Kevin Smith Starts a Campaign for ‘Red State’
Posted by Adam Sweeney (adam@filmschoolrejects.com) on September 10, 2008
Sara Palin may have dibs on political scandals, but Kevin Smith has some shockers up his sleeve with the upcoming horror Red State.
The sensational staff over at shocktillyoudrop spoke with Kevin Smith about his plans for Red State, a “movie about a group of misfits who end up encountering fundamentalists in the heart of the country.” While Smith wants to get started on the film’s production, he indicated that he may have to hold off until he can scare up some cash flow.
“We’re still looking for some cash for it ’cause it’s not a really commercial film at all. It’s very bleak and very dark, and there’s no one to root for in the movie, so it’s a real film festival type of film, but it’s not the type of movie you can take into multiplexes and do a bunch of business with unless it becomes a water cooler type of movie where people start talking about it,” Smith said in a nominee for run-on sentence of the year.
Smith continued, saying, “We’ve had trouble finding financing for it, but hopefully that will come together soon. Script’s all done. We want to make it for like $5 million in the midwest and just do it with a bunch of unknowns and see what happens. So I mean none of those things add up to people rushing to you with a check. No one’s rushing to give us money for it.”
The choice not to have Smith’s familiar acting posse appear is a wise choice. Jason Mewes is good for a laugh but nobody would take a horror film seriously with him in it. Freddy Vs. Jason already proved that when they they created a character that was a carbon copy of Jay. What will be interesting is to see Smith’s approach to the film. “It is definitely a 180 from everything else we’ve done including Zach and Miri but at the same time, it’s not like a splatter film, it’s not like slasher balls-to-the-wall gore, it’s more unsettling and disturbing type of horror,” he explained.
Most people are familiar with Smith for his New Jersey Trilogy, which featured Clerks, Mallrats, and Chasing Amy. But Smith’s talents extend beyond laughs and dysfunctional romances. He’s been involved in the comic genre as a writer for nearly a decade, and is set to write a limited comic series, “Batman:Cacophony”, that will run this fall. Moviegoers should be excited to see a novel attempt at a horror film. Throw in Diablo Cody, who wrote the horror film Jennifer’s Body, and it looks like comedic writers might be kicking the old guard in Elm Street out.
Are you excited about Kevin Smith’s Red State? What are some of your favorite horror films?
Read more articles by Adam Sweeney
