Until we figure out how many listeners SIR averages for our CPM, we’re starting at a RIDICULOUSLY low ad-rate: first 2 weeks = $200 a spot. That means ANYONE can put an ad on SIR that me, Mewes & Jen will be live-reading. You wanna advertise your blog? $200 for a 2 minute spot. For the first 2 weeks, you can advertise your comic book store, ice rink, or convenience store on SIR for $200. Contact tricia@smodcast.com.

Via @LesterDiamond28 “$200 for you to read anything? ANYTHING” Could be fun, right? Act fast: only 10 slots available for the morning block.

Via @weaseljohn23 “how about $200 for a 2 minute why you should date me ad?” When you own the network, you call the shots. FUCK YES! 5/9/SIR

Via @Evil__Stevie Steve “Can we pay an ad seeking for donations to a non-profit?” It’d be a goddamn crime NOT to! Email tricia@smodcast.com

Via @AntBarlow “How about advertising other podcasts” We were BORN of a podcast, so YES! For our first 2 weeks on SIR, it’s $200/2 min spot!

Response has been overwhelming, so please allow Tricia some time to get back to you. As there are still a bunch of live shows happening in the first two weeks, chances are they’ll be able to work you in, though we’re guessing that the first few days filled up pretty quickly at this price. We’re also guessing you can buy repeat ads for the duration of the two weeks. We don’t think ad time on this visible of a Podcast network, where you can potentially reach millions, will be this cheap, ever again, so now’s the time to get on board.

SModcast Internet Radio (S.I.R.) launches on Monday, May 9th.

SMidnight @SModcastle Lounge starts Fridays at 11:30 with Acting with Mewes & Youse! Take to the SModcastle stage with Hollywood veteran and movie professional Jason Mewes, as you – the audience – partake in your favorite movies scenes with a real, live actor!

On Saturdays, SMidnight @SModcastle Lounge starts at 11:30: Babble-Off, with Ralph & Kevin. On this post-show podcast, we give you the chance to out-funny us ñ as you tell us your best stories or jokes! Make us laugh and you win a t-shirt!

But thatís not all weíve got planned for The Lovitz. Check out what we’re brewing for SMummer 2011 and beyond.

– The SMorgy Pajamma Jammy-Jam! To celebrate the opening of SModcastle Lounge, we’re launching a 24 hour podcasting marathon! 200 crazy sumbitches will spend the night in a house haunted solely by the unending navel-gazing of podcasting giants! Ever wanted to spend the night with Bryan Johnson or Katie Morgan? You’ll be doing just that in this once-in-a-lifetime experience! We’ll be serving lunch, dinner and breakfast, so bring your jammies!

– On Sundays, we launch our version of church: from 11am ’til 1pm, join me and Mewes for Jay & Silent Bob’s Sunday Morning Movie Triva Super-Challenge & Pancake Brunch. Eat amazing pancakes while we podcast a trivia game show that you play in table teams! Win cool prizes and get real fat ñ all before the Sunday afternoon movie matinees begin!

– During the next semester of Red State of the Union Q&A Class, toss back some beers as you hear more cast and crew tales of making it and taking it in the movie biz.

– I’m joined by Lovitz Theater namesake and comedy legend Jon Lovitz for The ABC’s of SNL, an ongoing series in which we reminisce with anybody who ever had anything to do with Saturday Night Live. Expect some Not Ready For PrimeTime Players, some writers, some founders, and LOTS of laughs.

– Now all SMarriages can begin as lifelong unions should begin: drenched in drinks and stuffed with food! And the audience can get as toasted as the guests on SMovieMakers!

– Gaming Events with Jason Mewes, such as this Saturday’s SModern Warfare: Call of Mewes! Expect a hockey tourney and lots of YooStar fun in the weeks to follow.

– Now that we’re Lovitz partners, expect lots more podcasting legends to hit the stage for monthly and weekly shows! Nerdist! WTF! Doug! I’m talking to you guys!

– Vulgarthon Film Festival! Nostalgia alert! See the flicks that put us on the map and listen to the stars behind your favorite Askewniverse flicks tell tales of how shit was way back when!

– Graphic Novel Theater: Dramatic renditions of comic books, read aloud! We pick three people from the audience to join a panel of pros on stage for a dramatic reading of legendary comic book stories. First up: my Green Hornet run from Dynamite. Which kinda leads to our favorite future plan for The Lovitz.

– JAY & SILENT BOB’S BABBLE-ON COMI-CON! That’s right: a bi-monthly comic book show will take over The Lovitz and offer three floors of vendors to shop, as well as a stage for programming ñ where you can see genre pros offer sneak peeks of their blockbusters long before they hit theaters and listen in as Kevin or Ralph interviews them about the movies you love!

There’s a lot more, including background information on the closure of the original SModcastle, in the full post at the Silent Bob Speaks blog. Congratulations to all involved on taking the world’s first podcasting theater and graduating it to a larger, easier-accessed venue in under a year. Between S.I.R. and the new theater, there’s a lot to love about SMod this Spring and Summer. Speaking of SIR…

Over the course of the 15 shows of the Red State USA Tour, we made almost one million dollars from ticket and merchandise sales. A few times, we had the highest per screen average in the country. We started out with a record-making show at Radio City Music Hall and went on to average 1100 people per screening. Had we booked ourselves into smaller houses, we could’ve SOLD OUT every show; but being in the larger houses cost us nothing extra.

And apparently, we managed to pull 1100 a night solely from our podcasts: when asked nightly if they heard about the show from a show at SModcast.com, an overwhelming 85/90% of the audience indicated yes (Jon swears it was 100% in Seattle). That bodes well for SIR.

You take what we made on the tour, you add that to the $1.5mil we’ve pulled in from foreign sales thus far (with a few big territories yet to sell). Add to that $3mil we’re on the verge of closing for all North American distribution rights excluding theatrical (which means VOD/HomeVideo/PayTV/Streaming).

The flick cost $5mil to make, but $4mil after the California tax incentive. One of the only things Jon and I promised the Red State investors in exchange for letting us handle American theatrical distribution ourselves was that their $4mil would be covered as soon as possible, something very few other production entities can promise or even offer. Invest a million dollars in almost any production, and you rarely if ever get your money back within five years, let alone the one year it’s looking like it’s gonna take for our guys to make their money back.

Add up all those figures above and you’ll notice our gains are higher than our spending. And without any dopey marketing figures to have to recoup, once we close the aforementioned deals (which Jonn Sloss & LawCo are working to close as we speak), simple math dictates Red State is in the black ñ long before any wide release. That’s music to the ears of any investor who only put up their money in September.

Ta-da!

Y’know what else is kinda sweet? Those $3million in deals I was talking about? That only materialized because our little movie went out and performed well. See, any idiot can lie and write hyperbolically (and high scholastically) about a movie’s future and its maker’s sanity all they want at 20,000 feet. But in the real world, when movie and maker put asses in seats and money in the bank ñ all without spending anything on marketing? I don’t know what the technical business term is for it, but I’m pretty sure it’s not ‘imploding’.

So there ya have it, folks. $4 million spent. $1.5 mil from foreign sales, $3 mil from North America, and $1 mil from the tour. That’s $5.5 mil earned SO FAR. And things are just warming up…

Take a look at this new promo for the show and catch a glimpse of her at the 3:18 mark along with what looks like some extremely positive feedback.

In the meantime, you can also show your early support for her by checking out her new (unofficial) “The Voice” fan page. Go Raquel!

I gots me some butterflies churnin’! Quentin asked to borrow a RED STATE print for this weekend. He’s gotta like it, right? It’s got Parks!

Today, Kevin reveals the events of that day, and it’s a fantastic story that you’ve just got to experience in full on the blog, but here’s a taste:

‘I’ve already watched Red State,’ he chuckled. ‘I watched it Friday night. By myself.’

At which point everything in me went away but the filmmaker and I asked that all-important question:

‘Did you dig it?’

‘I loved it! That’s why I’m’

I didn’t let him finish. I just hugged him as hard as I could.

You see, Quentin’s was the only review that was ever gonna matter. Red State was inspired by the man’s work, his casting choices, his daring Pulp Fiction-tonal shifts. I’ve told the audiences at every stop on the Red State USA Tour ‘I didn’t want to make a Kevin Smith movie this time. This time, I wanted to make a movie that was Quentin Tarantino by way of the Coen Brothers.’ And to have Quentin not only watch the flick, but also dig it enough to watch it again in the span of 24 hours?

That’s graduation day, folks. Ain’t no reason for me to continue in this business past Hit Somebody because I scored the respect of a Grand Master.

He said it stands beside Chasing Amy as his favorite of mine, and then said ‘Your words coming out of Parks was perfect.’ He loved that he never knew where it was going. He just plain loved it, which was all that’d ever matter to the guy who made the film, who often pondered ‘What would Quentin do?’ before executing a shot, an edit, a keystroke or even before eating lunch on set.

‘Well we really don’t have to watch it again now’ I started to say.

‘No, I wanna watch it again,’ he countered. ‘And I wanna show Rhia.’

Quentin’s friend nodded, offering ‘He’s been talking about it all day.’

We love this story — Notice how despite having a time set to watch it, Quentin got a hold of the print and watched it RIGHT away — And then watched it through a SECOND time mere hours later. Not only an endorsement by words, but actions as well. Not only did he LOVE it, but he talked about it, thought about it…And wanted to watch it again. That’s the highest compliment you can give a flick, really.

Kevin’s blog entry telegraphs his love of all things Tarantino right back to the “Clerks” beginnings, and even includes some classic photos and links from over the years. The background makes the story from this weekend’s “Red State” screening with Quentin even more poignant, as Kevin prepares to retire from filmmaking. Much like Kevin, Tarantino has also set a definitive end to his film career — Though he’s yet to announce how many more films he’ll be making, he’s always said that he’ll retire from the directing biz early.

Tarantino is set to appear as the first guest of “SMoviemakers” at the Lovitz, and the thought of that is so cool, we want to start shopping plane tickets. Truly, a can’t-miss event. Read the entire blog entry, “QT and Me”, at the Red Statements site.

We’re thinking that SIR will be a lot like SModcastle and its programming, where shows will get tested out, and come and go as the schedule takes shape. Plus, with 24 hours of programming, lots of new experiments and concepts as well. It all starts on Monday, May 9th.

Since we realize many of the fans aren’t going to be there in person, what we want to talk to you about a bit here is the online bidding aspect. Yes, you CAN bid on any piece you want today, right from your computer. First set up a FREE account over with Live Auctioneers. Then, bidding buttons for all the items up for auction today should be active. Now we’re not sure, but it’s looking like you can place an actual silent bid right now (we can see some of the more popular items have bids in place). What’s likely to happen here is that your silent bids will determine the opening price at the live auction, though you can still be outbid by someone else with a higher silent bid online or obviously also in person. We’re not totally sure how this will work when the live auction takes place (if you’ll be able to follow a piece and place a real-time online bid), so what we’d recommend, for now, is put down your highest bid possible if you really want something.

Something else to keep in mind. Every piece has what they call a buyer’s premium. In this case it’s 23 percent. That means, for every hundred dollars you spend, you owe another $23 to the auction house. Keep that in mind when bidding. Also, all items are getting shipped to you at actual shipping costs plus another $25 for packaging and handling. We just wanted our fans here to know all the extra costs which will be added to your bids. In person bidders also pay the 23% buyer’s premium, so you’re not at a bidding disadvantage online.

Good luck to you all, and if you snag anything memorable, drop us a line and show us or let us know about it! Maybe we can feature you here with your prized possession here at News Askew.

Even if you don’t plan to bid, or if you do and want to keep up with the live event, the entire thing can be watched via USTream.

GOOD LUCK!

• Congrats and kudos to the fine folks from Film Threat magazine who contributed $1500 to Japan disaster relief for the rights to post the Stephen Root character poster from the film. Hit up their site http://www.filmthreat.com/news/33325/ to view it and for specific thanks to those who chipped in.

  If youíre a movie website or film journalist and you want to feature this poster or use it in a story, donít be a detail-thin dick.

  Be sure to tell people WHY the poster was released: because (Gavin Apí Morrygan (@Tearsinrain78), Darryl Clarke, Jamie Calder (@jamiecalder), Dan Duffy (@TheHalfFund), Heath C. Ice (@hcice) and FilmThreat.com (@filmthreat)) bid $2050 to earthquake and tsunami relief for Japan.

  If you also include the link for Japanese earthquake and tsunami relief (http://www.redcross.org/) in your story/article, youíre not only being a thorough journalist, youíre also helping to save actual lives.

  It only takes a few seconds longer to provide all available facts in any story.

  Including THIS fact can help save lives.

• The list of “Red State” reviews continues to grow, available at the Coopers Dell site. These are all unedited, fan-written takes on the film, from anyone who has attended any of the tour screenings. If you’ve seen it on the tour, send YOUR review to ming@coopersdell.com along with a shot of your ticket stub and have your voice heard. No reviews refused!
• Feeling artistic and want the chance to see an upcoming “Red State” tour stop for FREE? Details in Kevin’s latest Red Statements blog on how you can submit your own one-minute musical composition, for future use in SModcast broadcasts, and get into a show for free.
• Kevin stopped by Los Angeles’ KTLA to drop some innuendo and promote the “Red State” tour in this 5 minute clip. Not as much of a rush this time, and some fantastic promotional stuff for the film, the L.A. stop of the tour, and the upcoming shows at the Lovitz.

Tonight, the tour rolls into the great city of Denver, Colorado. You last-minute folks can still snag your tickets — Those not attending can follow a live tweet from Kevin this evening, under the hasg tag #SMileHigh. We hope to hear of many News Askew readers flooding the audience!