Kevin Smith in a Question and Answer Session For Red State

Ever since it was announced that Kevin Smith had finished the first draft of his horror film Red State, he’s been talking about the film all over the view askew message boards. That’s a great thing about Kevin Smith, no matter how busy he may be, he’ll always make himself accessible to his fans and let them know what he’s up to.

As you can imagine, there were a lot of questions asked on the message board, so we’ve whittled it down to a few. In the Q & A Smith talks about his writing process, how the film is more bleak than Requiem for a Dream, political themes and sharks!

Question: From the time you sat down to write it, how long did it actually take you to finish?
Smith: I started writing on Saturday. Finished [Wednesday]. However, to be fair, I’ve had months to let it simmer and stew in my imagination before I started the actual script, so I wasn’t flying blind. I also spent about a week doing a twenty page outline that I then worked off of. But from the first “INT AIRPORT - DAY” to “THE END” was five days.

Question: Have you done that before, when it comes to writing? the “flying-blind” thing?
Smith: More often than not, I fly blindly into it. I rarely… rarely do an outline. But with “Red State”, I wanted to flesh it out a bit more in notes-form, rather than just let it all happen via dialogue. When I’m writing something like “Chasing Amy” or “Clerks II”, the structure and story evolve from the conversation to conversation flow. Since there’s not a ton of conversation in this, I felt that going in with some semblance of a game-plan was in order.

Question: How did you handle action description? Is there a lot of “and they fight” or is it more descriptive?
Smith: Much, much more descriptive. Painstakingly so.

Question: Did you learn anything about your own fears in writing this?
Smith: What a great question. The answer: a little bit, yes.

Question: Are you going to be adding elements of comedy, or is it going to be just serious and as you said, “fucked up.”?
Smith: There’s a few chuckles; about 2%. The other 98% is pretty fucking bleak and disturbing.

Question: Anything to compare it to on a bleakness scale?
Smith: “Requiem for a Dream” is a pretty bleak (but insanely well-made) flick. This is more bleak than that.

Question: Terrorists, republicans, marshal law!!!! I know that you can’t tip your hat too soon, but…… Am I off-base here?
Smith: Yeah.

Question: So you’re more or less confirming that “Red State” is not political?
Smith: I didn’t say that.

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