Kevin spent some time on Twitter yesterday to talk directly with fans who dug the film. We won’t list all those tweets here, for that you can visit his Twitter directly, but here’s some of the some significant from the day:

Hey! Thanks, all, for braving the elements and peeping #COPOUT last night. Best opening of my career! Means a lot to the whole COP OUT crew.

Via @bLouMagic “I wanna see Cop Out but I’m snowed in.” Saturday’s good, too. Sunday as well. If not, then next week. Peep it if you can.

Via @Svayvan “I feel obligated to see Cop Out because of all the free smod” I like the way SNrub thinks! #COPOUT

Via @proudcanadianer “number of sources saying 20mill for #copout congrats buddy!” With that weather back east, I’m just hoping for $18mil.

Via @amadcow2 “loved Cop Out, great cast, great pacing, & really really funny.” Thanks! Getting this from vast majority of you, & I love it!

Via @TobysKat “just watched CopOut gonna go see it again. I laughed so hard, so did the entire audience!” Excellent to hear. WB & I thank u.

Via @markhoward “Saw #Copout last night in Northern NJ crowded house even with the snow. Really liked the flick, good job” JERSEY REPRESENT!

Via @dvdmike “are you and the studio happy with the numbers on #copout ” I can’t speak for the studio, but I will: it’s all happy emails.

Many of the more critical reviews for “Cop Out” seemed to be reviewing Kevin himself rather than the film’s content, which struck us as quite strange. That being said, we wanted to point out some major venues that dug the movie and share some links and clippage for ya:

LA Times – “Cop Out” Review

“Kevin Smith’s lowbrow buddy-cop comedy is ridiculous fun.”

---

The Detroit News – “Review: ‘Cop Out’ brings foul-mouthed wit to the buddy-cop genre”

“‘Cop Out” is foul-mouthed, puerile, crude, haphazard, superficial, silly and funny a lot of the time.

Of course it is. It’s supposed to be that way.

That’s why the producers hired indie wisenheimer, director Kevin Smith (“Clerks,” “Chasing Amy,” “Zack and Miri Make a Porno”) to helm what would otherwise be a standard black-and-white, buddy-cop flick.

Smith certainly does his thing here, delivering a film that’s part celebration and part parody of the well-worn genre.”

---

Minneapolis Star-Tribune – “‘Cop Out’ Review: Fast, cheap and out-of-control funny”

“”Cop Out” is a silly waste of time. In other words, it’s just what we need right now. An outrageously smutty comedy that riffs on cop movie clichés even as it uses them to anchor its loopy plot, it’s got automatic weapons, Tracy Morgan in overdrive and Bruce Willis rolling his eyes in a way that says, “I’m surrounded by crazy people.”

PLEASE do go see “Cop Out” today, for the first time, or go at it again with some new friends…And if your schedule allows, do yourself a favor and watch some of the best hockey ever played today at 3 PM EST, when the USA takes on Canada for the gold medal! The last match was insane, this one’s shaping up to be even crazier. Must see TV.

Ads are continuing to run for “Cop Out” up to the wire (on Thursday night prime-time network programming as we write this) and hopefully throughout the weekend to keep awareness high. We’re assuming a large general audience penetration for this one, given the starpower and the amount of , it’s promotion Warner Brothers has put into this one. At this point, it’s on YOU. So get into that movie theater, dear readers.

Wanna pass on some “Cop Out” love via YouTube to help speed Friday along in the office? YouTube shares this new quick featurette that gives newbies a taste of what it’s all about. See you in the theaters, folks.

Kevin Smith’s Cop Out So Clich-Filled It Just Might Work!

Cop Out establishes its movie lineage right away, with a slow-motion toe-to-head tilt up, set to the Beastie Boys’ “No Sleep ‘Til Brooklyn,” of black-cop/white-cop buddies Jimmy and Paul swaggering stone-faced toward the camera. Director/editor Kevin Smith (who notably didn’t write the Cop Out script; this is the Clerks auteur’s first feature-length work for hire) immortalizes his heroes as stock crime-flick badasses in their very first frame.

So far, so middlinguntil Smith complicates matters by following that shot with an opening sequence that sends Cop Out swerving into smarter territory: Determined to prove his bad-cop “acting” chops to a skeptical Jimmy (Bruce Willis), Paul (Tracy Morgan) interrogates a perp by subjecting him to an unrelenting marathon of movie character impersonations. Beginning with Al Pacino in Heat and moving, logically, through In the Heat of the Night and Training Day, Paul’s “homage” (which he pronounces “homm-ige”) eventually jumps off the rails. Jimmy, on the other side of the interrogation-room glass, can only gape at his partner’s increasingly non sequitur charade: “Dirty Dancing? Star Wars? Everything on cable?!?”

And so Cop Out announces itself as both loving “homage” to “everything on cable”particularly ’80s action comedies, referenced most directly by Harold Faltermeyer’s cheap synth score and an honest-to-goodness plot song (called “Soul Brothers” and sung by Patti LaBelle)and a sly subversion of genre. It’s a movie that shamelessly trafficks in the clichs of other cop movies, while also engaging both characters and audience in the spectator sport of catching references to those very movies. Cop Out only works as well as it doesand it works exponentially better than it shouldbecause the movie-trivia game is played smirk-free, with palpable joy from everyone involved.

Jimmy, a swinging-dick career NYPD cop threatened by his ex-wife’s young, rich new husband (Jason Lee), tries to sell a priceless, long-treasured baseball card so he can pick up the tab for his daughter’s wedding. That plan immediately goes horribly awry, thanks to interventions from Seann William Scott and the scene-swiping Guillermo Diaz as a textbook Mexican movie gangster with a baseball obsession. Jimmy and Paul have no choice but to Break All the Rules.

The plot is almost an afterthought, an obvious MacGuffin intended to steamroll a path for the charisma and chemistry of the two leads. Morgan has been brutally undervalued for his work on the otherwise heavily awarded NBC series 30 Rock, possibly because it’s assumed that the incorrigible comedian he plays is just a riff on himself. In Cop Out, unchained from the temporal constraints and standards and practices of network TV and, according to the press notes, given free rein to improvise, Morgan of course works broad and blue, but he really surprises with his timing and self-control. There are comic set pieces in Cop Out that play out at a snail’s pace, turning awkward and uncomfortable for long stretches in order to build toward a big funny, and Morgan not only hangs on, but steers. Willis’s main order of business is to stay cool and look goodto provide a solid backboard for Morgan’s delirious lunacyand this he does well.

Like most of Smith’s movies, from Clerks to Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back to Zach and Miri Make a Porno, Cop Out tracks a small arc of maturation for dudes who filter their own lives through popular culture. There was a sincere love letter to the transformative power of filmmaking baked into Porno, but its impact was diluted by what felt like strained overtures to the Apatow audience. On the contrary, Cop Out works as a love letter to film fandom, and, amid the ample violence and genitalia jokes, its strength is its sincerity. Working with a full-on studio budget for the first time in his decade-and-a-half career, Smith is still making movies about guys just like him. It may be masturbatory, but it’s also some kind of creative integrity.

Kevin tweeted his own take on critical love/hate this morning, quite succinctly:

“Here’s the thing… *inhales* I’ve made movies that have been panned before, by critics who are still working, and some who I’ve outlasted. I came from a world where critics could make or break you (Janet Maslin’s CLERKS review in the NY Times made me). That world’s long dead. A movie like COP OUT, while an easy target for critics, is clearly not intended to impress those prone to show off their cinema erudition. Critics can stab at COP OUT with their poison pens all they want, but it still doesn’t change the fact that it’s a funny flick.”

“Movie Marketing Madness” takes a look at the marketing campaign we discussed briefly above today, where they take a look at the poster, trailers, media, and online presence of “Cop Out”. It’s quite a lot more detail than you’d expect, with detailed reactions to all the different types of promotions used to make audiences aware that the movie was heading into theaters this month.

This week, Kevin told the LA Times a little more detail about how “A Couple of Dicks” became “Cop Out”. We hadn’t heard this bit before:

…Unfortunately, “Cop Out” was a title registered to the great comedy director Blake Edwards, who wasn’t interested in giving it up to Warners, owing to some old bad blood. Luckily, Michael Pitt, Smith’s first assistant director, had an Edwards connection: His father, Lou Pitt, was Edwards’ agent. When Smith heard that Lou Pitt and Edwards were having dinner together, he immediately called.

“I got on the phone with Mr. Pitt and said, ‘Would you please pass along to Mr. Edwards that “S.O.B” is my sixth favorite movie of all time and that “Victor/Victoria” is in my top 25 and if there was any way that he would help out a fellow filmmaker and save him from being stuck with a lame title, I’d really appreciate it.’ “

The personal plea worked. Edwards agreed to let Smith have the title. “It was a huge save for us,” Smith says. “He’s not just a great filmmaker, but he’s a class act too.”

One of our scoopers noticed the marketing blitz happening around New York City while in town this week, and sent us a few snaps of the various giant billboards. Good marketing campaign as far as awareness, for sure. If the goal was to stretch beyond the internet audience and to John Q. Moviegoer (and the little old lady in the office), we’ll say, mission accomplished.

Kevin Smith Rocks Out with His Cop Out

Source: Edward Douglas

After writing and directing eight raunchy, irreverent and mostly independent comedies in his relatively short 15 year career, Kevin Smith certainly made a name for himself for a certain type of movie, building himself an incredibly devout fanbase from it, too. Who knows what was going through his mind when a script titled “A Couple of Dicks” crossed his path? Maybe as he reached his 40th birthday, he was looking for a much-needed change?

The story goes that writers Mark and Robb Cullen were the showrunners on a pilot Smith directed and when they sold their script for the movie to Warner Bros., Smith’s name was thrown into the ring as a possible director. The results are Cop Out, an ’80s throwback buddy cop comedy that brings together Bruce Willis and Tracy Morgan in a good cop/bad cop-that’s “bad” as in dumb and incompetent-scenario. It’s the first movie Smith has directed from someone else’s script, his first attempt at a genre widely regarded as the type that Hollywood often churns out, and it also trades Smith’s long-standing association with one set of brotherly distributors (the Weinsteins) for another (the Warners).

Kevin Smith is easily one of the most outspoken filmmakers out there, but let’s face it, the guy can ramble if given the chance, so being that we couldn’t get the type of opportunity that allows us to steer the interview into any sort of coherent direction, instead sitting in two back-to-back roundtable interviews, we’re calling this one “Kevin Smith’s Best Bits About the Making of ‘Cop Out.'”

Why Direct Someone Else’s Script?

“For me, it just happened at the right time. I’d come off ‘Zack and Miri’ which I loved so dearly with my heart, but it didn’t wind up doing much more than the standard Kevin Smith business, and that movie was supposed to be the one that punched us all through to the next level. Suddenly, that type of storytelling had become very profitable, telling stories about dudes that were in love with one another, who don’t f*ck yet. So suddenly, I was making one with the guy from the other one that was insanely successful, so I’m making mine with the ‘Knocked Up’ guy and everybody thought it would do $60-70 (million) but it wound up doing ‘Kevin Smith business.’ At that point, I was like, ‘Okay, I’m done, I give up, I can’t stand it anymore.’ If I were to write at that point in my life, which I often do, I would have been writing a script about this poor fat kid whose movie didn’t make enough money. Nobody wants to see that f*cking movie, least of all me. At that point, I’m like, ‘I just won’t say anything for a while.’ Into my life comes the script for ‘A Couple of Dicks’ that the Cullen brothers had sent to me because I worked with them on this pilot called ‘Man-Child’ for Showtime, so I’d seen the script and saw their name on it, but I didn’t know why they’d send it to me. Then I got an Email from Jeff Robinov, the guy who runs Warner Bros., and he said, ‘Hey, what do you think about A Couple of Dicks?’ And I said, ‘I can answer that question a number of ways.’ He wanted me to read it and I read it and I said, ‘This is funny, dude, do you want me to rewrite it? There’s not much I can do ’cause this sh*t is funny. I can take your money to rewrite but I’d only add a couple of jokes.’ He said ‘Not rewrite.’ ‘You want me to cameo? You want me to be that Dave guy, ’cause that part’s funny. I can see a fat guy doing parkour.’ He goes, ‘I find it very odd that it takes you three guesses why I sent you, a filmmaker, a script. That’s just really funny. Three guesses. I’m surprised you didn’t ask me if I wanted you to do craft services.'”

Brooklyn, Queens, Etc…

“I had no idea there was more than one borough in the city. I grew up in Jersey and whenever we said ‘The city,’ it was Manhattan, so this script was written for Los Angeles, and when we talked about coming over here to do it in New York, they did a rewrite and most of it was still set on the island. So when we got here, we were based out of Kaufman Astoria in Queens and I was like ‘Where is Queens?’ and they said, ‘It’s where Spider-Man lives.’ Once we were there, I spent more time there than I ever spent before. I was discovering Queens and then they introduced me to Brooklyn, but I’d heard about but always thought it was a fictional place from a storybook. Suddenly, you meet these two completely other boroughs that is kind of like the real New York in a weird way. I was meeting people in the boroughs who was like ‘I’ve never been to Manhattan, what’s it like?’ I was like, ‘You are SH*TTING me!’ and they’re like, ‘Have you ever been to Brooklyn before?’ No, good point.”

Letting Tracy Morgan Run Wild

“It never hurts to always unleash, because you can always rein it in in the editing room, so while we were on the set, I think for the first week, Bruce was like, ‘Why aren’t we cutting yet?’ because we would just keep rolling. The scene proper would be done but I’d still be rolling, because I knew Tracy would be like, ‘Okay, now the scene’s about to begin.’ It took a while for everybody to catch on that we’re just going to go and see what happens, and I’ll just call out sh*t like ‘Say this, say this!’ Having Bruce there absolutely helped because Bruce would be a true governor where he would be like, ‘This is not funny. Why are we talking about this?’ so we were like, ‘Okay, if Bruce doesn’t think it’s funny, let’s rein it in.'”

An Audience of One… Named “Bruce Willis”

“All of us were stepping up our A game just to make this one f*cking dude laugh and I think that is part of the reason why that scene is so funny. He didn’t figure it out until the very end. I think Bruce felt, ‘Ah, we’re all making a movie,’ but he’s got 25 years. He’s got longevity in a business that doesn’t have longevity anymore. When I was a kid and I walked into a video store or movie theater, they’d have a picture of Humphrey Bogart, Cary Grant, sh*t like that, to represent movies. He’s that face. He represents movies now. You go into a video store or a movie theatre and they have murals? There’s John McLane or any number of things he’s been in. He’s like a living legend and sh*t and I was intimidated ’cause I’d never worked with a movie star before. Please don’t tell Ben Affleck I said that.”

Working in the Studio System

“I give credit to Jeff Robinov. This is the nearest thing that I can figure out now that I’ve been inside. This guy seems to be making all these weird decisions and moves that are good. Basically he takes interesting filmmakers and puts them into studio movies, so you’ve got Guy Ritchie shooting ‘Sherlock Holmes,’ you’ve got Christopher Nolan shooting f*cking ‘Dark Knight,’ you got me shooting ‘Cop Out.’ There was some other f*cker they did. I like what they do here, but I make movies that need a needle to be thread and they make chainsaws at Warner Bros. Their thing is that ‘We like how they thread a needle but let’s see if they can make a chainsaw.’ You got cats doing stuff you wouldn’t normally associate them with and I like that, that’s ballsy, that’s trying for something. Soderbergh laid the ground. He went into Warner Bros. first and said, ‘I’m going to make ‘Ocean’s 11,’ I’m the guy who made Schizopolis.” You can’t make two different f*cking movies than that! But he did and he was successful.”

Studios Do Have Their Benefits

“The best example of having them behind you is three weeks I was up in Toronto and we were four weeks out from my release right now and there was more awareness for my movie this far our than there was for ‘Zack and Miri’ 12 seconds ago, that’s the difference. When we had the title hiccup, when there was the moment where we had to change from ‘A Couple of Dicks’ to ‘Cop Out,’ their whole thing was, ‘We can’t market the movie effectively if we can’t run ads before 9pm.’ That was the problem. If we can’t do that, we can’t market the movie effectively. I was like, ‘What are you talking about? It’s an R-rated movie, we’re going after people who watch TV after 9 anyway!’ Their marketing is like the Bombing of Dresden, they just take it out and they make a huge impact. You cannot turn around without being aware of that movie and what it’s kind of about and when it’s opening, that’s how they market. So the idea of them not being able to advertise before 9pm terrified them. Once we agreed to change it and they started their marketing campaign a month later, you could see why they were nervous. You can’t do what they’re doing with this movie if you’re hamstrung by a time. They’ve owned the Olympics for the last week. Every time I’ve watched an Olympic event, it’s like ‘Sponsored by Cop Out’ and I’m like ‘WHAT? I made that movie!!!’ Because for fifteen years in the world I come from, I was so involved in the marketing and publicity and they always tell you where it is and what you need to do to make it better, I was used to that, and these cats are like, ‘You did your job, you made the movie, thank you, we got this from here.’ All of a sudden, you’ll be walking somewhere and there’ll be a billboard up and you’ll be like, ‘How did that happen?'”

The Retro Music

“Ironically, we were shooting the movie and I would always say to Robb and Mark Cullen, ‘Am I crazy man? I just want Harold Faltermeyer to score the movie.’ The vibe I was going for when I was shooting was ‘Fletch,’ and I was temping the movie with ‘Fletch’ cues and sh*t. At the same time, Faltermeyer apparently went into Warner Bros. and was just like, ‘Hey, man, I feel like scoring again, what do you guys have?’ ‘Well, we’re not sure, but we’ll get back to you when we figure something out.’ Then all of a sudden, I was calling someone at Warner Bros. going, ‘Hey, would you guys fight me on Harold Faltermeyer?’ So they put us together and I loved him so much. He watched our temp cut which had all of his music in it from ‘Fletch,’ ‘Tango & Cash,’ ‘Beverly Hills Cop,’ so he was just f*cking flattered. He was sitting there watching the movie where he was the third character the whole time, so when he came back to do the original score-as opposed to all the cues of his we stole before-he just did a great job. I loved every time I would get an Email from Harold Faltmeyer and there would be a cue in it. Pull it down, put it in my iTunes and listen to it and the first time I heard the theme song, the main cue? I just wanted to go back in time and tell 15-year-old me, ‘You’re going to have a Harold Faltermeyer theme song in your movie!'”

Before we wrapped up, Smith also talked about editing the movie himself and how important that is to his creative process even for a movie he didn’t write and how hard it was for him to accept the fact that the studio wanted another editor to come in after Smith to do a pass on it. Like with Faltermeyer, Smith threw out a name of an editor he liked and trusted, that being Stephen Mirrione, the Oscar winning editor of Steven Soderbergh’s Traffic, and Warner Bros. indeed got Mirrione to look the movie over, but he only made a couple of changes.

All of the above culminates with the release of Cop Out nationwide on February 26.

@Billygator “Saw #CopOut last night. Wonderful movie! Full theatre really responded well.” Right on! I was at the premiere last night. It played like crazy there, too. So fun to laugh at something with a crowd that I’ve been giggling at by myself for months now.

Don’t worry, folks – Many of you will get to enjoy this one in just 3 short days! Until then, Collider.com has got SEVEN clips from the film neatly strung together in one easy to watch video (they’ll play one after another). Enjoy six and a half segmented (though unfortunately censored) minutes from “Cop Out”.

So far, here’s what we’re seeing as far as scheduled “Cop Out” press on the tube this week:

Wednesday 2/24 – Tracy Morgan is on The Daily Show (Comedy Central).

Thursday 2/25 – Adult Swim (Cartoon Network) airs a Sneak Peak of “Cop Out”. Seann William Scott tapes Chelsea Lately and appears on Craig Ferguson (CBS late night). Bruce Willis appears on Regis & Kelly.

Friday 2/25 – For “Cop Out” Opening Day, Seann William Scott appears on Bonnie Hunt.

We’re expecting more press to roll in, so once we know, so will you. “Cop Out” takes over North American theaters this Friday, February 26th. Spread the word.

Smith ready for U.S.-Canada, then it’s ‘Hit Somebody’

By Adam Kimelman – NHL.com Staff Writer

Acclaimed filmmaker Kevin Smith spent Sunday doing interviews for his new movie, “Cop Out,” which comes out Feb. 26. But there really was only one thing on his mind.

U.S. vs. Canada.

“I called my kid (daughter Harley), she’s sleeping in a different hotel room from me this morning,” Smith said. “I got up very early and I said, ‘You know what happens tonight?’ And she said, ‘Parise vs. Brodeur,’ and I said ‘Yes!’ It’s a big game for us.”

Smith, New Jersey to the core despite his current Los Angeles address, still bleeds Devils red. So for him, it’s a win-win situation knowing either Canada goalie Martin Brodeur or U.S. forwards Zach Parise and Jamie Langenbrunner are going to leave Canada Hockey Place happy.

“That’s a big bucket of win for me,” said Smith. “I’m not sitting there going (go) Team USA, and I’m certainly not sitting there going (go) Team Canada. I’m just like, that’s the best hockey you’ll ever see. Unlike an all-star game, these guys are going for medals. They’re going to play really hard.”

So hard, in fact, he hopes for some NHL-like extracurricular activity.

“I’m hoping they’re so competitive Marty starts busting out like (Ron) Hextall and starts slashing ankles,” Smith said. “It would be awesome to see a Marty-Parise fight.”

While that likely won’t happen — at least outside of Lou Lamoriello’s nightmares — expect to see that kind of action in Smith’s next project, the hockey-themed “Hit Somebody.”

Smith revealed exclusively to NHL.com that Seann William Scott, who worked with Smith on “Cop Out,” will play Buddy, the title character in “Hit Somebody.” The script, based on a Warren Zevon song with lyrics by acclaimed writer Mitch Albom, is a story of a hockey enforcer who strives to score just one goal in a hockey game.

“Seann, for me, was the key into the character,” Smith told NHL.com. “I had all the elements in place, and the one thing I was missing was the personality. Generally I like to write to a voice, but I didn’t know who that voice was or what that voice could be. And then after spending all the time with Seann on this movie, he’s pitch perfect. He is that guy.

“This dude has something in him that you can just see hangs so well on Buddy. He’s got some pain that’s going to work out well. More importantly he has so much love in his heart. Seann Scott is such an ebullient, happy person who’s just happy to be there. And on (“Cop Out”) you could see it. On our set the guy is just so delighted to be working, to be making people laugh. But he’s always dismissed as Stifler. … This is his chance to shine.”

Scott, a native of Cottage Grove, Minn., admittedly isn’t much of a skater, but for the role of Buddy, that works just fine.

“I didn’t grow up playing hockey which is good because the character is not supposed to be a great player, he’s a great fighter,” Scott said.

“When I pegged Seann, I said ‘You’re Minnesota; that might as well be Canada,” said Smith. “You’re from hockey country. He was like, I’m an athlete and I played a lot of baseball and basketball, but I wasn’t good at hockey. I can skate, though. I said that’s all I need. He doesn’t have to be Paul Coffey on skates. He shouldn’t be.”

Scott said spending time with Smith drew him back into hockey — he follows the Minnesota Wild, but not closely — and Smith said he’s hoping Scott will join him in June at the Walter Gretzky Street Hockey Tournament in Brantford, Ont., that Smith has turned into a personal pilgrimage. Besides his playing goalie for his own team, Puck U., Smith will be bringing seven teams along with him.

The tournament also allows him to indulge his personal obsession with all things Gretzky, and have a life outside the movies. It’s why he enlists close friends and family members for his own team, rather than friends like Seth Rogen and Ben Affleck.

“These cats are super-famous and they got other things to do, they got lives,” said Smith. “The notion that you want to go to suburban Ontario to play street hockey while Wayne Gretzky’s dad watches — some people don’t want to do it. Seann William Scott will definitely go. He wasn’t aware of it last time. I remember saying while we were making the movie that I was going to play hockey, and he was like, where? Maybe he’ll come.”

While nothing is locked in contractually, Smith said having Scott’s voice in his head makes finishing the script a far easier task.

“Once I get going I could probably write it in less than a month, because it’s all right here at the top of my throat, ready to go, and in my heart,” Smith said. “In my heart of hearts I know it’s Seann, it’s so easy to go. Just easy to skate all-out when you have a voice in your head and I have his voice well in my head.”

That voice doesn’t sound like Scott’s famed “Stifler” character from the “American Pie” franchise. Scott has done dramatic roles before, and Smith believes Hit Somebody can elevate both their careers.

“I look at this as Seann’s opportunity to go to the (Tom) Hanks level,” Smith said. “Hanks for years and years did this (lesser) role and then he became that (blockbuster movie) guy. This is Seann’s chance to do that as well, not just be Stifler. And it’s my chance to not just be the “Clerks” guy. It’s my chance to do something big, epic in scale. Stories I tell span one day. … This spans 30 years. You’re talking a period. You’re trying to bring people to a time in your life that hasn’t existed in 30 years. The look of it, the feel of it, the sound of it — everything I have is going to be in that movie.”

Synopsis

Bear Nation is an exploration of a sub-culture that exists within the gay rainbow. The documentary is presented in the format of show and tell. Through conversations with subjects, experts, bear-lebrites and admirers, the piece will attempt to shine a light on this fresh and vibrant movement.

Director Bio – Malcolm Ingram

A lifelong interest in film led Malcolm Ingram to work at The Toronto International Film Festival at the tender age of 21. After 3 booze soaked years of schmooze, Ingram left the organization to pursue a writing career with the influential Film Threat Magazine. While on assignment for the magazine, Ingram met Kevin Smith (Chasing Amy, Dogma, Clerks) who soon became his mentor and financed his first feature film. DRAWING FLIES, shot in Vancouver, BC in the summer of 1995, starred rising talent Jason Lee and had a successful run on the festival circuit.

Ingram’s next feature was TAIL LIGHTS FADE and featured a high profile and talented cast including Denise Richards, Jake Busey, Elizabeth Berkeley and Margot Kidder. With these two features under his belt, Ingram delved into his psyche and decided to make something more meaningful. Fortunately, it was at the same time that he realized he had a fondness for dudes.

SMALL TOWN GAY BAR was Ingram’s third film and it screened at over 50 film festivals internationally (Including a successful sold out screening at Inside Out). It was nominated for the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film festival and the GLAAD Media award for Best Documentary while winning THE HBO Award for Best Documentary in Miami and the Grand Jury Award at Outfest in Los Angeles.

Ingram recently finished his next gay opus BEAR NATION: LOOKING AT THE HISTORY AND IMPORTANCE OF FAT AND HAIR IN GAY – a documentary in seven parts.

Kevin and Malc’s Bear-themed SModcast should be available online sometime this weekend or early next week. Stay tuned.

With the film just 8 days away, you might wanna show your love for the film with some cool “Cop Out” swag. How about some for free? Gofobo has some pretty cool prizes up for grabs including hats, pins, gym bags, flashlights, and more. All you gotta do is fill out a form to enter. Good luck – Let’s see some News Askew fans win this stuff!