Trying his hardest to redeem fans lost from Cop Out and all that involved, Kevin Smith just wrapped his big passion project, Red State. With the 25-day $4 million production wrapping only two days ago, the director was also editing during any free minute. On a blog update, he shared with us he screened a 98-min “fine-cut, complete with credits and some pre-mixing” at his wrap party. As a Halloween surprise he also shared the first teaser poster for the film, with an interesting story on how it came to be below.
Moody, weird, and pitch-perfect for the tone of the film. If I went out to an ad agency here in town, I’d be billed close to 20 grand for a campaign that’d maybe… maybe… include this poster. But this piece of artwork (I call it “The Holy Ghost”) didn’t come from a top-tier ad agency: Jon Gordon is my RED STATE producer, and this poster was created by his assistant, Melissa Bloom. So we’ve got a marketing image that was put together by someone who was on set every day, integral to the process that produced the film which inspired this image. This isn’t the work of some gun for hire who’s doing six other campaigns; we’re not just one of many. The marketer is actually family, RED from pre-production all the way through wrap, so she’s got an insight into the flick that no ad agency could ever boast (not even one-time Glo-Coat golden boy Don Draper over at SCDP). I’ll take passion over pedigree any day.
You can read the rest here. Kevin Smith has said he is looking to get it into Sundance this January.
Are you still looking forward to Red State? Even after all the pain Cop Out caused?