KEVIN SMITH LAUNCHES NEW FILMMAKER WEBSITE: MOVIESASKEW.COM!

SOMEWHERE, CA – AUGUST 19, 2004

Make movies, not love!

For years, View Askew has made you sit through our shitty, amateurish, self-indulgent (yet *ahem* award-winning) excuses for cinema. Now, it’s payback time… and this time, it’s personal! Because just because they serve you, doesn’t mean they like you (insert a dozen other taglines here)!

Anyhoo, View Askew is weeks away from launching a new website to join its already over-crowded ‘net empire of ViewAskew.com, NewsAskew.com, MoviePoopShot.com, and Google.com (I’m pretty sure we own that last one too), and this one’s a doozy! We’re giving you, the undiscovered filmmakers, a chance to show the world what you’ve got, via the stunningly originally titled…MoviesAskew.Com!

“What’s the skinny, Tubby?”

For a small fee (what – you thought it’d be free? It’s View Askew, sir – we’re money-grubbing whores), wanna-be filmmakers (and has-beens too; I’ll be submitting “Jersey Girl” myself) will be able to submit their short films of thirty minutes or less to our distinguished panel of judges and a chance to secure one of five monthly spots at MoviesAskew.com. From there, visitors to the site will vote to decide which of the five shorts gets named Best of the Month, and all twelve of the monthly winners will earn a place on the MoviesAskew Vol. 1 DVD!

But wait! There’s more!

The fun doesn’t stop with the MoviesAskew DVD. Fuck no! Those twelve winning shorts will also screen at the First Annual MoviesAskew Film Festival (to be held in either Red Bank, NJ or Westwood, CA; y’know – close to one of the two Secret Stash locations, so we can foist some of our merchandise on ya’) where a panel of celebrity judges (me and Mewes, probably; maybe someone with more juice) will pick the best five shorts. Filmmakers making it to the last final round will have their shorts re-screeened, followed by a sit down Q&A session with the audience. After that, the audience will determine, by vote, which film will be named the Best Short of the Year!

The Winner will walk away with the Grand Prize: a Panasonic Home Entertainment Center, a bunch of Miramax/Dimension Home Videos, and an apprentice position on the next View Askew Film (which is hardly a prize, we realize; more like a punishment).

WIN LIFE ETERNAL!

Or at least feel like you have. Don’t miss out on all the pseudo-fun! Dig deep into your circular files and yank out those terrible-looking shorts your film school teachers failed you for, your friends mocked for, and your parents berated you for, and get ready to flip ‘em all the bird, compliments of the home of second chances and dreams come true – View Askew Productions!

Don’t call it Project Greenlight (or else we’ll get sued); call it Project Bluelight Special (old school K-Mart style – before all this Big K crap). Or better yet, just call it what it is: a crass grab at your wallet. Aka MoviesAskew.Com!

MoviesAskew.com

But the true highlight of last night’s presentation was Kevin Smith, swearing away without fear or favour, jokingly exclaiming to the packed media: “I’m here representing Miramax while they still exist”, alluding to the recent Disney/Miramax squabble. Asked about what the status was with “Green Hornet”, Smith said he has written a script “and I might direct it, but I’m nervous about directing a bigger budgeted film again after Jersey Girl.”

After the presentation, Smith told me that “immediately next I’m doing an ultra low budget flick and if I end up not doing Green Hornet, then I’ll finally be directing Fletch.” So it seems that Fletch lives after all. He said poor reviews were more to blame for the failure of his $35m “Jersey Girl” than “the whole Bennifer thing”, and he hopes to work with his pal Affleck again soon, “but never his ex.”

Smith Backs Off Hornet

Writer-director Kevin Smith told SCI FI Wire that he may withdraw from directing the upcoming Green Hornet movie because his last film, Jersey Girl , failed at the box office and shook his confidence in his ability to handle a major movie. “Right after Jersey Girl came out and kind of underperformed, I was just like, ‘I got no business making large-budget movies,’” Smith said in an interview at a preview for the DVD set for his first movie, Clerks . “I should always make movies that cost less than 10 million bucks. … I just don’t think somebody like me should be in charge of big-budget movies. I’m too interested in dialogue, and dialogue and big budgets just don’t blend very well.”

Smith continues to write the script for the proposed movie, an update of the 1930s radio serial about millionaire newspaper publisher Britt Reid, who masquerades as the crime-fighting Green Hornet, for Miramax. Smith added that Miramax honcho Harvey Weinstein has encouraged Smith to keep his options open. “Ideally, yeah,” Smith said. “He said, yes, he would like me to do it. He wants me to get over my chickens–t attitude. I don’t know if it’s chickens–t.”

What would it take for Smith to helm the film? “I don’t know,” he said. “Like I said, if I do it, I don’t think I’m going to do it alone. I think I’m going to bring somebody on with me to co-direct it. Because I just don’t trust myself. … There’s people that I like. And whether or not Miramax would agree to let me bring those people on is a whole different story.”

Smith said that he is about 50 pages away from completing the script. He added: “We have to start making the movie by April [2005]. Or Miramax has to start making the movie by April ‘05, so whether it’s with me or not, it’ll go into production.”