Published On Thu Apr 01 2010
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Director Kevin Smith went on a Twitter tirade over bad reviews of his movie Cop Out.
http://media.thestar.topscms.com/ima...ceb4a5c53.jpeg By
Peter Howell Movies Columnist
Open letter to Kevin Smith, disgruntled filmmaker:
I understand you’re furious about the critical drubbing that your recent movie
Cop Out received. So much so that you’ve been ranting on Twitter about how you’re going to get back at all those ink-stained hacks who vex you so much.
You want to start charging critics to see your movies, instead of getting “free” advance looks at them. To me, and to many of my fellow critics, your idea sounds like being asked to pay to perform jury duty. We consider it neither honour nor privilege to see your movies. I wish I’d had an excellent excuse to avoid having to see
Cop Out, which already tops my list as the worst film of 2010.
And for the record, there is no such thing as a “free” movie for a critic. Anything that involves writing on a notepad in the dark and thinking about what you’re going to say about it afterwards isn’t playtime. It’s work.
Here’s how much I hated
Cop Out, your foul, unfunny and ultimately sad excuse for entertainment starring a cheque-cashing Bruce Willis and the desperately hopeless Tracy Morgan. Prior to seeing it, I always thought that a single star rating was enough to indicate a truly bad movie.
The Star didn’t have a rating lower than that.
But
Cop Out convinced me that it was possible to be worse than one star. It was unfair to so many one-star movies to be considered equal to a ten-megaton bomb like
Cop Out.
So I asked
The Star’s software gurus to create a half star rating for
Cop Out. You may take some pride in knowing that
The Toronto Star’s new half-star rating was inspired by your work. If future movies descend to the depths reached by
Cop Out, they too, can have the half-star of shame.
For people reading this who have come late to the argument, let me recap your beef, which I first saw in Devin Faraci’s column on Chud.com. He collected all your tweets on this issue and reposted them. Here’s a condensed version of your very long hissy fit about critics and
Cop Out:
“Watching them beat the s—t out of it was sad. Like, it’s called
Cop Out ; that sound like a very ambitious title to you? You REALLY wanna s—t in the mouth of a flick that so OBVIOUSLY strived for nothing more than laughs?
“Was it called
Schindler’s Cop Out? Writing a nasty review for
Cop Out is akin to bullying a retarded kid ...
“It was just ridiculous to watch. That was it for me. Realized the whole system’s upside down: so we let a bunch of people see it for free & they s—t all over it? Meanwhile, people who’d REALLY like to see the flick for free are made to pay? Bulls—t: from now on, any flick I’m ever involved with, I conduct critics screenings thusly: you wanna see it early to review it? Fine: pay like you would if you saw it next week.”
You go on and on, Kevin, but we get the point: You’re unhappy that critics wailed on
Cop Out. And you insult regular moviegoers by implying they’ll happily see any garbage you throw up on a screen.
Funny, but I don’t recall you writing any public praise about great the critics were in the early part of your career, when they were describing you as the Great Indie Hope for movies like
Clerks and
Chasing Amy. I consider
Chasing Amy one of the best romantic comedies ever made. Hey, some of us even liked
Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back and
Clerks II.
But that was back when you were viewed as a talented writer and potentially good director, somebody with good ideas, a sense of irony and some perspective that not every movie is going to get two thumbs up from critics.
Those days are long gone, Kevin. You’ve turned into the worst kind of Hollywood whore, the kind who makes bad movies and then wonders why critics don’t appreciate how much “fun” they are.
You used to make fun of directors like that. Now you’ve turned into one. What the hell happened, man?
Instead of taking your ball and bat and heading home to sulk, you should be apologizing to everyone who had to sit through
Cop Out, including critics who saw it for “free.”
Do like J.D. Shapiro did this week. He’s the screenwriter of
Battlefield Earth. He wrote a piece in the
New York Post, which has been widely reprinted online. He apologized for the sheer awfulness of this wretched waste of celluloid, which was based on the writings of L. Ron Hubbard and starred John Travolta as a dreadlocked space alien.
Granted, the apology was 10 years late.
Battlefield Earth came out in 2000, and Shapiro waited until the Razzies recently anointed it Worst Movie of the Decade before offering his mea culpa.
But at least he’s sorry. You, Kevin, are acting like your sad decline is entirely the fault of critics who have grown tired of your witless and childish attempts at comedy. Does every one of your movies have to involve excrement?
Grow up, Kevin, or simply grow a pair. Critics aren’t your enemy. Your worst nightmare is the one that stares at you in the mirror every morning. It’s the face of a guy who has stopped caring about making good movies.
