It’s Friday night at 6. After a long week of waking up early to sell the tour on radio stations across the country, I’m plenty centered & ready to take stock of thoughts & feelings of a whirlwind week. But first? Huge thanks go out to @ColeAbaius over at the @rejectnation site. We Skyped what was, for me, a pretty cathartic conversation about me & the press, with Cole standing in for bloggers everywhere. It was a really great, honest talk that you can hear on the @rejectnation RejectRadio podcast soon. It was pretty healing for me if that makes any sense. And speaking of press, I sat down with Kim Masterson today for the @kcrw The Business. Kim wrote what Jen described as a “fair & funny” piece about me & the flick over at @THR for which I can only find the photo gallery right now: http://bit.ly/gS3lYg .

Don’t forget, Kevin will be at each and every “Red State” screening — Tickets and links at the top of the page you’re reading, or http://coopersdell.com/ or http://www.newsaskew.com. The first big show at Radio City Music Hall, is just a month away — March 5th. That joint holds 6,000 people, so let’s just see how close to sold out we can get that sucker. Nab your tix today, and be a part of history as Kevin takes it to the people.

Why the tour, and why Radio City, you ask? The latest “Red Statement” from Kevin goes into some good detail on the reasons for this type of rollout. Here’s a peek:

“…For each venue, thereís a minimum number of seats to sell before weíre at break-even. As long as the minimums were reachable, the tour wouldnít cost us anything ñ which is always my first goal in business: to spend as little as possible while eking out a living. Beyond the minimum seat numbers per venue weíd have to sell to cover the costs of doing a show in that venue, we figured it was all gravy. Best case scenario: we sell out every show and walk with $1.5 million net that would go toward recouping our $4 million dollar budget. Worst case-scenario: half-empty-houses that cost us nothing but also earned the movie back nothing but potential word-of-mouth.

Not the ideal, but still better than the alternative: sitting on the film ítil October or simply festival-hopping. But more importantly: the folks who really wanna see it could see it soon, and see me in the process, too ñ and, God-willing, theyíd start talking it up to everyone they know. If theyíre talking it up in March and April (on Twitter, Facebook, real life, etc), theyíre getting our word out six months before weíre in theaters. And as a creature of the web, I know thatís worth way more than monetary profit now: thatís profit later ñ when we really need it, once the flick hits theaters October 19th. Long tail, son.

…

“…I donít know who suggested Radio City Music Hall, but when they did, I knew weíd never sell it out: itís a 6000 seater. But that didnít matter: it was the idea that two fucking movie dorks like me and Jon could actually rent Radio City Music Hall at all to show our weird little flick. The moment Jon compared it to Spicolli getting Van Halen to play his birthday party (as revealed at the end of Fast Times at Ridgemont High), I was in. So even though I sold out the 2600 seat Carnegie Hall the day of the show, even with Red State shot from the Sundance cannon, we knew weíd never sell 6000 seats in only a month, with no paid advertising.

The good news is all we have to sell is 1700 seats.

1700 seats is the break-even point: the amount of tickets we have to sell so our rental of Radio City that night is paid for. After that, every ticket sold is all gravy. Naturally, weíd love to sell the rest of the seats, but the pressureís off at 1700. The rest of the shows across the country are under half the size of Radio City, so our break-even numbers everywhere else are far lower; only the Radio City 1700 looms large in our minds. At 1700 seats sold, we un-cork champagne and un-clinch our assholes.

On Monday, Iíll tell you how far away or close we are.

Read it all at the official site. Be a part of the Jerry Maguire-like movement by attending the shows, always up to date at http://www.coopersdell.com.