By Jason Apuzzo. Apparently Kevin Smith hasn’t gotten the message about how we’re all supposed to ‘tone down our political rhetoric’ in the wake of the Tucson shooting. Take a deep breath and check out the new teaser trailer for Red State above.
Since Smith is going forward with his forthcoming Red State debut at Sundance, I can only assume he didn’t catch President Obama’s recent speech in Tucson during which the President made the following remarks:
[A]t a time when our discourse has become so sharply polarized – at a time when we are far too eager to lay the blame for all that ails the world at the feet of those who think differently than we do – it’s important for us to pause for a moment and make sure that we are talking with each other in a way that heals, not a way that wounds …
We may not be able to stop all evil in the world, but I know that how we treat one another is entirely up to us. I believe that for all our imperfections, we are full of decency and goodness, and that the forces that divide us are not as strong as those that unite us.
The Red State trailer wallows in exceptionally ugly, inflammatory and hateful stereotypes at the worst possible moment. I hope Smith understands what he’s unleashing here. The sad thing is that he probably does, and doesn’t care.
[UPDATE: Red State is currently expected to have its distribution rights sold by Sunday night – the evening of its debut – for around $4 million. Meanwhile, Joel Surnow’s The Kennedys currently has no distributor whatsoever.]
Posted on January 20th, 2011 at 1:48pm.
That’s quite all right Mr. Smith, I have no plans to tone down my principles and see your foul movie. Somehow I’m guessing the majority of America is with me on that.
Ditto, Shin.
I couldn’t watch the trailer because I am at work, but I can guess what’s in it. Who really cares? Once this movie bombs, we will only have to put up with Clerks 3 more than likely. After that, he can fade back into irrelevance. I never understood how he got so famous. None of his films have been grade A in my opinion.
I only care because the film is appearing in America’s premier film festival – and is taking up a spot that other films could take. As a filmmaker myself, I definitely do care about that.
Jason- Unfortunately, I work in insurance and not your line of work. I hear you though.
Trust me, most of the time this stuff rolls right off my back. Even I get cranky, though.
I was surprised and disappointed to see a glimpse of John Goodman in there. How’d they get him? Perhaps I missed something, but I never pegged him for an extreme lefty (or maybe they just all are with rare exception). I always thought he was a good actor. What’s he doing in this film? Isn’t it beneath him?
For a lot of actors, a gig is a gig. I doubt he even thought much about it.
It’s been well documented that Smith’s career was on terminal guidance directly into the toilet. I reading is that is a last ditch attempt to again become relevant by the tried and true method of attacking the right.
Agreed. Believe me, I hesitate even posting on this film – because I’m not eager to draw any more attention to this project than is necessary. At the same time, I haven’t seen anyone commenting on this trailer in the run-up to Sundance – which is amazing.
Mr. Smith, according to his own biography, spends most of his time sitting around his lavish home eating take out food, smoking pot, and having “animal-like” sex with his wife while his daughter plays in the other room. Knowing that, ugly stereotypes do not surprise me a bit.
I liked Clerks…I thought it was a fresh idea, especially on such a tiny budget, and I actually thought a lot of the humor was clever. Mr. Smith, however, has decided that smoking weed all the time and acting like a child in an adult body is the way to go, so his sense of humor and his outlook on various types of people reflect a lot of that
Another way of putting it is that he’s become like a living, breathing parody of fanboy culture.
Lasts 30 seconds and happens twice a year? I could believe that.
By the way, he named his daughter Harley Quinn. I get that the whole fanboy thing is a feature, not a bug, for his image – but he sees his newborn daughter and his mind goes straight to ‘minor Batman villains’?
Better than a ‘major’ villain from Thor, one supposes …
We actually are in a sick place in our political discourse – just not at all in the way the left assumes.
What’s sick, and dangerous, is that the same side of the spectrum gets to spew hate and bile by the intestineful at the other side, AND to hold the rhetorical high ground as the Pure Ones. It’s sites like this one that are actually trying to do something about that, which is why I’ll always be here, for as long as Jason and Govindini wish to continue.
But I don’t believe we’ll have torn down the walls of the cultural fortress until projects like Red State are considered as vile as they, in reality, are. The enormity of that task makes a vanguard effort like Libertas all the more admirable.
I appreciate the sentiment very much, SeeSaw. I only wish we could do more here …
I agree that the box-office future looks dim for this rancid project, as other commenters have predicted – but in a way that’s part of the problem. When most films are so depressingly tailored to box-office considerations and box-office considerations alone, it is always especially noticeable when Hollywood goes outon a limb like this. Every so often a clearly dumper bound project like this gets greenlighted and suicidally over-promoted, because its makers and backers think it lends them respect and prestige. In other words it’s done as a good deed, and therefore even the defence of mindlessness is denied it. When you think of how many truly great and important and worthy subjects are denied screen treatment precisely because they are not bankable, it makes the occasional abomination like this all the more reprehensible.
A wonderful point, Matthew. There is, alas, a scarcity of resources in the film world – and so projects like this do cancel out other, worthier projects that might get made.
Is Kevin Smith still making films? Oh well … just another chapter in the long story of lefty hypocrisy.
Smith is a classic example — as is Robert Rodriquez — of a filmmaker that never challenged himself, and consequently never grew.
I guess they have “Red State”. I’ll take “Atlas Shrugged.”
Here’s the big difference though, Vince: Red State will likely have its distribution locked up after this weekend. Atlas Shrugged may get no distribution whatsoever.
It may be Red State is the Theocratic Nightmare scenario like Handmaid’s Tale which people I think is absurd. What bothers the angry left is economic and the movie could be made that falsely portrays the USA as a robber baron state when really it is a worker’s paradise and a poor person’s paradise absolutely and relatively when compared with other nations and dramatically so when compared with past centuries. The poverte level is $22,000 + in-kind benefits for a family of four. That does not include all that’s free in the USA [libraries, parks, etc.].
Nobody ever worries about the Moroncratic Nightmare scenario, however, which is what Smith’s films seem to represent.