rights to Red State and promptly closed it with his own bid of $20. He then went on a long rant, again not out of the ordinary as he is never short of words, about how the Hollywood distribution system was broken and he was taking a chance on himself instead. He explained the hockey stick as a tip of the cap to one of his idols, Wayne Gretzky, who famously said you don’t skate to where the puck is, you skate to where it’s heading. Smith was trying to do the same thing. He announced that he was going to four-wall his film, taking it out on the road, screening it with fans, and then doing Q&As in the theater afterward.
Smith had built up a big following in his years as a filmmaker, only partly attributed to his films. He was one of the first to podcast and has since created a ridiculous amount of podcasts with a variety of themes and topics. Still, at the time, his idea of four-walling Red State seemed crazy. He was lambasted in Deadline, the Hollywood Reporter, and virtually all of Hollywood. I, however, perked my head up. As someone who had failed to break through the gatekeepers in the film industry, I was on his side. I thought it was crazy enough to work. The more I read about it, the more I thought that this would become the future. Hollywood routinely spends $20-25 million to market a $5 million movie. Instead of wasting all that money appealing to the masses, Smith would take his movie straight to the fans.
Kevin Kelly has written a famous blog post about needing 1,000 true fans to be successful as a creator. Smith obviously had more than that but he was using the same concept. The reason that this has inspired me wasn’t for his “fuck you” to Hollywood, although that was quite enjoyable. The real reason is that it has allowed Smith to do what he wants and make the kinds of films that he wants to make. And that is really the dream of any creator.
As technology becomes cheaper and the amount of networks and streaming services continues to grow like weeds, the gatekeepers are becoming less and less relevant. Smith jumped on board in the infancy of this trend. Granted he was already financially and artistically successful at that point, but he was still betting on himself for his creative future. If you are trying to become a filmmaker and have your work seen, you no longer have to pay your dues in the Hollywood system. It’s more important to create and nurture your own audience. Work on building your 1,000 true fans. Smith was the first one that made me start thinking this way but it’s since become a much bigger trend.
I met Smith once in 2008, when he was in Pittsburgh shooting Zack and Miri Make a Porno. I was working at the luxury apartments where he and much of the cast and crew stayed. He couldn’t have been more friendly or humble. As I continue to not throw in the towel and trying to “make it” as a writer and filmmaker, I just wanted to tip my cap to someone that has inspired me over the years. Happy 50th, Kevin Smith!