Kevin Smith - Why 'Tusk' Was a Box-Office Bomb [tekst, tłumaczenie i interpretacja piosenki]

Hi! It's TUSK-maker Kevin Smith!

For anyone interested in my take on the box office of TUSK, here are 2 links to podcasts where I discuss the subject at length...

SModcast

Hollywood Babble-On

But if you're not a podcast fan, here's some text...

TUSK cost under $3 million to make. Yes - I'm stupid enough to make a movie that weird but I'm not stupid enough to break the bank doing so. Demarest, the company that funded the film, made their loot back on foreign sales at the last Berlin market: http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/berlin-sony-snaps-up-kevin-678200

The marketing budget of our theatrical release was a low spend, as our plan was to use the Toronto buzz to launch our national release. A24 ran a beautiful campaign. I have zero complaints. I'm happy anyone showed up to see the flick at all. Seriously: it's a movie about a guy who turns another guy into a walrus. Thanks to ANYBODY who ever said #WalrusYes.

Monday morning quarterbacking the situation? The 600 screen release was way too ambitious. If you're going to open on that many screens, you have to spend far more than we did to let people know there's a movie in theaters at all. We could have likely done close to the same opening number on half the amount of screens. In retrospect, a more traditional platform release might've worked better. TUSK is opening that way this Friday in Canada, debuting on 4 screens across the entire country in Toronto, Winnipeg, Montreal and Vancouver. If there's interest, it will expand accordingly.

As for why TUSK didn't do better: it's a weeeeeird movie, man. It was always a midnight movie, not a mainstream movie. When A24 said they wanted to go out on 600 screens (and at one point, there was even talk of 1000 screens, if you can believe that), it was a wonderful vote of confidence. Now we know that wide release vote of confidence was misplaced on me and my walrus movie in this instance.

But TUSK is by no means a disaster. It's a three million dollar movie, kids: everyone's financially okay. And while I can't predict the future (obviously), I think the flick will do quite nicely on VOD.

Naturally, I wish more folks had come to see it in theaters, but I've been here before and I know how it all works out - because the TUSK release is akin to the MALLRATS theatrical release. That flick cost $5 million in 1995 and was release on 700 screens. It did only slightly better than TUSK, earning $400k on the opening Friday. But while I lost the box office derby on that 1995 opening weekend, I won the marathon with MALLRATS - as it's the movie people talk to me about the most and the biggest gateway/intro to the rest of the films and all the podcasts. TUSK will have people talking for the rest of my life. Some people will love, some will hate. But it'll make you feel something. And that, they tell me, is art.

I honestly don't mind all the roasting of my flesh online or being the whipping boy of the moment because even if I "failed", I did so doing trying something different. But on the purely financial side - the biz of the showbiz equation? Because of TUSK, I got to make YOGA HOSERS (which is turning out nicely). And also because of TUSK, we just secured financing for CLERKS III. And right after that, we wrap the third part of the True North Trilogy that began with TUSK, continues in YOGA HOSERS, and ends with MOOSE JAWS (which is my JAWS with a moose movie). TUSK was the bridge to all that. If that's failing, yes: I'm a big, fat failure. And I hope to fail lots more just like it in the near future.
Don't be afraid to do weird stuff, so long as you do it cheaply and cover everyone's bets. Be bold. Be stupid, if you have to: so long as you don't hurt anybody, what's it matter how dopey your dream is? If I hadn't made TUSK? If I'd let it die as a podcast? I wouldn't have three other movies I'm now making within the span of a year. Some folks will try to shame you for trying something outside the norm; the only shame is in not trying to accomplish your dreams.

People have been telling me I'm a failure and that I'm doing it all wrong for 20 years now. Never trust anybody when they tell you how your story goes. You know your story. You write your own story.