Boba Fett

http://www.film.com/features/story/k...llout/39323858

As a longtime fan, I've had to really think if he's worth supporting anymore after his recent shift in attitude. I can't recall a single filmmaker who lashed out at fans so intensely for not blindly loving everything he did.

RocShemp

Maybe I misread it but it seemed he was lashing out at professional film critics rather than his fans. And, who cares?

Boba Fett

He's lashed out at fans as well. When "Cop Out" came out, he wigged out big time over people who called themselves fans saying it sucked. That's when he began his tirade about people forgetting to have fun at the movies.

RocShemp

Ah. That wasn't in the long twitter rant they linked to. Woulda been helpful had the article included that.

Even fans are entitled to think a given movie from their idol sucks.

Boba Fett

Yeah, it was something I noticed as a (former) Twitter follower. Tonight he looks like he tried to start a flame war with the author of that article.

As an experiment I sent a nice tweet to him saying as a fan (not a sheep) I felt embarrassed for him engaging in flame wars. It says a lot for a guy who has 1.7million followers that he blocked me a few minutes later. Confirms my sneaking suspicion that he wants sheep and not fans. Can't fault it from a business angle though. The sheep will always pay, the fans might be a bit more choosy with their money.

Eric D.

To be honest, why Kevin Smith even has a career boggles my mind a little bit. But I won't go into detail about that because I'm not here to be a snarky douche. But my point is that it seems like he owes his entire career to his fans. He's constantly selling out all those shows and from what I understand he has a lot of merchandising too. His movies have never been a big hit with the general public, so he owes a lot to you guys. The fact that he pulled a dick move and blocked you like that is very telling. I agree that there is big difference between being a sheep and a fan and I'm sorry to hear that someone you respected turned out to be kind of how I imagined.

RocShemp

Yeah, it blows you got blocked for telling him it's embarassing for him to engage in a flame war. And it is. He should be above such nonsense.

jmanlakerfan

I'm a big fan of Smith. I get him and his comedy. I watched that MCM feature on Cop Out today and laughed more than I have in awhile. His Q&A shows and dvd's are always top notch. I don't think he's over. He will go back to small independent movies that he wants to make. He will never be a big draw at the box office or critical acclaim from the main critics in the business. His humor and skills are not what the masses look for.

I think he can take criticism. What he can't take is the people that say things that just aren't true. Like that he's irrelevant. Or people that aren't constructive in their opinions. Any asshole can say "hey you suck." Does that need to be said? What does that do? The "critic" on the internet gets off on a reaction and what Kevin Smith does wrong is give them one. It's easy for us to say that he should just ignore these assholes and continue to do what he does. He's been hammered by critics for the past 15 years and it would get to us eventually too.

If you had thousands of people tweeting to you that you suck or any other non-supportive tweets you would start blocking people too. Who wants to see that shit daily. It doesn't matter that he's famous or that he's a director. It's not like one if these tweets will change him and make him better. Most of them are hurtful for the sake of being hurtful. This is a man's career and stuff that he's put a lot of work into. If you're passionate about something why not be passionate about the criticism too?

I guess I'm just one of the sheep...

The Antipodean

Yes, his career as a valid artist ended with Dogma I think. His movies since then have been varying degrees of mediocre.

DeputyDave

Wow, now I know I'm not a Smith fan by any means (I think most of his movies are mildly entertaing yet vastly overrated) but I had no idea he directed this. Just seeing the trailer it seemed like a typical Hollywood formulaic comedy. I doubt I'll ever see it but I am a little disapointed, one thing you could always count on with Smith was that his movies were not you typical Hollywood fare.

Boba Fett

If he was merely blocking people that said he sucked, fine. The opposite is true though, he'll often call people out. He used to often select various tweets that flamed him and let his followers know he was blocking them. That just reeks of the type of pettiness you'd expect from children, not a director.

Honestly, getting blocked by the guy on Twitter doesn't phase me one bit. I'll still listen to SModcast and especially the "Tell Em Steve-Dave" podcast, but even those have shown signs of Smith's fear of criticism, when Bryan mentioned Smith's webmaster removing critical comments from feedback sections for the various podcasts. For a laugh, click on the "Leave a Comment" link on SModcast's webpage now. That really sums up the mindset nicely.

Boba Fett

OK, last comment I'm going to make about the whole thing:

Can anyone make an argument for his response via Twitter as documented here for being anything but embarrassing?

http://www.moviemobsters.com/2010/07...-it-seriously/

Josh-da-man

When he's not in a controlled environment, Kevin Smith often comes off to me as being very thin-skinned and insecure. Twitter probably isn't somewhere he should be.

jmanlakerfan

I follow him on twitter and I've never really noticed him blocking people with average critiques of his movies. The followers that he's shown to 'KA-Block' have been the "you are a hack," "you suck" and the "You tweet too much" variety. Now he seems to block more people than what's shown but I have to think that most deserved it.

I've always felt that if you're not getting paid to review something why say something if it's not good. If you don't like a movie he directs then don't go see the next one. How does telling him that he did a terrible job change anything? The movie is shot and done. Plus I don't think most really believe what they say. They like getting noticed and negative people get noticed.

I don't think Kevin's reactions are that childish. Childish would be to go to every critic's home and kick the shit out of them ala the end of "Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back." Even if he is petty and childish I don't think that means his career is over.

jmanlakerfan

I'd be a little embarrassed about how I came across but I can't say I blame him. Who is this guy to label anyone irrelevant? If someone called you out and said you didn't matter in the business you've been in for 17 years - I think your reaction would be similar. Mine would be.

jmanlakerfan

I don't mean to take over this thread. Two more points and then I'm done.

He grew up fat, as did I. Of course he's insecure.


I don't think so. I enjoyed them all in some degree but they had their problems. Clerks 2 was brilliant IMO.

EdTheRipper

I've got to agree with you there.

I'm a huge fan of Smith and his work but even I can't defend his tirades here. He's definitely getting carried away.

Michael Corvin

Sounds like Kev is off the weed. Didn't he say he mellowed out after Zack & Miri and didn't give a shit what others thought? So much for that.

I never bought into the Southwest debacle as a marketing stunt like some, but all this going down the day Cop Out comes out is a bit shady.

I picked up Cop Out yesterday (haven't seen it yet), but at least, good or bad, he's owning it. He could have easily shot back that he didn't write it so it's not his film anyway. Given his budgets and returns, his career is far from over.

treszoks

He does seem to be ranting on people a lot lately but if you read his first comments on this incident, the opening quote of the article that served as a basis for the whole thing wasn't even made by him. He was mad that the writer attributed the quote to him and wrote an entire article based on it when he was actually quoting one of his followers.

Eric D.

I'm sorry, but I can't understand how you can defend that wave of bitterness so easily? Smith has to learn to get a better control of his insecurities. The fact that he's been in the business for seventeen years is exactly why he has no excuse to act like that. People have turned George Lucas into a running joke and he has never come back with such childish responses.

On top of that, Smith should have learned his lesson with the drama he stirred up when the film first hit theaters, so one can't even give him the benefit of the doubt and just say that he had a bad day and acted out of character. The worst part is that Smith's childlike "Oh yeahs!" actually lend more credibility to the original article thus causing Smith to have done more damage to himself than that writer even could have.

Drop

I don't agree with that at all. He has never had a strong commercial success ever. Yea he can keep making movies, but budgets keep going up and his movies aren't making much more money than they ever did. And this one was a critical flop. He has plenty of reasons to be insecure. Plus time and time again we've learned people with the most success are often very insecure and they've been that way since they were children, it's hard to just wipe that away. There is no magical formula to control your insecurities.

He is acting childish, but I can see where he's coming from.

DonnachaOne

I'd hardly say his career is over; Cop Out was profitable, he has two more movies in the pipeline, and he does well for himself doing speaking tours.

Do you have any examples of this? Really, not trying to be snarky, I'd like to see them. He had issues with critics hating the film, sure, but when I read his Twitter he would respectfully disagree with those who paid to see the film and hated it.

In case it's relevant, I think Cop Out is the worst movie of the year so far.

Dr. Henry Jones, Jr.

Never heard of Cop Out, and I thought his career was over. The Southwest incident was the first I'd heard of him since Dogma.

Pixie Song

I always thought that being mouthy and lashing out was part of Kevin Smith's shtick. I'm not sure that's the case, but my impression is that his flame wars and Smod rants were done partly for entertainment value.

I'm kind of indifferent to Kevin Smith in general. Sometimes I'm amused by him and other times I'm putt off.

riley_dude

A friend of mine stopped talking to me because I told him what I thought of Kevin Smith and his career.
I loved Clerks and Chasing Amy but his films since have been pretty horrible.