Kevin Smith’s Red State might be auctioned off to the highest bidder at Sundance.

Kevin Smith’s latest film Red State may be auctioned off at Sundance Festival instead of more traditional purchasing methods. What are these more traditional methods? Well, meetings, negotiations, phone calls, offers, etc, etc.

In recent E-mail to Slashfilm.com he said this:

Here’s something that’s not so much news as my stated intentions for Red State : if it gets into Sundance, my plan is to pick the Red State distributor right there, in the room, auction style. Might even bring up a professional auctioneer to make it fun and unintelligible. And if you’re a multi-millionaire who can’t make it to the first screening of Red State, fear not: maybe we’ll set up an eBay page for the post-screening bid-calling as well.

This quote is widely avaible. A quote that is not as widely available in the blogosphere, and all the more interesting, is one such as this from the same E-mail regarding him retiring and the problem with blogs (which I’m included in):

But THIS “retirement” crap? Not news so much as another sad example of how fucking lazy movie pr ess has become: they cannibalize stories by other writers just to have something to post on their own blogs. Yours was the only website that bothered to go DIRECTLY to the source, Peter – other cats ran articles without even tossing a Tweet my way to check veracity. And I answer Tweets like I answer the dinner bell: often & much. While sweating. And already eating something else.

In this way Kevin Smith is a genius. His PR one-on-one is like no other filmmaker active today. And he is very correct in that no one blogging seems to be checking their sources and seem to post from information from a post from information from another post. If that makes sense?

He also goes on to point that the people dissing his movies are often the people writing fictitious stories. I can’t say I disagree, they are the people dissing him. But I have to say that credible journalist are trashing him as well. Also, most of the individuals are just dissatisfied with the recent product that Smith has put out and want something better.

Moreover, Kevin Smith himself has admitted he is a poor filmmaker, but I disagree. Yes, his visuals are bad. Real bad. But in the great book Moviemaker’s Master Class Woody Allen discusses the importance of staying out of the way of comedy in a visual sense. Maybe that is what Smith has been doing, staying out of the way. To distract from a laugh with the film camera is the worst thing a comedy director can do, that is why it remains the most difficult genre.

I have listened to the majority of Smith’s podcasts, including a lot of his Red State stuff, watched all his stand-up, and have seen all his movies. I think Chasing Amy was and is a great movie. A movie that is, dare I say, one of the great movies ever made regarding male jealously.

But he’s claimed that he just doesn’t have any more ideas to make. I think he is a little burned out. Or maybe just out of ideas for a little while. His movies have not been his strong suit of late either. His tweets, stand-up, writing, and podcasts are endlessly entertaining and I think, like his partner Scott Mosier, he might just take a different approach to filmmaking for a while.

Regardless, Red State was made for only four million dollars. So little that the crew actually burrowed a camera packaged from a guy for their C crew. Smith has spoken about the film with such pride in his podcasts. He’s talked about the exciting visual style they were able to cultivate with the Red One camera. Moreover, genius Neil Gaiman watched it and praised it saying it left him “shaken and grateful“

I’m excited, I don’t know about you.

-Collin