Kevin Smith Podcasts The Teaser Trailer For 'Red State'

Kevin Smith has premiered the teaser for his film Red State, but not in any traditional manner. The filmmaker showed a rough version of the teaser to an audience of twenty people at his Smodcastle in LA. But the semi-private showing was recorded and released as a podcast, through which you can hear the audio of the teaser and quite a few comments from the director about making the movie.

You can catch the podcast at Red State of the Union. [via videoeta] What you'll hear, starting at 2:30, is just over a minute of Michael Parks singing what sounds like a dark version of the hymn 'Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus,' and then speaking briefly of his fear of God. Michael Parks' voice is deep, rumbling and full of the spirit of Tom Waits as much as that of Jesus. He sounds great.

Of the teaser, Kevin Smith offered a preface:

You're not watching anything remotely polished or by any stretch of the imagination finished...this is just to give you a general feel of what it is.

Then after the teaser had run twice for the audience, he commented,

That's what you call a true teaser; it doesn't tell you anything about the plot, it's all about tone and mood. But at this stage of the game it's about all I'm willing to share.

Passing a mic around to audience members Mr. Smith solicited the response of those in attendance. One comment said it looked "like an old '70s movie," with which the director enthusiastically agreed. And while the audio of the teaser makes it sound as if the camera might just be on Michael Parks' face the entire time, comments suggest that there's a lot more to the teaser, as audience members talk about the visceral feel, a shot of Melissa Leo running, something that involves a cage, and camera movements leading Kevin Smith to reveal that almost the whole film is handheld, with no steadicam. He commented further,

It looks like that times the length of the movie...going into it, that was the chief aim. We felt like, look, the movie is a complete step outside of what we're normally used to doing...this time around, since it's a completely different genre we kinda felt at liberty to go crazy...it's like going to a new school where suddenly like, 'nobody knows us here, let's be the tough guys now!'

Looks like we'll get another couple podcasts in this mode, and from the sound of the conversation in this episode, there might be some clips and other material made available prior to Sundance. The image at the head of this article will give you a good idea of how Kevin Smith feels about getting info out to the press (he's not a fan, to be reductive) but as long as he keeps getting info about the film out there in general, I could care less about the delivery method.