Kevin Smith’s Twitter Tirade (December 30, 2010)

Wow, it’s been an interesting day on the Twittersphere today, hasn’t it? Just a few days after director Kevin Smith publicly stated he would not do interviews with press for his upcoming film Red State, he’s let loose with a bunch more thoughts on movie bloggers, his career, the film industry, plus extended a strange offer.

The following tweets are from Smith’s Twitter account today. I’ve aggregated them all here for easy reading. Looking on the entire corpus, it’s a breathtaking, intense critique, and a personal account of a man who’s trying to reinvent himself.

A few movie websites this morning have chided me for talking about not doing press on Red State. Number one, that’s ironic right there. Even I say I’m not doing Red State press…and press writes about it. But I never said I’m not talking: said I always talk plenty right here. So if you can always ask me anything you want right here (and often get a LONG-ASS response), what’s the damage? Besides, the only story in RedState that really needs telling is the MichaelParks story – and, as per usual, NOBODY is writing it. “Gotta wait & see on the Parks of it all. Don’t wanna be out front, first with THAT story. Now – the boring story of how KevinSmith Tweeted he’s not doing press? THAT’S news!”

And one month from now, when EVERYONE ELSE is writing the MichaelParks story, these websites who wasted their time/space on a fruitless war of words with me are gonna wonder why other websites get more hits/have more followers/earn more than their site does. I’M TELLING YOU THIS FAR OUT: why the FUCK aren’t you writing about the MichaelParks story? First one out there gets the top Google hits. But these swing have zero vision; it’s all “Kevin Smith is gonna hurt his career not talking to press.” Seriously: Someone actually wrote that story today (naturally it was a movie news site). The site that’s accomplished merely a fraction of wha tother movie sites in the online fraternity/sorority have, suggested that – since I’m not gonna play the game the normal, boring way, I’m gonna hurt my career.

Once again, these motherfuckers are a day late and a dollar short? Hurt Kevin Smith’s career? Have you SEEN this: smodcast.com? I ain’t hurting the career of Kevin Smith, I’m taking a fucking chainsaw to the career of Kevin Smith. That’s what you gotta do as an artist: when everyone’s comfy, pull the fucking chair out from under their settled asses while showing ’em something they’re not used to seeing from anybody, least of all YOU. And if you lose some people in the process, so be it: art should be a little dangerous, scary & thrilling – ESPECIALLY for the artist. You think there isn’t some tiny part of me that stops & says “You can make this SO much easier on yourself & the journey of this film if you just do what you’ve ALWAYS done and go hat-in-hand to the snark-factory…”? But nothing about RedState has been done conventionally; why should I start NOW? Best piece of advice I can give a bunch of people who only wanna shit on what I do? Go find MichaelParks and BECOME the interview of record. Stop writing about how you’re mad at me, or how I’m not doing it your way, or how I’m gonna hurt myself. Write about something original: the guy who the entire WORLD is about to wanna talk to. The money’s out there; pick it up it’s yours; you don’t, I got no sympathy for you.

“Hurt Kevin Smith’s Career”? Bitch, I’ve ANNIHILATED Kevin Smith’s Career. And now? I get to remake it, all over again. And I’ve got a dopey movie blogger to thank for it: one day, one of these hymens wrote “Kevin Smith owes his career to people like me” – said people being bloggers, critics, movie journalists. I gave this some serious thought & realized I’d never know whether that theory was true or not.

But while I couldn’t validate the veracity of the statement, I realized it didn’t matter: if people like this were to thank for my career, then I didn’t want that career anymore. So I made SModcast. And now RedState. And then combined the two. And realized I could do it without the help of the same people who don’t seem to have anything nice to say about not only my flicks, but ANYBODY’S flicks they see. Their game is rigged; why play it? I go to the carnival, I wanna ride the roller-coaster, not waste money on the rigged games of chance, the rewards of which are cheap, empty prizes that don’t seem nearly as cool in the light of day, away from the cotton candy haze. If they weren’t convinced that I made my own way the first time, I’m happy (and more importantly, EXCITED) to do it again, one more time – just to prove that point.

And if you’re gonna make art, you SHOULD reinvent periodically anyway. Lots of jackasses writing about my craft & how I conduct it weren’t even BORN when I built my shit from scratch. They can’t possibly be expected to be impressed by shit they couldn’t witness for themselves because they were just cum when it happened the first time. So rather than continue being the same ol’ KevinSmith that all these movie sites kept insisting I was, I practiced my game, skated night & day, and learned to stay out of the scrum & figure out where the puck was going. I stopped being the KevinSmith they loved to bitch about; the KevinSmith they chided to change. So I changed. And guess what? Now they’re bitching about that? And trying to scare me with some booga-booga bullshit about hurting my career. Like I said: the game’s rigged. So why play it on THEIR terms? KobayashiMaru that shit: at the very worst, you get bitched-out by cowards. At best? You BECOME James Tiberius Kirk.

Shortly afterwards, Smith extended an offer for up to 48 movie webmasters to go to his house for a screening of Red State, which prompted a whole other wave of hand-wringing and further questions. I’ll address the implications of that offer in a separate post.

The End of the World Began on October 5, 2010

Cord Jefferson argues that he knows PRECISELY when the end of the world began:

Most people don’t know this, but the beginning of the end of the world happened on October 5 of this year. That’s the day Frito-Lay announced it was ceasing production of most of its compostable bags due to customer noise complaints. That is, full-grown adults had whined so much about the biodegradable bags’ unusually loud crinkling that Frito-Lay caved and returned to housing its chips in standard, difficult-to-recycle mylar containers. It was one of the dumbest decisions made this year, and it went largely unnoticed for the abomination it was.

Pajiba’s Brutal Takedown of Kevin Smith (and Movie Bloggers)

When Dustin Rowles from Pajiba gets pissed, I get the hell out of the way. There’s something I find addictive about Rowles’ incendiary language. It’s the language of righteous indignation, language that doesn’t give a ____ who or what gets caught up in the ensuing maelstrom. And because his latest attack targets both director Kevin Smith and some of my fellow movie blogger colleagues (and probably myself?), I present an excerpt here without further comment:

If you follow Kevin Smith over on the Twitter, I pity you. I follow Kevin Smith because I love the guy, but Jesus Christ: The man alternates between two personalities: Pitch-man, trying to sell his wares and promote his film (and the endless Smodcasts) or King of the Motherfucking Bitches. Everyone complains on Twitter — my God, it’s an endless stream of whiny motherfuckers who are either detailing every goddamn boo boo they’ve ever experienced, or taking umbrage with something someone else said or wrote. I bet you didn’t know that there were 140 characters in “YOU SUCK! PAY ATTENTION TO ME,” but that’s probably because you don’t follow enough movie bloggers on Twitter.

But nobody whines more than Kevin Smith, not even the movie bloggers who constantly whine about Kevin Smith. Lately, the dude refuses to shut the fuck up about movie critics and movie blogs and how they’re ruining society and sending us into a dark dystopian future where we’ll never be free to run Cop Out on a continuous loop until our fucking brains bleed out of our head.

The Last Processor of Kodachrome

A sad story from the NYTimes about the last processor of Kodachrome (the first successful color film):

At the peak, there were about 25 labs worldwide that processed Kodachrome, but the last Kodak-run facility in the United States closed several years ago, then the one in Japan and then the one in Switzerland. Since then, all that was left has been Dwayne’s Photo. Last year, Kodak stopped producing the chemicals needed to develop the film, providing the business with enough to continue processing through the end of 2010. And last week, right on schedule, the lab opened up the last canister of blue dye.

I still think back with nostalgia to my college days, when I spent countless hours in the darkroom, developing and printing film on real photo paper. And while I love the convenience of digital, I’m sad that this way of photography is slowly fading…

Viagra Cinema

Matt Singer has an insightful piece on how Sylvester Stallone’s films have mirrored the actor’s career:

What Stallone’s done is basically without precedent. All of his former rivals for action film supremacy have faded away or moved on; all of his predecessors turned to moodier and more reflective work by the time they were his age. This is a situation that suits Stallone, since endurance was always the most important value of the “Rocky” movies. Rocky Balboa’s greatest strength as a boxer wasn’t his footwork or his punching power; on those fronts, he was mediocre fighter. What made Rocky extraordinary was his ability to take a punch and never go down. Though he has occasionally tried to distance himself from the character in his career (typically when he’s working on something other than blue-collar action films) it’s clear that Balboa is an extremely autobiographical character for Stallone. Rocky’s story is Stallone’s story: the dreams of an opportunity to prove your greatness, the struggle to remain hungry amidst the trappings of success and fame, the realization that you’ve lost your spark, the desire for one last chance.

When Journalists Fight About Wikileaks

I was going to write a blog post detailing the battle currently taking place between Glenn Greenwald and Wired magazine but Blake Hounshell has already done it for me:

I love a good blog fight as much as anyone, but after reading several thousand words of accusations and counter accusations being slung between Salon blogger Glenn Greenwald and Wired’s Evan Hansen and Kevin Poulsen, I’m left scratching my head trying to figure out what, exactly, this particular dispute is all about. For those of you who haven’t been paying attention, first of all: congratulations.

How Wired’s “Collar Bomb Heist” Story Came Together

Every now and then, I come across a feature article that’s so enthralling, it demands my attention and won’t surrender it until I finish reading. Rich Schapiro’s “The Incredible True Story of the Collar Bomb Heist” for Wired magazine’s January 2011 issue is one of those pieces. It’s written with such energy and momentum, and leads to such a devastating conclusion, that I daresay it is one of the best reading experiences I’ve had all year. The article begins as follows:

At 2:28 pm on August 28, 2003, a middle-aged pizza deliveryman named Brian Wells walked into a PNC Bank in Erie, Pennsylvania. He had a short cane in his right hand and a strange bulge under the collar of his T-shirt. Wells, 46 and balding, passed the teller a note. “Gather employees with access codes to vault and work fast to fill bag with $250,000,” it said. “You have only 15 minutes.” Then he lifted his shirt to reveal a heavy, boxlike device dangling from his neck. According to the note, it was a bomb. The teller, who told Wells there was no way to get into the vault at that time, filled a bag with cash—$8,702—and handed it over. Wells walked out, sucking on a Dum Dum lollipop he grabbed from the counter, hopped into his car, and drove off. He didn’t get far. Some 15 minutes later, state troopers spotted Wells standing outside his Geo Metro in a nearby parking lot, surrounded him, and tossed him to the pavement, cuffing his hands behind his back. Wells told the troopers that while out on a delivery he had been accosted by a group of black men who chained the bomb around his neck at gunpoint and forced him to rob the bank. “It’s gonna go off!” he told them in desperation. “I’m not lying.”

When a piece begins like that and doesn’t let up for 5,000+ words, you know you’re in for a literary treat. The piece is now online in its entirety, and I’d strongly suggest you go read it immediately. I’ll wait.

I had the chance to chat with Schapiro about how he put together the piece. Schapiro spent hundreds of hours poring over public records, case files, and court documents. He interviewed over 70 individuals, which included, according to Schapiro, “friends of the people who were charged, people who were charged themselves [that] I developed relationships with, people who worked on the case — the local people in Erie, the county coroner, people in the county courthouse…” It’s a staggering work of journalism that spans years and I’m impressed at how tightly the final piece reads given how much work Schapiro put into it.

When I asked him what the hardest part of writing the feature was, Schapiro explained:

The story has so many turns. It really is, I think, a case of truth-stranger-than-fiction. You couldn’t make this stuff up, what actually happens between these characters. The sequencing — telling the story, trying to figure out the order, ordering the story in such a way that it makes sense and will allow readers to follow along…it’s very easy to get lost in the bizarre events that happened after Brian Wells passed away, and actually, what led to that as well. So, telling the story in an organized, meaningful way that is still gripping and still accessible for readers was one of the greater challenges. Fortunately, and I can’t say this enough, the editors I was working with at Wired were fantastic and, no doubt, improved the story.

Indeed, with so many characters and with such a complex timeline, the challenge of pulling together an enthralling, coherent narrative must have been considerable, but I think the feature pulls this off expertly.

I told Rich how cinematic I thought the piece was, and how it bears certain similarities to the Saw series of movies. But Rich brought up another parallel, saying, “What I kept thinking about when I was writing was its similarities to another film: The Usual Suspects.” It’s an apt comparison that gives you a sense of how twisted and surprising the final story becomes. In the end, “The Collar Bomb” heist piece is the perfect marriage of solid investigative journalism and skillful, stylish writing. And if you haven’t read it yet, go check it out now!

Here’s the audio of my entire interview with Schapiro:

Disney Has a Command Center to Maintain Line Movements

Apparently, every part of the Disney experience is carefully managed, including line wait times:

Deep in the bowels of Walt Disney World, inside an underground bunker called the Disney Operational Command Center, technicians know that you are standing in line and that you are most likely annoyed about it. Their clandestine mission: to get you to the fun faster.

Looks like The Simpsons was right on in their portrayal.