By Jen Connors

“Welcome to protestors and excitement and the last paradise of free speech,” John Cooper, director of the Sundance Film Festival, began as he introduced one of the festival’s most controversial films. Starting at least ten minutes late, the world premiere of Red State had attracted a sold-out crowd and at least ten members of radical conservative group Westboro Baptist Church picketing the film.
The fact that there was going to be a protest was already common knowledge. Smith acknowledged it on his Twitter page, replying to a follower that he was going to, “Join them, I guess. That’s what you do when you can’t beat ‘em.” The WBC issued a press release on January 15,  stating Smith’s “hatred” and the fact that the film “mocks the servants of God and calls good evil and evil good,” as reasons for protesting. They were met with about 200 students from Park City High School, holding signs with legends such as, “
The movie itself is, as Smith puts it, a political/religious/horror/thriller film centering on the actions of a group not unlike the WBC in a small Midwestern town. The film opens on a teenage boy (Michael Angarano) passing a funeral on his way to school. The funeral, which was being held for a gay man who was found brutally murdered behind a bar, had a crowd of protestors from a fundamentalist group called Five Points. Upon entering his classroom, a debate about the validity of the group occurs. Soon after, two of the boy’s friends (played by Kyle Gallner and Nicholas Braun) show him a printout of an online dating profile of a woman from the group’s hometown, saying that she has been in communication with them for a few weeks and that she wanted to meet them later that night. While driving to the neighboring town, the boys accidentally side-swept a vehicle that appeared to be abandoned. The car contained the sheriff of the town, who was in the car with another man. The boys fled from the scene and continued to the woman’s home. After a few drinks, she said she was ready to have sex with all three of them. They were told to go into the bedroom and begin removing their clothes. The boys get knocked out by something hitting the walls and Gallner’s character wakes up alone, in a dog crate, on some type of conveyor belt.
It is soon revealed that he is in fact inside of the Five Points church, and that the boys’ planned night of debauchery had gone terribly wrong. While the pastor (Michael Parks) is giving a sermon, preaching about how hateful of a country the United States is and how the world is going to hell, it becomes clear to Gallner that this was not a good place to be, even less so when the men of the group reveal that a gay man is tied to a cross in the middle of the room and proceed to murder him in cold blood, identically to the way the man whose funeral was shown was killed. That is when the fact that the group has automatic weapons is revealed, and as federal agents attempting to take down the organization arrive, a bloodbath begins.


This film is not for the faint of heart. Smith said so himself during the film’s introduction. Red State is a bloodbath for about two-thirds of its ninety-five minute runtime, with serious questions of what is good and what is evil being raised. With radical groups abundant today, it’s almost safe to ask if the movie hits a little too close to home, with amount of potential radical groups like the WBC might have to do something like this.
The movie is notable for other reasons. Kevin Smith stated during the film’s Q&A that this will be his penultimate film as a director, with Hit Somebody! being his tenth and final effort. He will instead focus on releases features done by newcomers via his Smodcast Pictures banner. Hit Somebody!, based off the Warren Zevon hockey song of the same name, is due to hit theaters sometime in 2012 and will feature most of the same cast as Red State.
As previously posted, Smith is not going about the traditional route of selling a film, doing press and a publicity tour for Red State. He is instead going on a fifteen-city, month-long tour beginning March 5 at Radio City Music Hall in New York City. “I came here seventeen years ago and all I wanted to do was sell my movie, and I can’t think of anything f—ing worse seventeen years later than selling our movie to people who just don’t f—ing get it,” he said upon purchasing the four million dollar flick for a paltry $20. “We’re starting over, so to speak,” he continued, “and this time it’s not enough to just make the movie, we have to learn how to release the movie because true independence isn’t making a film and selling it to some jack—. True independence is schlepping that s–t to the people yourself.” Smith is refusing to do any publicity or any press for the film.
Tickets for the first run of the Red State USA Tour go on sale Friday, January 28. The dates are as follows:
March 5- Radio City Music Hall, New York, New York
March 6- Wilbur Theater, Boston, Massachusetts
March 8- Harris Theater, Chicago Illinois
March 9- State Theatre, Minneapolis, Minnesota
March 10- Michigan Theater, Ann Arbor, Michigan
March 11- Clowes Memorial Hall, Inianapolis, Indiana
March 12- Midland Theater, Kansas City, Missouri
March 14- Clark State PAC, Springfield, Ohio
March 22- Paramount Theater, Denver, Colorado
March 26- McAlister Auditorium, New Orleans, Louisiana
March 28- Paramount Theater, Austin, Texas
March 29- Cobb Energy Center, Atlanta, Georgia
April 4-      Marion Oliver McCaw Hall, Seattle, Washington

Red State will be in theaters October 19, 2011.