Tough Sh*t: Life Advice From a Fat, Lazy Slob Who Did Good by Kevin Smith Page B
Book: Tough Sh*t: Life Advice From a Fat, Lazy Slob Who Did Good by Kevin Smith
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Authors: Kevin Smith
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more P. T. Barnum than P. T. Anderson when it comes to getting a film out there. That’s because I was trained by Harvey Weinstein—the slickest salesman since Don Draper.
After Miramax picked up
Clerks
at Sundance 1994, Harvey had Scott and me up to his office for a “Welcome to the family” chitchat. As Scott and I sat across the desk from him, Harvey was approving artwork, looking at a recut scene, fielding power phone calls, and generally multitasking like a cartoon octopus, all while dropping pearls of wisdom on me and Mos. But it was one particular bon mot he’d drop that would define the type of showman I’d become.
“In my experience, the movie doesn’t begin and end when the lights go down and the lights come up,” Harvey proclaimed, while cracking open another Diet Coke. “If you’re really good at your job, the movie begins long before they get to the theater. And if you’re a fucking magician? It never ends—even after the credits roll.”
It could’ve just been some bullshit a movie mogul says to kids who’re tryin’ to make good, but I actually saw his words in practice a few months later when
Clerks
screened at the WorldFest-Houston. After the flick, Mos and I got up and did Q&A—which had developed into more of a slacker joke-fest, as I couldn’t take
Clerks
or it’s production as seriously as most other filmmakers treated their films at film festival Q&A’s. How could I? The flick was ninety minutes full of dick jokes, set in a convenience store.
So while I tried to be informative during the Q&A, I tried more than anything else to be entertaining first and foremost. If someone puts you in front of a crowd with a microphone in your hand, I’ve always felt it’s your duty to give ’em a little bit of a show. Dial it up and snap into performance mode so nobody gets bored or starts to wonder, “Why are they letting this fat guy talk to me?” At that particular Q&A, Mos and I were on fire that evening, regaling the audience with tales of getting the cat to shit on cue. When the laughs were done and the folks were filing out, I overheard a conversation between a pair of exiting audience members: two dudes around my age at the time, maybe a little older. Their exchange went
exactly
like this.
GUY 1: What’d you think of the movie?
GUY 2: I thought it sucked. But the fat guy was
funny
.
Guy 2 didn’t dig
Clerks
, and that might’ve been the end of it. He might’ve never sampled my wares again. But by simply talking and telling stories about the making of the movie, I’d reached him: He’d now likely try something else I made in the future. The movie hadn’t ended when the credits rolled because we kept the experience going. And somehow, it buttressed what’d gone before—which was weak in Guy 2’s mind.
That only works, however, if you get ’em in the door in the first place. But how do you get ’em off their couches and into the theaters?
You make a little noise.
As Miramaxkateers, we were taught to always use the press to our advantage—manipulate it, even, if you could. Commercials and newspaper ads or billboards for a movie were cost-prohibitive. The press, however? Cheap and voraciously hungry at all times. Lots of inches to fill every day in those newspapers, Harvey’d remind us, pointing out that
someone
had to give ’em something to write about. And with almost
every
Miramax release, he somehow found a way to get people talking, long before the flick was playing anywhere
near
them—without heavy marketing spends in other media. That’s because Harvey’s marketing campaigns in the mid-’90s weren’t based on TV spots: They were based on creating a story around every movie so that there’d be press interest, with or without movie stars.
When
Clerks
went before the Motion Picture Association of America’s ratings board in 1994, the flick received a prohibitive NC-17. Normally, this X-rating replacement was reserved for films that depicted sex and adult
After Miramax picked up
Clerks
at Sundance 1994, Harvey had Scott and me up to his office for a “Welcome to the family” chitchat. As Scott and I sat across the desk from him, Harvey was approving artwork, looking at a recut scene, fielding power phone calls, and generally multitasking like a cartoon octopus, all while dropping pearls of wisdom on me and Mos. But it was one particular bon mot he’d drop that would define the type of showman I’d become.
“In my experience, the movie doesn’t begin and end when the lights go down and the lights come up,” Harvey proclaimed, while cracking open another Diet Coke. “If you’re really good at your job, the movie begins long before they get to the theater. And if you’re a fucking magician? It never ends—even after the credits roll.”
It could’ve just been some bullshit a movie mogul says to kids who’re tryin’ to make good, but I actually saw his words in practice a few months later when
Clerks
screened at the WorldFest-Houston. After the flick, Mos and I got up and did Q&A—which had developed into more of a slacker joke-fest, as I couldn’t take
Clerks
or it’s production as seriously as most other filmmakers treated their films at film festival Q&A’s. How could I? The flick was ninety minutes full of dick jokes, set in a convenience store.
So while I tried to be informative during the Q&A, I tried more than anything else to be entertaining first and foremost. If someone puts you in front of a crowd with a microphone in your hand, I’ve always felt it’s your duty to give ’em a little bit of a show. Dial it up and snap into performance mode so nobody gets bored or starts to wonder, “Why are they letting this fat guy talk to me?” At that particular Q&A, Mos and I were on fire that evening, regaling the audience with tales of getting the cat to shit on cue. When the laughs were done and the folks were filing out, I overheard a conversation between a pair of exiting audience members: two dudes around my age at the time, maybe a little older. Their exchange went
exactly
like this.
GUY 1: What’d you think of the movie?
GUY 2: I thought it sucked. But the fat guy was
funny
.
Guy 2 didn’t dig
Clerks
, and that might’ve been the end of it. He might’ve never sampled my wares again. But by simply talking and telling stories about the making of the movie, I’d reached him: He’d now likely try something else I made in the future. The movie hadn’t ended when the credits rolled because we kept the experience going. And somehow, it buttressed what’d gone before—which was weak in Guy 2’s mind.
That only works, however, if you get ’em in the door in the first place. But how do you get ’em off their couches and into the theaters?
You make a little noise.
As Miramaxkateers, we were taught to always use the press to our advantage—manipulate it, even, if you could. Commercials and newspaper ads or billboards for a movie were cost-prohibitive. The press, however? Cheap and voraciously hungry at all times. Lots of inches to fill every day in those newspapers, Harvey’d remind us, pointing out that
someone
had to give ’em something to write about. And with almost
every
Miramax release, he somehow found a way to get people talking, long before the flick was playing anywhere
near
them—without heavy marketing spends in other media. That’s because Harvey’s marketing campaigns in the mid-’90s weren’t based on TV spots: They were based on creating a story around every movie so that there’d be press interest, with or without movie stars.
When
Clerks
went before the Motion Picture Association of America’s ratings board in 1994, the flick received a prohibitive NC-17. Normally, this X-rating replacement was reserved for films that depicted sex and adult
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