Kevin Smith: Connects Again, Says Pirates Lead To Converts
from the indeed dept
A few months back, I wrote about how director Kevin Smith (who's most well known for Clerks, but has done plenty of other stuff as well) is showing how the old CwF + RtB formula works in the movie business as well. Smith has gone above and beyond (and crazy far beyond that) in connecting with his fans in all sorts of ways. Beyond just making cool movies, he has a fun (mostly) weekly podcast, a blog (which he doesn't use as much any more), web forums and he regularly does Q&A sessions that are somewhat legendary and hilarious (check YouTube).Recently, he jump onto the Twitter bandwagon and hasn't looked back (it explains why the blog has gone mostly silent), and he interacts with all sorts of fans that way. Last week, he announced that for Labor Day, he would do a 24-hour Twitter marathon, taking and answering questions from fans. It started up around 8am Monday morning, and was fun to follow along with (including some back and forth with Ben Stiller, who lives in Kevin's neighborhood, and has a house that Kevin wants...). Yet another example of connecting with fans -- though, every here and there he interspersed it with links to things to buy, such as a book made from some "best of" moments from the podcast, called Shootin' the Sh*t with Kevin Smith.
Smith seems to have the whole CwF+RtB thing down cold -- and has for many years. But, given all of that, I had no idea what his opinion was on the question of "piracy." While he notes, at one point, that Disney will own the rights to his movies forever, someone asks "How much money do you think your projects have lost to piracy?" to which Kevin responds:
See, I think "How many more converts did I get from piracy?"Bingo. The smart creator these days looks to use "piracy" to his advantage. Smith has done that and more. Hell, we all wish that our favorite creators made plenty of money any time anyone viewed/heard/experienced their content -- but that's not the way the world works. So why not figure out ways to use what the world is doing to your advantage? Many have figured it out -- and yet the industry bigwigs and lawyers continue to insist it's impossible. Oh, and I'm looking forward to (finally) seeing Kevin Smith do a Q&A live later this year as part of his fall tour -- for which I was happy to give him money, once again, disproving Hollywood lawyers insistence that fans just want everything for free. Luckily, Smith doesn't appear to be listening to the lawyers in his neighborhood, and it seems like he's better off for it.
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Filed Under: connecting with fans, fans, kevin smith, movies, twitter
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But he is a pain in the ass to follow on Twitter. I mean, god, left my computer alone for an hour yesterday, came back to 200+ tweets from one guy.
That part of this article should be refiled under (Mis) Uses of Technology.
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Weird...
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1 down.....
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That's Just How it Happened...
Never did get the chance to see it at the theater, but I did buy all of his DVDs up to that point. So I pretty much became a (paying) convert of his because of piracy.
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Unfortunately though I think we are a minority but perhaps a large enough one that they still make money due to the effect of piracy.
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Pirates lead to converts
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Re: Pirates lead to converts
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IT WAS AWESOME!
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