How Kevin Smith Keeps Adapting to a Constantly Changing Industry

Kevin Smith knows that these days, he occupies a very peculiar place in the movie distribution landscape. “Somebody put up a tweet this morning for a Red State anniversary screening, and it was very clear that it was one show only — it’s a picture of the poster, and then somebody wrote ‘One Show Only, September 27th’ [on a piece of paper] and taped it to the plexiglass,” the filmmaker tells Consequence. “And I was like, ‘That’s kind of the leitmotif of my life.’ I could literally do a biography called One Show Only.”

Since his breakout movie, 1994’s Clerks, Smith says that he’s “always had one foot on the studio side, one foot on the indie side.” But it’s thanks to his independent film roots that, he says, “I’ve always been able to pivot and figure out a way to get my movie in a theater and make it last longer.”

Smith’s most recent film, The 4:30 Movie, embodies that in a whole new way for the filmmaker. Shot at the New Jersey movie theater he now owns, Smodcastle Cinemas, the period coming-of-age comedy is now available on VOD after a short theatrical run — and Smith says that “I was just happy it had any theatrical window, we weren’t even guaranteed that.”

Plus, he adds, “I know there’s one movie theater where it’ll play at 4:30 every Sunday until the day I die. It may be like one person sitting there watching it, but goddamn it, it will always play at Smodcastle Cinemas. Because very rarely does a movie theater get to star in its own movie, and I can make a home for it where it can always be shown theatrically. And honestly, I’ll benefit from that if it’s no place else — if I do a Q&A with it, we can upcharge.”

That said, Smith also feels that “in terms of the expectation for a movie to ever actually go to a theater — I haven’t had that in years. The business has been changing for so long and so often and it’s changed dramatically in the last two years for a lot of people.”

And when it comes to his own output, he notes, “I don’t make movies that demand an audience come out and see it in the theaters. I mean, honestly, I could give a shit less whether they watch it in a theater or if they watch it on their cell phone, as long as they ingest it sooner or later.”

For example, says Smith, “I love when people are like, ‘Hey man, I just saw Tusk for the first time.’ This is the 10th anniversary of Tusk this year, and there are still people who have never seen it and just discovered it for the first time. That’s kind of the side benefit of having movies that are not vastly popular, is that you’ll always have an audience discovering them every month. So you always get that feeling that you get when most filmmakers release a movie for the first time. In a Kevin Smith world, the movie’s always getting released from now until the end of time.”

Part of that comes from how hands-on Smith has been when it comes to every part of the filmmaking process. He does say that “when you dream about making the movie, you don’t dream about anything but making the movie. Even though I’ve been making movies for 30 years, I don’t dream about like, ‘Ooh, what if we had marketing money? What if we had sneak previews and it played in theaters for more than two weeks?’ I’m just happy to get to make the flick in the first place.”

However, once the movie’s completed, he knows that “I could always extend the life of a movie in the theater if I want to, because historically I tour the flicks. Clerks III and Jay and Silent Bob Reboot, I took on 65-city tours. Generally, if you’re lucky, you get like two weeks in a theater or something like that, but when I was touring the movies, I could spend as long as I want with it.”

The 4:30 Movie pays homage to its ’80s time period in numerous ways, such as the inclusion of fake ’80s-appropriate trailers: As seen with the trailers made for Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez’s Grindhouse (most recently leading to the release of Eli Roth’s Thanksgiving), there is precedent for similarly fake movie trailers eventually becoming real films, and Smith does has an answer for what movie-within-a-movie he’d adapt, if given the chance.

“If somebody was like, ‘Hey man, I can’t live without seeing that Sister Sugar Walls movie, here’s a bunch of money,’ I would do that in a heartbeat,” he says. “Like, ‘From the maker of Dogma and Red State comes a new vision of religion.’ That one would be a lot of fun to do.”

Sister Sugar Walls features Smith’s daughter Harley Quinn Smith as a young nun-turned-prostitute, who’s seen murdering a john played by Jason Mewes. “I honestly feel like Sister Sugar Walls, I could really get into… I would hate to say get behind, but you know what I mean?” Smith laughs. “Plus it would give my kid a job. Anything that keeps my kid employed is a good thing by me. Even if I’m the one making the movie. If she’s getting paid, that’s less money that she’s borrowing from her parents.”

Of course, she could always get a job at Smodcastle Cinemas. Smith isn’t the only filmmaker to own his own movie theater — in Los Angeles, Quentin Tarantino has taken over two different venues, which exclusively project movies on film (as opposed to digital). “Quentin is a role model, in as much as he was one of the first of us who’s like, ‘I’m a filmmaker and guess what, I own a film movie theater now,'” Smith says.

However, he continues, “He’s a rich movie theater owner, because he only shows 35-millimeter prints that come from his library. I love Quentin, he’s the gold standard and whatnot, but if I tried to live off 35-millimeter prints in suburban New Jersey, that wouldn’t do it for us. [Moviegoers there] don’t care whether it’s on 35 or in digital.”

Smith has instead gotten tips from art-house theater owners he’s met while on his aforementioned tours, shouting out the owners of the Rio Theater in Vancouver: “Their best advice was that you have to sell grilled cheese sandwiches. I was like, ‘Really?’ And they’re like, ‘It costs like 26 cents to make and you can charge 10 bucks for it. We know you’re not going to be selling liquor at your theater, because you don’t have a liquor license. So there’s no way you can make it without selling grilled cheese.'”

Smodcastle does not currently sell grilled cheese sandwiches, but Smith promises that “one day we will. I bought the panini maker and I see it every time I go to the theater, but nobody’s branched out to the actual next steps of buying bread and cheese. One day that will happen.”

And most importantly, Smith says with a happy smile, “I’ve got an apartment above the movie theater. A filmmaker who lives above a movie theater is like a cobbler who lives in a giant shoe. It’s just an adorable concept.”

The 4:30 Movie is now available on VOD (as well as in limited theatrical release, at Smodcastle Cinemas).