A few interesting trends emerged this week during the launch of HSX’s Director StarBond series. Kevin Smith (KSMIT) is the most widely held of all the Director StarBonds as of this writing. Twice as many HSX accounts own KSMIT than Quentin Tarantino (QTARA). And twice as many traders own QTARA than Martin Scorsese (MSCOR). Together these three directors are the most widely held of the director StarBonds. The least widely held are Joel Schumacher (JSCHU), Roland Emmerich (REMME) and John Singleton (JSING) in that order. Oddly enough, this ranking is almost inverted from the grosses of their respective films.

Another interesting FACTOID is that Kevin Smith’s new film, “Dogma” (DOGMA) is the 15th most widely held MovieStock in the entire HSX universe, with over 26 million shares in the float. More HSX traders own “Dogma” than “Scream 3” (SCRM3).

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Kevin Smith (KSMIT)

This young indie director has been trading like hot cakes since his bond was issued earlier this week. Along with directing films he’s a huge comic book fan and pop television buff. That’s probably why he’s an off again, on again writer on such projects as “Superman Reborn” (SPRMN) and “The Six Million Dollar Man”. After “Dogma” (DOGMA), Smith hopes to work on a film about the restaurant industry entitled, “Bussing”. Sounds a lot like “Clerks” which I was a big fan of.

Now, to “Dogma”, Smith’s film about a renegade group of angels trying to battle their way back into Heaven. The film stars Ben Affleck (BAFFL), Matt Damon (MDAMO), Chris Rock (CROCK), Alan Rickman (ARICK), Salma Hayek (SHAYE), Linda Fiorentino (LFIOR) and Alanis Morisette has a cameo. “Dogma” is currently in post-production (Smith is one of the editors) but reports have begun to surface about some serious controversy brewing around the film.

William Donohue, the president of the Catholic League, got his grubby little hands (not that I know they’re little for sure) on a copy of the screenplay. He is ticked off by the film’s take on Christians. He stated in an interview with the New York Daily News, “They love doing this… ‘Let’s see how we can stick it to Christians. What would really offend them?” Now Donohue wants an audience with the head honcho at Disney, Michael Eisner, and it looks as if he just may get that meeting.

Eisner is apparently a little uncomfortable with the project himself. In a recent interview with the web site, Mr. Showbiz, Ben Affleck claimed, “It would not surprise me if the political situation around Dogma was very tenuous. I know Harvey Weinstein has his trepidation about this, and he’s gotta answer to Disney.”

When asked if he knew what Eisner thought about the film Affleck went on to say, “For a $5 million movie, which is small beans, he may take a disproportionate amount of heat over it. So if I were Eisner, I might be a little nervous, but I certainly hope [Disney] supports the movie and stands behind it and is brave enough to say, ‘Listen, this isn’t necessarily Disney’s credo, this is Harvey Weinstein and Miramax, whom we allow to make the kind of movies they want to make.”

Now I really can’t wait to see this film.

This past winter I was witness to a photo shoot of young, influential film directors. Filmmakers such as Mimi Leder, Griffin Dunne, Bryan Singer, etc. were all present. In walks Kevin Smith, middle of January in Los Angeles, wearing the long green wool trench coat and backwards baseball cap of his famous recurring character Silent Bob. This would have been an appropriate outfit if the shoot were in New York City and if almost everyone else was dressed in casual, yet semi-formal clothing AND if he hadn’t been wearing Bermuda shorts underneath his coat. You either have to give him credit as fashion rebel or a few extra dollars to hire a fashion coordinator.

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