Kevin Smith Buys Two Tickets To Red State

By  · Published on March 23rd, 2010

Love him or hate him, Kevin Smith is in the movie-making business for the long haul. None of his films have made big splashes at the box-office, but he works on the cheap and his flicks always turn an additional profit on DVD. He’s basically Woody Allen with fewer Jews and more dick jokes. (But for the record, his movies are far funnier than Allen’s.)

Smith’s filmography has varied in quality over the years (and no, Mallrats is not his least entertaining movie), but he’s always stayed somewhat comfortably in the comedy genre… lowbrow and crude comedy for the most part. But word has come down via Smith’s Twitter feed that he’s about to change things up quite a bit.

I talk about lots of stuff I wanna do that either happens years later or never happens at all. Happy to report RED STATE is not the latter. First draft was dated 9/5/07. Looks like we start shooting this July. Took nearly three years, but we’re finally gonna roll on RED.”

Red State is Smith’s first foray into the horror genre, but not a lot of specifics are known about the movie’s plot. It apparently uses conservative nut-job Fred Phelps as a dramatic starting point and then takes off from there. Phelps is best known as the dumb ass founder of the Westboro Baptist Church and avid collector of twelve-inch dildos. He and his goofy followers have side businesses manufacturing pithy protest signs and selling jewelry made from their teeth.

That dude has always fascinated me and he’s really informed the horror movie that I’m working on,” Smith told AICN back in 2007, “The movie’s called ‘Red State’ and it’s very much about that subject matter, that point of view and that position taken to the absolute extreme. It’s certainly not Phelps himself but it’s very much inspired by a Phelps figure. And to me, too, the notion of using a Phelps-like character as a villain, as horrifying and scary as that guy can be, there’s even something more insidious than him that lurks out there in as much as a public or a government that allows it and that’s the other thing that I’m trying to examine in a big, big way.”

Smith has had some funding issues over the past few years, and as recently as last month had opined the possibility of the movie being fan-funded. It seems the relative success of Cop Out has helped open some new financial doors as he plans to start filming Red State this July immediately followed by his hockey comedy Hit Somebody.

Are you excited by a Kevin Smith horror film?

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Rob Hunter has been writing for Film School Rejects since before you were born, which is weird seeing as he's so damn young. He's our Chief Film Critic and Associate Editor and lists 'Broadcast News' as his favorite film of all time. Feel free to say hi if you see him on Twitter @FakeRobHunter.