Hollywood Babble On & On #664: Making Failure Work For You

Welcome to the show folks...

A lot of people are saying that filmmaker Kevin Smith is in full implosion mode over his film Red State. He makes a big deal about having an auction for the film at Sundance, got those yahoos from the Westboro Baptist pseudo-Church to protest the film, then after some cranking, whining, and insulting those who bothered to attend, he sold the film to himself for $20 and pledged to self-distribute it as a traveling roadshow.

Well, he might be crazy, but he also might be crazy like a fox.

You see he might be doing this whole thing, including making the movie, just so it can be a failure.

Of course for it to work it can't be just another one of his run of the mill failures like Zack & Miri Make A Porno, or Cop Out, it has to stand out, it has to be special, it has to be what I call a "Heroic Failure."

You see a heroic failure is a movie designed to fail at the box office, but win plaudits, and hopefully big money deals from within the Hollywood community.

To create a heroic failure you must create something that would repel the general audience, but appeal to the prejudices inside Hollywood. How do you do that? Well, antipathy towards Christians and Christianity is the last prejudice Hollywood is allowed to have. Need proof, check out the movies and TV shows from the past 20 years and count the times where it turns out that the openly religious characters are either maniacally homicidal, or perverted at worst, or sleazily hypocritical at best.

Now there are some who would justify this prejudice that these film/TV makers are merely speaking "truth to power" about the coming fundamentalist theocracy. Well, Hollywood is basically cowardly, and highly unlikely to do anything that might threaten them financially, and absolutely nothing that might harm them physically. Remember how the entire community collectively shat their pants over South Park satirizing Islam and supported its censorship?

If there was a theocracy coming, or enraged Presbyterians wearing Semtex underpants and leaping into studio commissaries Hollywood wouldn't dare raise a finger to offend their delicate sensibilities. The suits that run the industry may do stupid things, but they are not suicidal.

To sum it up, it's safe to insult or offend Christians, because the worst thing they will probably do to you, is either not see your movie/TV show or buy your product, or complain prevent you from getting their tax dollars.

So, you go and make a film that's the cinematic version of the art world's "Piss Christ" a work who's only point is to generate controversy and attract attention by casting Christian fundamentalists as a cult of homicidal maniacs. Then you top it off by calling it Red State, the commonly used description for parts of the country that vote for the Republican Party. Now you have Republicans, even non-religious Republicans, also repelled by the film, and guess what, there happens to be a lot of them in the United States these days.

What will these people do?

They will simply not go to the movie.

As my Grandpa would say they won't even ignore it.

Not everyone will ignore it. Some will make noise, and some are already being a little more active. Namely the douche collective otherwise known as the Westboro Baptist Church, which has already made appearances at Sundance to protest the film.

Well, that's perfect for Smith.

Westboro is basically a bunch of hyperactive howler monkeys who love to make noise and hurl the equivalent of pseudo-theological feces at passersby to get attention, but will run away and scream for the protection of the police and their lawyers if things threaten to get ugly. (Remember when they threatened to protest the funeral of the little girl murdered in Tuscon? When buzz got around that some were going to aggressively crash their party, they canceled and ran straight to the safer fields of Sundance)

Smith will take his movie on the road, making sure that Westboro get all the dates. That way their protests will guarantee him media attention, sell a few tickets to counter-protesters, and otherwise blame the film's inevitable financial failure on him being "suppressed" by the sinister religious right.

Hollywood will see this and automatically feel sympathy for Smith and his film, standing up to these disgusting little trolls. Sure Westboro is small, politically powerless, basically cowardly, and loathed by people on both the Left and Right of the political spectrum, but they're good at getting attention. That makes them a super-human foe in the eyes of Hollywood, and a perfect foil for Smith.

Which brings us to his behavior at his precious Sundance, which has been described as veering between erratic and obnoxious and all points in between.

Sure, it could all be crazy, or it all be a brilliant played shell game.

Remember one simple fact, Hollywood is high school with money. Not just any high school, but the stereotypical upper crust high school you see in an 80s teen movie and the social strata breaks down like this:

Actors are the cheerleaders.

Directors are the jocks.

Writers are the nerds who have to do the homework for the everybody else.

Producers and studio executives are the keeners who run for student council and eagerly seek the approval of the cheerleaders and the jocks, because attention from them makes them look and feel more important than they actually are.

This hunger for approval from the "artists" who get paid the most in attention and money leads to them not only forgiving obnoxious behavior, but actively promoting it. Rant about how their business model is all screwed up and holding back their art, and they may tut-tut for a minute., but they won't punish you. They are not allowed to stay mad for any real length of time, because they want to be seen as people who understand the artistic temperament, with an emphasis on temper.

The only time they might stay mad at an artist is if said artist costs them personally in the form of a bonus, pay raise, or even, in rare cases, their job. But those times are rare in the age of other people's money.

This forgiveness gets amplified exponentially when the artist in question is in the situation explained above: Namely promoting one of Hollywood's few permissible prejudices and facing alleged "suppression" of their from allegedly right wing religious forces, when the most damage actually came from non-religious, non-political, market forces.

Suddenly all behavior, whether it's biting the hand that feeds them, or producing a string of flops is forgiven, because this "artist" is now being seen not as a simple failure, but as a heroic who is mad, bad, and dangerous to know, as well as making a huge sacrifice for their art.

But it's more than likely that they're just using failure to play the system like a puppet on a string.

So here's my prediction. Smith will play the film in a few cities. It will attract protests from his new frenemy Phelps & Co. which will attract some attention and a few counter-protest ticket sales, but not enough to justify any wide release. Then he'll go back to Hollywood, get a pat on the back for his courage, and a fresh new movie deal, his past behavior and poor performing films forgiven.

Truly, a Hollywood ending.