Tom (00:07)

Hey, everyone. Welcome back to the Delphi Podcast. Today I’m excited to welcome our guest, Kevin Smith and Guy of Secret Labs. Kevin Smith is an icon of in independent cinema. His films include Clerks, Dogma, Chasing Amy, and Tusk, and his work inspired a generation of filmmakers to make movies. His latest film KillRoy Was Here, is being released as an NFT on Secret Network, that’s why we also have Guy on here, who’s the founder of Secret Labs and is Kevin’s first foray into Web3. Kevin and Guy, welcome. We also have Nick Sinistra joining who is on our podcast team and is a former and actually current actor as well. How’s it going, everyone?

Kevin (00:47)

Hey. This is not me correcting, but this is me wanting to clarify. What constitutes an incursion into Web3? Just playing in the NFT unit space because if so, this would be our first film as an NFT, but about a year and change ago, the Jay and Silent Bob’s Crypto Studio released Smokin’ Tokens. That was our first move into the space. The people that bought the platinum token are in Clerks III. We told people it was like, you pick up the platinum token and put you in the movie. There’s a sequence that has everybody in it.

Kevin (01:26)

When I wrote Clerks III, there’s a crypto NFT storyline that runs through the whole movie. I was so excited because when we did Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back years ago, I had to write about the Internet at a time when the whole world didn’t know what the Internet was pop culturally speaking. In Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back you have many moments where somebody like Ben Affleck is describing what the Internet is. A bunch of people who know the Internet was like, why the fuck? What he said is, because the rest of the world didn’t.

Kevin (01:58)

I had to do the same thing on Clerks III, I wrote it a year ago. I was writing about NFTs and Web3 and crypto in the same way that I’m like, some people are going to be hearing these terms for the first time. I felt really clever and really cool, like oh my God! I’m going to bring NFTs into movies before anybody else and that was one year ago. In the course of us making that movie, NFTs have entered the national discussion thanks to folks like Matt Damon and stuff like that. Everybody uninformed or informed has an opinion about crypto and NFTs and the space.

Kevin (02:34)

When the movie comes out, which Clerks III comes out in September, it’s actually timed pretty nicely in a weird way, unintentionally to enter the conversation. I feel like I’ve done one foray into Web3, but this one with KillRoy is far bigger because this is the beginning of a foray that we’re intending to keep going. Taking KillRoy, minting it as the first film as an NFT is fine and get you some cool bragging rights. But what we’re trying to do is build the first franchise as an NFT, so that it starts with KillRoy is here, then we do like KillRoy is back with the audience.

Kevin (03:19)

The idea of when you get this KillRoy NFT, it has its own piece of generative artwork like the Bored Apes, you own that piece of artwork. What we’re saying is make a short film, make a cartoon. We’re going to collect four or five of those. I’m going to create a bridging device. Boom, that becomes a sequel. You go from art consumer to art collaborator and your participating in the financial flow. For me it’s like even I dip my toe in the water with Jay and Silent Bob’s Crypto Studio and then dove in headfirst when I met Guy and the good folks at Secret Network.

Tom (03:55)

Kevin, that’s actually a really good interplay. Just before we dive into the details, Guy, can you maybe share a bit about Secret Network and kind of why you guys partnered together? I think that’s really helpful context before we get into it.

Guy (04:07)

Of course. Secret Network is level one blockchain. It’s part of the Cosmos family of blockchains. It has smart contracts capability. But the one unique factor that really sets it apart from anyone else is that it essentially allows you to have data privacy on the chain. This is actually a very tough problem for people who don’t know, my background is in applied cryptography, Secret is actually historically the culmination of my research papers and side-note, I mean, I could have never believed that eight years after writing those crazy math papers, that would actually end up doing something as cool as releasing a movie with Kevin Smith. But coming back to today, especially when it comes to NFT, we found that Secret has an advantage that pretty much no one else has.

Guy (05:09)

NFTs are great. NFTs are an amazing technology that essentially allows you to connect any token, anything of value that you can transfer with some content. Whoever owns that token is technically stated as the owner of that content. But the one glaring problem of NFT that sometimes people joke about, especially in mainstream media, is this idea that even if you technically own the content, there’s no privacy on the blockchain, so everyone can see it, everyone can copy. This is something that people outside of blockchain actually have a very hard time reconciling for somewhat good reason.

Guy (05:55)

This is something that Secret Network solves because of the privacy and encryption properties. It essentially allows all NFTs to not just have public metadata because sometimes you do want to have a nice Bored Ape or a nice KillRoy Was Here picture that you can show off and everyone can see, but you can go deeper. You can have private metadata. You can essentially have content that only you as the owner can see. Then it’s up to you if you want to share it outside, go for it. But it’s your NFT, it’s your power, you should decide who you share the content with.

Guy (06:33)

In relation with Kevin Smith, the reason why I feel this is like such an exciting project is twofold. First of all, to me this is the first segue into something like a decentralized Netflix. You put the movie in an NFT, you buy the movie. It’s similar in a sense to pay-per-view, but it’s much better because it’s decentralized, you can then go ahead and sell that to the next person. Or also, thanks to Kevin being so great, you also get part of the IP in the movie, which means you can actually participate not just passively watching it, but also in the creation of it.

Nick (07:14)

Just taking a step back, when you get the NFT next week on July 12, you get the image and then you go to a website and it’s like token gated, and then you’re going to watch the film or is the NFT itself actually the film?

Guy (07:31)

The NFT itself, this is actually even a bit more interesting. There has been attempts to do like token-gated NFTs, but like I said, my background is in applied cryptography, so I tried to find the holes and problems in things. The reality is that if you don’t do something like Secret and more elaborate technology, token- gated NFT basically mean that there’s an NFT on the blockchain and the data is pointing to someone’s server sitting in someone’s basement or something, and that person is basically going to tell you whether you have access to that content or no.

Guy (08:14)

To me, that’s not really NFT. That’s not really what Web3 is about. Web3 does not need intermediaries, does not need me or Kevin or the producer or Netflix to be the gatekeeper. Instead, what happens with the KillRoy Was Here NFT is that each NFT holds a key. That key points to an IPFS, like a distributed storage, where the movie sits encrypted, and it actually sits encrypted in a splittered way so that it’s very streaming friendly. We actually did a lot of work to get it done, and I’m excited about it. But the point is that the movie sits encrypted already decent for a storage. There’s no one that can shut that down, there’s no one that needs to give you approval.

Guy (08:59)

When you buy the NFT, the NFT have encrypted the key to the movie, which only you can decrypt. Then when you go into the KillRoy Was Here website where you buy the NFT, we simply make the UI easy for you. The UI itself would take that key, would start streaming the movie, would take each encrypted package and use that key to decrypted client side on the browser, and that way you get to stream and see the movie. But as a matter of fact, you don’t need us. There is no token-gated gatekeeper. If we go away tomorrow, even if the website crashes a year from now, you can still do all of these directly on chain, on secret network and IPFS, which hopefully will be here even when both myself and even Kevin are long gone and all of us.

Kevin (09:51)

Is he smart? I’m telling you, over a year ago we went out in the world, me and David Shapiro, who run Semcorp company I made KillRoy with. We’re like, we’re going to auction this movie off as the first NFT. Guy in Secret reached out to us and they were like, you’re doing it wrong. Do this instead. What he offered, like what he just explained was so smart and so forward thinking. He was like, don’t Martin Shkreli this. Don’t sell the Wutang albums to one person. We can do a bunch of these and that’s how you initiate people into the world of Web3 who aren’t very familiar with it.

Tom (10:33)

Kevin, what sold you though? What about NFTs blockchain tech, the community changed your mind? You’re out here creating, leading videos, movies, changing the world here, and now you have this brand new technology, what’s sold for you, ’cause a lot of people don’t get it?

Kevin (10:49)

I’m telling you, it always helps to have somebody proselytizing for something. The guy that I made KillRoy Was Here with my producer, David Shapiro, was big into crypto and NFTs before anybody. He’s like one of the first people that bought Bitcoin or whatever. Aside conversation in all of our exchanges would always be him bringing up NFTs and trying to explain crypto to me. This is going back to 2016, 2017, way back while we were making KillRoy.

Kevin (11:22)

When KillRoy finally got finished, which was after I had a heart attack four years ago, we picked up and finished the rest of it one night, I was talking to David about, since he kept bringing up NFTs, he’s showed me his digital wallet, showed me his collection and stuff. He was just proud of it. It was the thing he was into. He always described it thusly. He’s like, look, you like comic books? I was like, of course. He’s like you collected them. I was like, yeah. He’s like, this is what I collect. I was like, it makes sense, like digital baseball cards and stuff. It just sank in.

Kevin (11:52)

I’m a guy, look behind me. Look at all the trinkets and tchotchkes and souvenirs that are connected to the movies I make. The idea of having something artistic, if I take you around my house, the walls are covered in graphic arts. He introduced me into a new world of graphic arts where he described it as fine art collecting. I was like, that makes sense. He’s like, you’re rarefied. A lot of people think we’re crackpots and stuff, but you like what you like and what makes you happy, you invest in, correct? I was like, you’re absolutely correct.

Kevin (12:25)

He wasn’t trying to sell me, but just his enthusiasm for the field slowly rubbed off. Then one day, I was like, David, we have this movie that we were about to take out and sell in the world the way like I sold Clerks years ago. You make a thing, and then you find somebody to buy your thing. That was the traditional model. I was like, before we take that step and I’ve taken that step many times, let me just ask you this, has anybody ever released a film as an NFT?

Kevin (12:56)

His eyes lit up like Christmas, where he’s like, no. Why? I was like, well, we have a movie that didn’t cost us $20 million, so we’re not responsible or beholden to a corporation of some sort. If I made Clerks III with Lionsgate, if I turned around and said, I want to release as an NFT, they’d be like, you’re out of your mind. You’re fired. They own the movie. We own KillRoy Was Here. I was like, rather than sell it, which was something that I’ll never regret selling Clerks to Miramax, it changed my life. But I do regret not personally owning Clerks in this lifetime in America ever again. It’s owned in perpetuity by whoever buys it. Now that’s owned by Paramount.

Kevin (13:36)

I’ll never own it again. In the UK I’ll get to own it again in I think 10 more years, but here in the United States, I don’t get to own again. That’s fine. The trade off was I got a whole career and stuff. They didn’t give me a lot of money for. It didn’t matter. I got a whole career. But that thing I made that defined me, the thing that people still talk about this day, the only thing that keeps people from disliking or disregarding me, Clerks, it’s like my child. The idea of letting that go, selling it, just years later I’m like, weird. I know it had to happen, but now in retrospect…

Kevin (14:08)

I remember I went to a lecture by Edward James Olmos, the actor from Battlestar Galactica. He’s also a filmmaker. We were all a bunch of young filmmakers at the independent feature film marketplace in 1993. I was there with Clerks hoping to show it and hoping somebody would buy it. This is before Sundance happened, even. I go to this lecture, and he’s there with Robert Young and other filmmaker, and he’s telling the audience, he goes, “Own your negative. Don’t sell it.” He’s going, “It’s so important.” I remember sitting in the audience being like, buddy, if I don’t sell this movie, I’m going to be poor. I’ve made this movie on credit cards. I have to sell this movie.

Kevin (14:43)

Here I came to the same divide in the road decades later, and I was like, David, I’m not a kid who works at the convenience store putting a movie on credit cards. You finance this movie, if you want to take the risk, if you want to try this thing. He goes to me it’s not risky. He’s going, that’s historic. We would be the first people to do it. He’s like, somebody’s going to do it first. He’s going, if we don’t do it first, then for the rest of our lives we’ll sit around being like we had a moment, and we let the moment pass because why? We got scared, because we wanted to do things traditionally, because what if this didn’t work out, or what if people made fun of me.

Kevin (15:19)

Let me tell you, that’s been the biggest price to pay in all of this, is like a bunch of people who don’t really understand the crypto, Web3, or even my traditional business model, telling me that this is stupid. What are you doing? This is wrong and stuff. I’m old. I’m 51. I don’t get to go through many doors first anymore. The older I get, the less original my ideas get. Case in point, we’re releasing Clerks III in September.

Kevin (15:44)

The idea of being someplace first, going through the door first hand in hand with Guy in Secret and David Shapiro, that felt exciting to me. Also a new frontier, I love what Web3 represents. I understand that there’s a bubble, and it looks like it may have burst, and a bunch of people have gone running. I was around for the same thing when it happened on the Internet the first time and stuff, when Web2 was developed and whatnot. Everybody thought they’d get stupid rich off the Internet for no good reason just by pressing a key. When that bunch of people went away, and it was just left with people who were like, what do we actually do at this space? That was where a lot of folks flourished.

Kevin (16:21)

Same thing here. A lot of folks have left, a lot of people have written NFTs and the metaverse and Web3 off as some sort of fucking ridiculous scam. I disagree. I see it as a playground. I see it as one more place with a dedicated audience. Do you know what kind of audience do you get in this world, man? People who are fervent believers. You know what kind of audience exists out there? People you have to sell on a regular basis ’cause they’re drowning in content. They don’t need you. They have the luxury of so many other options and stuff.

Kevin (16:53)

Here in the world of Web3, you’ve got a bunch of people who are passionate, who believe in the space, and they believe in others. They’re not waiting to kick others down, they’re waiting to elevate people. Naturally, it was a no brainer space to suggest heading into. Thankfully, David was like, let’s roll the dice. First we went out there in the world and announced that we were going to auction the movie off. That’s when we found Guy, who came in and said, no, do this instead. During the course of that, I’ve learned so much more.

Kevin (17:22)

I didn’t know anything about privacy before. Privacy was the idea that I pulled out all my shades in my bathroom, turn the lights off when I take a shower, ’cause I don’t like to see my home body, ’cause I’ve got body shame issues. Guy has introduced me to a whole different world outside of the world I exist in, where privacy is a matter of importance and how that intersected with what we were trying to do. He was like, look, this would be a perfect way to showcase what I’ve been trying to build my whole life. I was way hip to anything Guy said ’cause he had just worked with Quentin Tarantino, and I’m something of a brand whore. If he worked with Quentin, I’m like, If Quentin worked with a guy in Secret, that’s good enough for me for heaven’s sakes.

Kevin (18:04)

I’ve seen a lot of the filmmakers who have inspired me moving into this space as well. At the same time, I saw Spike Lee at VeeCon and he leaned over and said to me, you and me we’re still here because we do things like this. A filmmaker who was doing it before me, a filmmaker I looked up to whose movies made me want to become a filmmaker saying we, moved me to tears. He included me in the equation because here we were both heading into a brave new world. Both storytellers who recognize there’s a place to go that has an audience that’s waiting, and any storyteller wants to go anywhere. There’s an ardent audience, and there’s nothing but ardent audience in Web3. For me, it was an absolute no brainer and someplace to go play.

Kevin (18:50)

I’m keeping a foot in both worlds. It’s not like me going, hey, man, fuck movies. Of course I grow up in that business. I’ll stay until Krypton explodes. But it doesn’t mean that I’m not going to investigate other avenues. My whole career has been about, let me try this, because it seems interesting.

Kevin (19:08)

I’ve been podcasting since 2007. I had a website since 1995, back when that wasn’t really a thing and whatnot. I’ve been online interacting with the audience for decades longer than most of my peers, because I’ve always been curious and shifted toward whatever seemed creatively opportunistic to me. A place to go play, an audience.

Kevin (19:30)

So many people sitting there waiting, going, entertain us. This is one more place for me to go and a fascinating, interesting place because of how much fervency is here. I’ve gone to both decentralized and the VCON, and I’ve been more welcome there than almost any place in my entire life.

Kevin (19:48)

It’s beyond my ability to express how much being in the world of Web3 feels different than it feels being outside the world of Web3. On Twitter, when I say the word NFT, I get hit by a bunch of people calling me dirty names and stuff like that.

Kevin (20:04)

But in Web3, I talk about, hey, we want to try a thing and all you hear are people being like, yeah, let’s all try that thing. It’s so welcoming. I get it’s not built for people like me who just want to go and have a good time and storytelling and whatnot, but the fact that it’s been built the way it has allows me one place, one more place to go do that.

Kevin (20:27)

It’s exciting place where you can actually do something like what we’re talking about doing with Killroy.

Nick (20:33)

With Killroy, there’s 5,555 and so are you going to own like a proportion of those? Are you going to own one? Then there’s a digital ownership with like, everybody has the same ownership of Killroy and everybody can choose to do the same thing with it or are you keeping more IP?

Nick (20:52)

Like, if somebody buys one, are they able to screen it in a local town hall or something? Are you planning to do distribution later? What’s the IP going to be for people that buy Killroy?

Kevin (21:04)

I say if they want to have screenings in a local town hall, they absolutely can. The ownership of Killroy is really interesting because I don’t own Killroy. You know what I’m saying? Like Killroy was the world’s first meme created in World War I and World War II. I just kind of repurposed it for our little horror film. Our little horror anthology is like creep show, but our center villain is one guy and it’s this Kilroy guy who’s a local legend in sorts.

Kevin (21:36)

When we made the deal with Secret, I was talking to them about the generative piece of art that same core creates for each of the NFT. You got your own Killroy. I was like, the way I understand it, over at, like, Reese Witherspoons NFT collection and Board Apes, their generative art is their own art. They actually own it.

Kevin (21:58)

Are we doing that as well? They’re like, we can. Do you want to? I was like, yeah, it would seem cool to give them a piece of ownership. Like, that is uniquely theirs. It’s not like, well, it’s ours, but you can have it. That’s yours to do with anything you want.

Kevin (22:12)

Guy was like, that’s your choice. It’s your film, so you get to make the call. I was like, it’s my film. But again, I didn’t create the character. I feel like ownership, co ownership, this is the perfect movie to do this thing with where it’s just like, yeah, everybody who has the NF has the flick itself.

Tom (22:33)

Kevin, that’s actually a really interesting point. Guy, I’d like to get your take on this. We’re seeing in the crypto community that there’s probably a growing separation here, right, where you have, let’s call it the owners and then you have, let’s say, the broader community who may or may not want to own, but they want to interact with this view the video, things like that.

Tom (22:52)

I guess more so a question for Guy here, but do you see this delineation between, let’s say, those who own the NFT, those who are going to help produce the next version of this? Kevin, I know you want to get to that after and then I guess let’s say you just call it the casual viewers.

Guy (23:08)

Actually these are a lot of the active conversations we’re having now. In my opinion, personally, this is the point of having a community. We have a community that been building up anticipation towards this. Many of them are going to participate in the job and become part of Kilroy owners.

Guy (23:30)

Then it’s their saying within our conversation between the secret team, the Killroy executive team, whether it’s Kevin or David Chapel or anyone else from the executive team to work together and understand how to start making a franchise out of this.

Guy (23:49)

There’s nothing set in stone in my long experience in Blockchain, wants to empower the community, that’s where the most interesting ideas come. Initially, if I can throw a few of my ideas, then first of all, yes, we are working on benefits for those who hold more than one Killroy. Any Killroy that you buy first of all, there are different rarities and they’re just like more unique and interesting pieces.

Guy (24:14)

Like you see Kevin’s hat here. There’s a lot of features that come from Kevin’s that plug into Kevin’s View Askew were and his previous movies and creation with Jay and with many others.

Guy (24:32)

There’s like a lot of interesting plugs that some people I’m sure are going to want to try to tackle and make sure that they get one of those. Obviously there’s like priority ranks and things to do with it.

Guy (24:43)

Then one thing that we’re like conceptualizing is that we’re going to eventually have some giveaways, the ability to influence decisions and those might be weighted by the rarity rank of your Killroy NFT. If you have more, then obviously you have more weight.

Guy (25:06)

Now that’s like on the mechanical governance coolness factor side. Then there’s the other endgame. Everyone gets access to the movie. That is done for sure. That is like the main idea in the whole deal. But also in the secret NFP, each one of them is going to have hidden, unique, unpublished content.

Guy (25:30)

These are actually great. Like, there’s going to be like a film, very high quality video effect. Like interactive comic book featuring Killroy and some scenes that were not part of the movie. That, for example, is going to be different for any NFT.

Kevin (25:56)

Can I tell that story real quick?

Guy (25:58)

Yes, please.

Kevin (26:00)

When we were making Killroy was here, we made it with the kids at the Ringland College of Art and Design in Sarasota. It’s like a film school kind of program things and we shot it in chapters. After we shot the first, like three chapters, I would say and we were about to shoot the fourth and fifth, one of the kids observed to me was like, I noticed that most of the stories Killroy is like a child avenger.

Kevin (26:27)

I was like, what do you mean? He’s like, well, most of the stories like, Killroy goes after adults on behalf of kids. It’s only this next story we’re about to shoot which doesn’t follow the flow of that pattern. I was like, oh, that’s interesting. We shot that segment. But then after we were done, I was like, he’s right. If I lose this segment and make two more about kids, then thematically the whole thing is like, this monster does work on behalf of abuse children.

Kevin (26:57)

The one section that didn’t tell that story where Killroy was more just a villain for the sake of being a villain, we took out, we shot it. It’s wonderful. But we didn’t have a home for it because it didn’t fit with the rest of the movie.

Kevin (27:10)

Then David and Guy were like, what if we took that and turned it into this comic book NFT thing that we chop up throughout all the run of it. Everything gets used, everything finds a home. Back in laser disc and DVD days, you would just put a cut scene on the DVD or the laser disc and that was it. Here it’s been repurposed into a beautiful piece of artwork as well. It’s ingenious. Anyway, sorry

Guy (27:40)

Each one is unique, which I think is something you couldn’t have done with mass production, right?

Kevin (27:45)

No.

Nick (27:47)

Coming back to, you said you made Killroy with film students and obviously also in the next part of Killroy’s back is going to be maybe not students, but young filmmakers or older filmmakers that want to be part of the conversation. It seems like that’s a big part of your philosophy at the moment, that you’re trying to bring up the next generation of the younger generation. Is that like a new thing for you or is that something that’s always been part of your career?

Kevin (28:12)

The older one gets, the more you earn this chairman emeritus status. Whether you like my shit or not, I have been in the business for three decades whether you’re a fan of what I do, it’s undeniable that I do that thing for a living, and it’s worked out thus far. Somebody somewhere thinks that I must be that thing that I say I am. In this case, a filmmaker.

Kevin (28:40)

When you get to that place, it’s so awesome because you spend most of your career wondering if you are the thing you say you are. Like, you spend so much time believing you’re a filmmaker and then you have to spend years proving it by making multiple films.

Kevin (28:59)

Then over that long haul, you’ve got all manner of folks who were like, yeah, you’re doing it, or, oh, my God, you suck. You’re terrible at this. To get to the chairman emeritus point where you’re like, I’m safe. I don’t know how to describe it, but it’s like in baseball, I’m not a big sports guy but getting to a base and feeling safe.

Kevin (29:20)

For the first time in my career, when me and Jason Muse put our hands in our footprints in the cement at the Chinese Theater out down the hill here in Hollywood, that made me feel safe in my career. Like I got to homebase. I got to a safe spot where I’m like, people can say anything they want about me and they do on the Internet. But you can’t take away the fact that this happened and this only happened because this career exists.

Kevin (29:46)

With chairman emeritus status, I love to throw the rope back, so to speak. I come from the world of the outsider artist. I tried to go to film school and I dropped out. I was from New Jersey. The chances of me being a person who lives in Hollywood, makes movies for a living were astronomically high as the chances of me going to the moon.

Kevin (30:13)

But art is something that I loved and I watched movies and I was like, well, human beings make them. Why can’t I try one? I saw Richard Linklay and Ray Slacker in 1991. I was like, this guy could make a movie in Austin, Texas. It’s not Hollywood or New York, maybe I could do the same thing.

Kevin (30:30)

What do I make a movie about? I was like, I work in this convenience store. I’ve never seen a movie sitting in the convenience store.Let me write about that. All practical and then one day we try making the movie based on having seen others do it. Then one day we take it into the world. One day we take it to Sundance, it gets bought and Cinderella’s story begins.

Kevin (30:47)

But I’ll never feel like part of the establishment that I’m a member of. I’m a card carrying member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and whenever they put me on television, they put director under me. But I’ve never felt like a part of this world. I’ll always feel like an outsider who just happened to get in.

Kevin (31:07)

I feel more comfortable around people who are like me, outsiders who are looking to get in. The one thing I have that a lot of those cats don’t have has been access. I have been inside and yet I always choose to step back outside and do my own thing. That’s because I always identify as an indie filmmaker.

Kevin (31:26)

I don’t think I’m good enough to be a studio filmmaker. I’ve made some films for studios but I don’t think I’m a studio filmmaker. I think I’m an indie filmmaker at heart. An indie storyteller by hooker, by crook and so I identify with cats like that.

Kevin (31:41)

The notion of Killroy creating a community is nothing new to me. I jumped on the Internet and open Viewscu.com in 1995 because I wanted to talk to the people who bought tickets to Clerks and Mall Rats and be like, who the fuck are you? Why did you pick my shit over real things that you could have paid to see in the movie theater?

Kevin (32:04)

I built this web community that has supported me my entire career. We’ve had viewscu.com led to the View Askew Board and a bunch of people found a place where they were like, oh, we like this guy in his movies. Those people together honestly helped me shape what my career would become and in which direction we would go.

Kevin (32:25)

I was listening to them as to the types of stories they liked. Case in point, we made Jersey Girl. A lot of people didn’t like it. I was like, we aren’t doing that anymore. Prior to that, we headed in directions. The idea of moving into this community where it’s beyond theoretical, like back then, there were people that bought tickets to my movies, so I listened to them and I was like, yeah, that’s a good point. I do what I wanted to do.

Kevin (32:48)

With Killroy Was Here in the sequel going forward in the community that we’re building here, it’s the same principle that they actually have skin in the game. Not like, oh, I bought your things, and stuff like that. Because we get to collaborate together. That’s why I love Web3, is the notion of collaboration with upcoming artists.

Kevin (33:08)

I’m an old man. The older I get, the less razor’s edge my shit has. Quentin always says, filmmaking is a young man’s game that’s why he’s only making 10 movies. It’s not just young man’s game.,It’s a young person’s game in general. I never believed him up until recently. Now I understand what he was saying. The older one gets, the harder it is to compete with a fresh, young voice who has an original take.

Kevin (33:31)

I scroll through TikTok and I have to close it because it’s so fucking terrifying how talented everybody is. There was a time when I was one talented person, they’d hold up and be like, look at this guy, and I was by myself. Now, when I scroll through social media, I realize there are billions of me and I got luckier than I have any idea prior to this.

Kevin (33:52)

I love being around people who want to do the thing, like, not people who can do the thing because that’s what they do for a living. Those people are nice, don’t get me wrong. But you want to get great art, you want to get edgy art, you want to discover things, you want to see what the future looks like, you’d be around the hungry artists. The ones who haven’t done it yet but want to, the ones who almost hate your fucking guts because you’ve been doing it, in their opinion, doing it wrong.

Kevin (34:19)

I recognize that. I felt that way when I was a kid. I had that kind of hunger in the belly as a storyteller, as an artist, and it’s never gone away. I like being around those like minded individuals. The idea now that I’ve got the status where some people will treat me seriously. My whole career, a lot of people feel like, that’s Kevin, he just makes Kevin Smith movies.

Kevin (34:40)

But 30 years in, kids, they got to treat you seriously. At that point, I’m trying to treat them seriously right back. They’re like, look, you want to know something? I got nothing but information to tell you. I love the sound of my own voice, obviously, so I’m happy to share that sort of thing.

Kevin (34:57)

In doing so creatively, that’s why I love the idea of making the Killroy sequel with the people that bought Killroy. That gives a filmmaker who’s like, how do I get noticed in this world where people are dumping content so often? What are the chances that I’ll ever be heard from? You could jump into this dopey ass movie with us, make a better Killroy shot than I do and be hand in hand with me in the flick directed by with our names right next to each other.

Kevin (35:23)

You will get noticed, because you know me, I like to raise attention for whatever the fuck I’m doing. I have to. I don’t have budgets behind me and stuff. I got to make a lot of noise. The idea of me being in the room with young talent, fresh talent, raw talent, reminds me I’m not trying to be Roger Corman.

Kevin (35:41)

But one of the things I loved about Roger Corman’s career is Roger Corman can be like, you know who I found? I found Ron Howard because I gave him one of his first jobs. I found Jim fucking Cameron because I gave him one of his first jobs. The idea that maybe I can help the next Jim Cameron, the next Catherine Bigelow.

Kevin (35:58)

People who don’t have their start and their careers paved out for them, don’t have the access, don’t even have the inroads that I first had when I came into this business. Being able to reach back and also get something out of it by seeing what’s first, what’s coming next, that’s worth it to me.

Kevin (36:18)

That will keep me young as an artist and I want to leave this world like Robert Altman. Robert Altman was a great filmmaker who smoked weed till the day he died, made movies, made pretend for a living and left this best of all possible worlds toes up from a fucking movie set, doing the job. I want to die being creative and the only way to do that, surround yourself with people who feel the same way and youth feels that way, man, they get it.

Nick (36:45)

That’s really cool. I’ve got so many questions about Killroy, so many specific questions around like, are you going to do another NFT drop in a similar way? Are the other directors that are taking part in it, are they going to get some of the royalties from the NFT drop?

Nick (37:00)

What are you doing with the funding from the first drop? Is that paying back Dave Shapiro or is that going to go towards the treasury to make more films? I’m just going to pile on these questions. You can answer them however you want. Are we finally going to get to see…

Kevin (37:15)

I didn’t want to jump in, but I keep giving the nod for this one because I’m like, yes.

Nick (37:20)

Finally, are you going to use the funds for this community for us to get to see Moose Jaws?

Kevin (37:27)

Now we get to the crux of it. I’m so glad you brought that up, kids, Moose Jaws is a movie of mine that I’ve been talking about making for a long time. Any time here, I’m going to try it out on the world. Anytime I talk about it, it generally makes people smile. They go, what’s Moose Jaws?

Kevin (37:44)

I go, Moose Jaws, this movie I want to make. It’s a movie. It’s Jaws, but with a moose instead of a shark. People always smile and go like that. Some people chuckle. Then when I go, do you have any money for that? They’re all like, no.

Kevin (38:02)

It’s been very difficult to get that movie financed. Now, I haven’t tried all that hard, to be honest with you, but people like the idea and think it’s funny and want to see it more than they want to pony up for it. Believe me, when the process of Killroy coming into Web3 began, germinating in the back of my head was like, this could be how we finally make Moose Jaws, literally, as a community.

Kevin (38:27)

It’s going to be not like from a studio who’s like, that’s a great idea. A moose that bites people’s heads off, just like in Jaws. I’ll pay for that. It’s probably going to be a community that’s like, look, I want to see that bad enough. You’ve been talking about it for a long time. Let’s figure out how to do this.

Kevin (38:46)

We may be building the beginnings of that Moose jaw community here with Killroy. Look, I couldn’t become a horror franchise Maven in the real world. I did a few horror movies and stuff, but I feel like in Web3, maybe I could. Maybe I could have killroy going on. Maybe we could start Moose jaws.

Kevin (39:06)

This might be the place where unlikely projects come to live instead of die. Fingers crossed. You could smell what this cock was cooking, man. You could see it miles away. You’re like, I bet you he’s trying to get some Moose Jaws. You’re right.

Tom (39:23)

Hey, Kevin, one quick question and I’m excited for[inaudible 00:39:27] when it comes to fruition. But just to zoom out, you’re someone that’s been in the industry for a long time. You’re somebody that really hustled to get their movie across the line early on. You didn’t come into this with major connections. You didn’t come into this with ultra rich parents that were like, hey, man, we’re just going to fund this for you.

Kevin (39:47)

Ultra loving parents, but not ultra rich.

Kevin (39:49)

Funny stretch of imagination.

Tom (39:51)

That’s worth more, anyway. You’ve been inside Hollywood. You’re now inside crypto, right? So I’m wondering if you think ahead five or 10 years and you see all the issues that you have with Hollywood, and I’m a major movie addict, as Nick knows. But you see all these issues. You see crypto as this democratizing force. But then crypto also has its issues, right? Not everybody is going to want to own an NFT. Not everybody is going to want to make video clips. Not everybody’s going to want to frankly meet you. You have the super fans that do, but some might just want to laugh at your movies, right, and love them, right? So if you zoom out a couple of years, how do you view crypto disrupting Hollywood overall, outside of just your foray, but for the industry globally?

Kevin (40:37)

I’m not sure that it’s going to be disrupted as much as Hollywood is going to try to come co opting. Look, I’m not a visionary man by any stretch of the imagination, but I think I can promise you this, if Secret and me and David Shapiro see a nickel off of what we’re doing here, you better believe the studios are coming and you’re going to buy Terminator 2 yet again as an NFT. They’re going to dump their entire libraries because they’re like, are you kidding me? This counts? This is a place where now we could sell the movie again?

Kevin (41:13)

So I think the danger is going to be keeping them at bay from just taking over and turning it into a commercial medium like anything else. Now, I’m not saying commercial is bad. I’m no communist. I like to make money from my heart as much as the next guy. But I think those are the people who are coming next, the people who are just like, oh, we already have all of this. Now we’re just going to distribute it here. I think there are going to be a bunch of people within my business who see this as DVD version two.

Kevin (41:48)

Just like at one point there was nothing but VHS and then there was a small submarket of laser disk, but all of a sudden, DVD allowed them to sell the entire library to people all over again and then Blu-ray allowed them to do that as well. I bet you a lot of studios are looking at this potentially going like, great, we’re going to release all the Star Wars movies as NFTs.

Nick (42:09)

I think what’s interesting as well though as well, generally when Web2 companies or Web2 industries come into Web3, they’re just not quite crypto native enough, so they don’t seem to succeed as much. So it’s interesting that, obviously, you’ve been working really closely with Secret and guys, So you’ve got this quite natively Web3 product. You’ve already done it with Clerks III.

Nick (42:27)

So I think you’re probably right. I think people will start coming in, but I don’t know how well they’ll succeed, because I think also, that we have a really good bullshit detector in Web3, where people are coming in and looking like they’re going to repackage the same thing they’ve sold 100 other times, so they’re going to go, I bought this. I don’t need this. I’ll just get the Blu-ray. So I think there’s going to be some natively, putting my artist hat on, there’s going to be some natively Web3 stuff that’s going to be coming up that is going to overtake those industries, hopefully, if this pays off, which I think is really cool over the next 5-20 years. I think Nick is part of that.

Kevin (43:01)

It could be like the next incarnation of when we saw crowdsource financing, when suddenly people on Kickstarter or Indiegogo were like, hey, man, I got a movie, and never mind the studios, you can make it happen. It’s a community in and of itself that wants to see it grow, but also seems to self-govern. I have no doubt in my mind that people in this community aren’t going to be easily sold the same DVDs and Blu-rays that they already have, but I do know that the studio is going to smell easy money. When they get in and find out that it’s not easy money, that it’s more.

Kevin (43:45)

You got to recall kids, and I’m not bragging, but I’m old enough, 51, and so I’m a creature of the internet. I was here for the advent of it. I’ve been on the internet since there was a time you could literally make this statement, be like, oh, I did the Internet last night. It was fun. Meaning you hit every fucking website that ever existed, in a day, over the course of a weekend or something. Something that will never happen again.

Kevin (44:09)

So I’ve seen many incarnations and I’ve seen people get excited about a thing, come and go. I’ve seen things explode, implode, so forth and so, like. So I feel like based on when we over a year ago started going like, me and David Shapiro like, “We’re going to take this movie out, [inaudible 00:44:26] here and auction it.” I started getting emails. I got three emails from people who worked or work in the studio system who I hadn’t heard from in years because I don’t really… Last time I worked in a studio was Cop Out or something like that for Warner Bros.

Kevin (44:40)

I heard from an ex-Warner Bros exec when we started talking about auctioning Killroy. The dude was like, “This is fascinating. Everyone’s watching you.” At first, I felt dirty and weird and naked and then I realized why. Because they were like, oh, there could be money in what he’s doing. It was eye opening, to say the least. Then I got two other emails from people being like, we’re rooting for you. This is a great idea, from the unlikeliest of places, very corporate places.

Kevin (45:10)

I know that that has everything to do with, if you can figure this out, if a chimp like you makes this work, well, guess what? We’re all coming. But I think they’re going to find it’s much harder to establish a beachhead because here it’s more about community. They could smell an authenticity here. In a world where it’s just like, wait, you’re just going to try to sum… I’m sorry, I keep using T2 as an example, but I bought Terminator 2 18 different fucking times. I’m sure more people in this medium will be like, “I have T2. You have to do something different. You have to bring us something new, something fresh.”

Tom (45:47)

So just to relay this back to Guy for a minute. Guy, you’ve obviously been a leader in the crypto space for a long time and I think a lot of people’s mental models, when they think of cinema-based NFTs, might even go back to music based NFTs, right? A lot of our mental model is, hey, I can buy this as a collectible, but at the end of the day, I hope there’s a distribution platform that disrupts Spotify and all the NFT holders split a revenue stream. That’s a very Web2 line of thinking here, but to Kevin’s point, there has to be a revenue flow to drive that interest, to drive that disruption at the end of the day, right? So what do you see beyond primary and secondary sales for the broader revenue streams for what Kevin is trying to achieve here?

Guy (46:33)

Yes. I actually think it’s the opposite of Web2. I agree. Look, the first interaction and what we’re doing here is the first interaction, right? It’s like, not to sound too grandiose, but like the first Wright Brothers flight, right? The first interaction, you take what you know from Web2, like Netflix and Spotify, you do it on Web3, but you do it decentralized and better, and actually you give IP ownership to the people, which is something that Web2 centralized studios would never ever do. So that’s already one step in the right direction.

Guy (47:07)

Again, research. When you do research, you see what’s out there, and then you take one step in the right direction, and then other people come in and take other steps, and very quickly, a tsunami.

Guy (47:18)

I think, hopefully, that’s what we’re going to see here and I do hope that Secret would be able to play a good part in that transformation. But that transformation, in my view, would have to encompass the Web3 spirit, which, [inaudible 00:47:36] very astutely said, right? This community has a bullshit meter, but this community is also very accepting and very inclusive and very collaborative.

Guy (47:51)

I think that if we can find a model like Netflix, like Spotify, but that is more decentralized and more open, where artists, whether they are very famous and well-known and admired like Kevin, like Quentin, or if they are just like at the beginning of the road and they’re trying to break in, then this would be a platform that would accept them. It would accept them, it would help fund them, right? Then when they fund them, it could actually collaborate with them together to actually make that creation.

Guy (48:26)

When that creation is finally produced, those platforms can actually distribute them with different varieties of IP rights. In some cases, it’s you funded this, so you get some of the IP rights and you get the ability to participate in it going forward. You get to participate to sell it to the next person. So it’s not a top-down model like Netflix to a person, where Netflix sends it to a person. There are secondary markets and all that. I think all of these community-oriented revenue sharing, more direct interactions between the artists and the consumers and the ability to really bring people up and discover the new kind of artists, I think all of these together, hopefully, combine to one or several platforms that are very community driven, very, very useful. That’s my hope and my vision, but what do I know?

Tom (49:20)

Just one follow up question there, Guy. So what do you view to as the long-term separation of, let’s say… Kevin is a prime example here. Of, let’s say, Kevin’s ownership and then his insight and impact into the project? Let’s say Killroy Was Here number 5 comes out, right? Obviously, the community wants Kevin’s input, they want his genius, but they also want it to be built in their own view and with their own input. So where are we drawing the line here on what Kevin has a say over and what the NFT holders have a say over?

Guy (49:54)

I don’t think there’s a clear line, right. This is a back and forth. This is an iterative process. At the end of the day, I’m also a big believer in incentives. I don’t just mean monetary incentives. Some of it could be monetary incentives, some of it can be other kinds of incentives, right? There might be an up and coming filmmaker who would do great to get like five minutes of Kevin’s time and ideas and the ability… Kevin, not putting you on the spot, but just as an example. This back and forth. I think that as long as incentives are aligned, usually incentives have a way of becoming aligned, whether financially or not. I think that’s eventually what’s going to decide, but I don’t think you can put the line here or there.

Kevin (50:46)

I just want to add that I would love to get to Killroy 5 and my dream for it would be I continue making something for it, that they would still let me in. But it’s so weird. I don’t want to sound hippy about it, but I have no real hardcore sense of ownership with a concept and a character that is, as far as I’m concerned, public domain. We didn’t do anything that new with the idea of Killroy. We just repurposed him in a horror anthology. So all of that means that anyone could have done that. I feel like only I could have done Jay and Silent Bob, but I feel like anybody could have and could still do Killroy Was Here. So my dream for it is it stops being Kevin Smith’s at all and just becomes this community effort, that other people take it and run with it. How weird and wonderful it would be to have Killroy Was Here 6 made by a bunch of people that I’ve never met who didn’t even ask us to do it because they really technically don’t have to. It’s an interesting experiment in ownership, especially if we’re not owning it, but we’re all just adding to it.

Nick (52:15)

If in the ’90s, NFTs had been around when you were trying to sell or produce Clerks the first time, would you have decentralized ownership the same way? Would you have done that as an NFT back then?

Kevin (52:25)

In ’90s, if NFTs existed, I wouldn’t have been smart enough to understand them. It took David Shapiro two years to break through to where I was like, oh, I think I get it now. I do think vice versa, though, if I was trying to make Clerks today, I’d be doing it in Web3. I’d be doing it as an NFT. I know that in my heart as the guy who did it the first time because I went to the Indie Film World because there was no chance on God’s green earth that I was going to be able to walk through the doors of Warner Brothers Universal as somebody who’s never made a movie and be like, “Can you let me make a movie in a convenience store?” So I just kind of like, “There’s an indie film movement. I’ll just do this sort of thing there.” This is where the current indie film movement exists. The true guerrilla filmmakers, low budget, no budget, the dreamers who watch movies and then one day they get bit by the bug going, “Wait a second, I think I could do this too.”

Kevin (53:26)

If you were to look at the current state of the business, as an entry point, there is none. Oh, my God. The movie business is ruled by Marvel movies, Star Wars movies, Harry Potter, DC, Top Gun do now. The streaming world is ruled by a bunch of gatekeepers and they make very expensive shows. Where’s the first timer go? Movie theaters closing left and right. There aren’t even that many art house theaters left. So there would be no entry point for me. I would see no place to dream toward. Like, if I do this, then I could take it there. All of those options seem closed to me or overcrowded. What would not seem overcrowded at all, what would seem welcoming would be this world, would be the metaverse, would be doing it in crypto, doing it as an NFT.

Kevin (54:15)

So I honestly believe in my heart of hearts, and this isn’t a sell or a hustle, but if I was making Clerks today, I know young Kevin Smith and I know exactly how much self-confidence he had, and I know how, hey, man, well, nobody’s here, let’s try it here. It’s always best to go build in a new place that has something of an audience than try to build in the old place where the audience already exists and has expectations. Here, there wouldn’t be expectations of what a convenience store movie would be. It would just be a lot of people being like, oh, my God, I worked in a convenience store. Let me tell you what happened to me. There would be so much collaborative effort.

Kevin (54:53)

So I doubt that I would feel the same sense of ownership at that point because it would be more community based. But hands down, if I was making Clerks today, I would be doing it as an NFT. There’s just less chance to get hurt, right, and more chance for an audience because you’d be building it along the way and they’d be part of the story. It wouldn’t be you just like, “Hey, I did a thing. Here it is.” You’d be talking about it the whole way through. You’d be talking about not just the art of it, but the science behind it, what blockchain you’re going to be on while it’s coming out and then afterwards.

Kevin (55:30)

Talk is cheap, kids. In the movie business, whenever you want to sell a thing, it costs money. Put a commercial on TV, put it in the theater, put it on the internet and shit like that. But sitting around talking about like this, this costs time, not dimes. An indie film, that’s what you got, nothing but time because you’re not a part of that thing you want to be a part of yet. You’re waiting. You’re biding your time. So you’ll put everything you can toward that thing.

Kevin (55:54)

But having been to both sides of the playground, there’s no one that’s better than the other, man. I go back and forth. If they want me over there, I’ll go play. Sometimes I do Masters of the Universe for Netflix. It’s a very large company. But I just did Clerks III for Lionsgate, also a very large company. But then over here, man, we’ll do stuff like Killroy Was Here, which was just me and David and stuff and the school. Now because of that, we found something interesting to do it, which may pave the way for the rest of my career. Does that make sense?

Nick (56:27)

Yeah. I think as well what you were saying about being a young filmmaker trying to break into the industry being really hard now. My background is I trained at drama school and subsequently, me and a bunch of friends have been making films together and we’ve had a lot of fun doing it. But just going from making it because you love it and then distributing that. So I know me and my friend, Henry, we’re looking forward to making a Killroy is Back short. How long have we got? When’s the deadline for the next one?

Kevin (56:56)

I think once we drop, I think in one year’s time, that gives people more than enough time. Because the idea is you see Killroy and you’ll be like, this is simple. It’s a simple morality tale formula like Creepshow, like Twilight Zone, like any horror anthology. So once you get the formula or the recipe or the guidelines or whatever, then the artist can go crazy, do whatever they want. So we figure, in one year’s time, that’s when we start building. That’s when I go like, okay, what do we got from the audience? Now let me figure out what the framing device is going to be and then the sequel, which will be just such a mindfuck, but I welcome you. Join us, please.

Tom (57:41)

We definitely will. So, Kevin, we double-clicked on the revenue side a bit, which was interesting. I asked you and Guy your take there. But one thing I’m also interested in is just how you view the community actually rallying around the films you create now that they have a real sense of ownership to it right? We see halls and convention centers fill up with Spiderman fans and Marvel fans and the funny part is they have literally zero connection to any of it outside of wearing a costume and being around people, right? They don’t own anything. They don’t have any say over the direction of the film. They don’t basically have any governance power, right, whatsoever. They’re just at the whim of, here’s our next movie, show up to the movies and pay $20 for popcorn, right? How do you view the change in the physical community dynamic around the films you create now that there’s an NFT aspect?

Kevin (58:33)

I’ll be honest with you, it’s not much different from what I’ve historically had to do. I started almost 30 years ago. So at a certain point, the powers that be lost interest in me or promoting my career. So early on, I had to learn to “sing for my supper” and part of that was building community. I didn’t even realize. When I built the View Askew website with Ming Chen [inaudible 00:59:03], and he built it. I was just like, do this, do this. He was the smart one. It was more about talking to the audience just to be like, why did you like these movies? The only way you could find out how people felt about what you did was reading the film reviews and looking at the Box Office. This was a way to actually talk to somebody who bought a ticket on a Friday night. So I’ve been so deeply engaged in community from 1995 onward that most of everything I’ve done has been built on the back of community. I’m not a guy who’s like, “Hey, I got a Batman movie coming.” You don’t need a community for that. You got a world for that.

Kevin (59:41)

Spiderman, same thing. There are people lined up just to throw money at you if you show Spiderman doing anything. Things I do, rarefied audience for, not because they’ve got better taste, there’s just not that many.

Kevin (59:56)

If you work for the audience, you’ll never work a day in your life. And this is true. And I’ve always worked for the audience and some people try to make that a dirty thing. I’ve had many critics have been like, “Ew. He just always plays to his audience.”

Kevin (01:00:07)

But I’m like, “I think every artist does that.” I just happen to know the exact size of my audience. Whereas Spielberg’s audience is very big. I know what the size and shape of my audience looks and feels like.

Kevin (01:00:19)

So it’s always covered in my career. It’s always kept me from spending too much money on a movie and stuff. There’s a ceiling. There’s a shape to the room. I know how many bodies are going to show up.

Kevin (01:00:29)

So I’ve always been in that world. And that’s why the transition into Web3 has felt so familiar and comfortable. And this is going to sound like a weird analogy, I had the [inaudible 01:00:42] website since ’95, and I was on the message board constantly. And the message board was just as big old whiteboard looked like Reddit where people can post questions that I would respond.

Kevin (01:00:52)

So I was used to long-ass responses, small-ass responses. The day they dropped Twitter, I was like, “You’re kidding? 140 characters? This is a fucking walk in the park.” And I was so ready for Twitter, so ahead of the game, that I got to a million followers quick. Even though I didn’t have anything new to say, just because I was well-versed in dealing with the audience, all I had to do was compact it.

Kevin (01:01:15)

So there’s a degree of that here. And as much as I’m like, “Oh, I’ve been through all of this before. All of this is very familiar.” It’s just a different platform in a different world, different players, and different hopes, but same type of structure.

Kevin (01:01:33)

You’re talking to a smaller group who are very ardent about what you do or taking it more seriously than the average person who might see it, dismiss it, move on to something else. For them, your story didn’t end when the credits on the movie ended. They followed the story right back to you, the storyteller, and here they are.

Kevin (01:01:54)

So those worlds are very familiar to me, both of them almost identical. And it makes me happy because I know over here I’m dealing in the future. And I’m like, “Oh, how nice to see that.” I’ve always been dealing in the future.

Kevin (01:02:13)

That’s always been oddly important to me. I think because I’ve never been good at making a lot of money or making movies that the whole world embraces. But being through the door first, because I was one of the first to the door with indie film, one of the first to the door with having a website, I started podcasting in 2007.

Kevin (01:02:36)

I’ve always enjoyed bragging rights. Being first to the door on cool ways to extend the conversation beyond the original conversation. The original conversation with me started as movies.

Kevin (01:02:48)

And being on Web3 is another version of that. I get to extend the conversation beyond how it began in a different milieu, in a different medium that comes with its own technology, where I could actually go stay there for a while and play and hang and do everything that I do over there.

Kevin (01:03:09)

And I’ll be honest with you, do a version of it that I’ve always been more interested in myself. And let me explain that really quickly. I know I’m very loquacious, but this is so important for me to get out.

Kevin (01:03:19)

As an artist, you want people to engage with what you make, but naturally, you don’t get everybody liking it. So I’ve spent almost 30 years making movies where I have to show them to some people who would never choose to watch them in the first place, who gets away in on them and give their opinion or something like that. Whether it be a critic or somebody writing in the press or something like that.

Kevin (01:03:47)

Part of the process that is frustrating for me because that’s like somebody dragging me into some movie. I wouldn’t want to see them being like, “What do you think?” I’m like, “Maybe I’m not going to feel great about that thing or whatever.”

Kevin (01:03:59)

As an artist, this is going to sound weird. I’ve always been dreaming of how to shrink the audience to just the people who want to be there. I’m not looking for yes-men. I just don’t want to disappoint anybody. I just don’t want to sit there and have to listen to somebody who’s like, “Well, it sucks because I hate movies like this,” “So why did you go see it in the first place?”, “Because it’s my job.” I’m like, “Oh, great.”

Kevin (01:04:23)

The idea of coming into this world is actually making that real because it is limiting it to the people who really give a fuck about it and are feel rooting for you. And that doesn’t mean like, again, I’m looking for yes-men, or 100% praise.

Kevin (01:04:38)

But it just means everyone in the room is of the same understanding of what we’re there in the room for, as opposed to a few people were like, “Well, I don’t even want to be here, man. But I got to be here. It’s like, “Good. Look, with all due respect, I don’t want you here. Get out of the fucking room.”

Kevin (01:04:53)

So here you’re left with the people who just want to be here. Think about it. The world I deal in, some people, just a small trickle-down thing. They treat it like their job. They’ve been doing it so long that the magic of making movies is fucking gone. And it’s just their grind, their day-to-day, how they fucking make their living and shit.

Kevin (01:05:13)

You don’t get that over here. I jumped into Web3, and I’m like, “Oh, I’m bringing a movie.” And they’re like, “Welcome, fellow artist.” And I’m 51, and all these kids are in their fucking 20s, man. It makes me feel amazing.

Kevin (01:05:25)

I’m used to dealing with people whose fervency will take me far further than their dollar ever has. So the financial conversation, just as when I started my career…Here, a lot of people take a movie of Sundance, sell it, make millions of dollars. That happened after us.

Kevin (01:05:45)

I was like, first of all, The Spitfire Grill made $6 million at Sundance. Happy, Texas was bought for $10 million. They bought Clerks for $227,000 in 1994, which to me was a king’s Ransom, but it’s a fucking pittance.

Kevin (01:06:01)

So I started my professional career not in the money. It was money that I thought was big, but nothing like that Clerks money, which I had to split up, pay off the movie with has long gone and stuff.

Kevin (01:06:14)

But I’ve always been able to go further on the currency of fervency than the currency of the dollar in my career. And the fervency that I’ve felt since I came into this space is the exact ferevncy I’ve felt that has kind of kept my career going with my audience.

Kevin (01:06:34)

For years, people have been like, “Oh, he has his audience. His audience will go to that.” They’ve been very dismissive about it. And in the last five to ten years, all we hear about is DTC, direct to consumer, having an audience, it’s so important.

Kevin (01:06:46)

So I’ve been here before, you know what I’m saying? I’m not saying this is nothing new, but I’ve watched similar things and similar spaces, and being here reminds me of when I first jumped onto the Internet with [inaudible 01:07:01].com and met my real bosses.

Kevin (01:07:04)

My real bosses wasn’t like Miramax or Disney, who owned Miramax. My bosses, motherfuckers who buy a ticket to go see that fucking thing. I don’t work for anybody except the audience. And when you work for the audience, you never work a day in your life.

Kevin (01:07:17)

But that’s my boss. And I got to meet my boss the day when I entered the Internet when I started talking on the View Askew forum and stuff and interacting with the people. Who am I doing this shit for?

Kevin (01:07:28)

Naturally, I make it for myself. Every art is very masturbatory. It’s for the artist first and foremost. But then after that, of course, you want to share it with people.

Kevin (01:07:37)

The idea of not having to share it with the entire world because you have to, it’s a financial fucking imperative that the most amount of people see this fucking thing on opening weekend. The horse race, the box office, all that bullshit.

Kevin (01:07:51)

I always dreamed of being able to ameliorate it. Just push it to the side. Filmmakers who work for Netflix get a version of that, right? They don’t have to worry about what the opening box office is or fucking critics and shit like that. It’s just on. So people are going to fucking watch it because it’s on. They’re already paying for the shit.

Tom (01:08:08)

It’s at homepage.

Kevin (01:08:09)

Homepage. So the idea of the audience being what it is now… And believe me, this fucking Web3 is going to blow up huge, and the space is going to be very crowded. Right now, it’s not so crowded. I’m thankful for that. That’s a plus to me, not a minus.

Kevin (01:08:28)

It’s getting me close to this awkward dream I’ve always had of making a thing where I’m like… But this is only for certain people, and not because it’s trying to alienate people. It’s just I don’t want to bug anybody with some shit they don’t want to see in the first place. They’re like, “I don’t want to see Joe Royals here. That’s fucking stupid.” Good. You will never have to. It’s never going to be a part of your world whatsoever.

Nick (01:08:51)

It feels like you’ve manifested your own space. It feels like you’ve been dreaming about this for 20 years, and suddenly it’s popped up.

Kevin (01:08:56)

Oh, my God! You’re using language we never had. And when you say it, it makes me emotional because I’m like, “Yes, that is what it is.” I spent a long time in this career trying to get to the place where I could just be where I was when I made the first movie, completely free. Not thinking about what the box office is going to be, what critics are going to say, what the audience is going to say. Make the fucking thing. Not with all that shit in your head.

Kevin (01:09:22)

I’ve only been able to really do that twice. Once with Clerks, and then years later I did it when we made Tusk. I was like, “You know what? This movie is so bad shit crazy and stupid. I’m making this. I just want to see it.” Which is the same reason I made Clerks.

Kevin (01:09:37)

But you absolutely said it, man. Oh, my God! Say it again because I’m going to write that shit down. Manifested? What did I do?

Nick (01:09:44)

You manifested your own space for 20 years. You’ve been manifesting the space, and now it’s here. And I also just have to pop on when say that Tusk is one of my favorite horror films of all time. It’s unbelievable.

Kevin (01:09:55)

Which one?

Nick (01:09:56)

Tusk. Tusk is an unbelievable film. It’s beautiful.

Kevin (01:10:01)

It’s so bad shit crazy.

Nick (01:10:03)

I spent a long time on all fours thinking I was a warrior after watching that film. I don’t know what I smoked, but it was intense. It was an intense experience.

Kevin (01:10:13)

Yeah, I can’t take credit for that. That sounds like the weed. My Lord! Thank you for saying that. When a young person says, “I like Tusk,” in that one movie, that every time a bell rings, an angel gets its wings. Every time a young person is like, “I like Tusk,” I get to live one day longer.

Nick (01:10:31)

I hope you keep hearing it then.

Tom (01:10:35)

Not to segue, but Guy, I have one last question for you on the NFT side of things, so Secret allows a lot of customization, a lot of privacy for NFTs in general. And that flies pretty much in the face of NFTs now, where everything is public, which has its own issues.

Tom (01:10:54)

But how exactly are you enabling that? Like selectively revealing features like, “Hey, I’m a level 10 Kevin Smith fan,” right? And Nick’s, maybe a level 20. And he reveals that that’s a very basic example here. But how are you able to do that in a way where I’m revealing things that I’m also not changing, right? These actually exist as facts within that IPFS that I’m unlocking.

Guy (01:11:21)

So first of all, just to know, you can program anything that you want. You can actually make NFTs [inaudible 01:11:27], not mutable, even by the owner themselves, where they can inject or change things. For example, there’s the analyst community.

Guy (01:11:37)

So the analyst community did something very, very nice and this is like a PFAE community. And what happens is that anyone who owns an NFT can send a transaction that mutates the private part of the NFT where they put like their Telegram handle.

Guy (01:11:54)

And then there’s a bot that is the only one with the decryption key that can see this and automatically invite you or kick you when it changes. But no one else on the chain can tie your address, NFT, to your Telegram handle. So you get like unlinkability there and some anonymity but you can change it. So that’s just like a side note about the NFT.

Guy (01:12:16)

This is actually can be programmed and changed, but the way it works is fairly simple. At the end of the day, Secret Network… I mean, NFTs are smart contracts eventually. Secret Networks allows you to decide what kind of data in a smart contract is private and what isn’t.

Guy (01:12:38)

Other blockchains don’t give you that flexibility. Other blockchains are always public. Everyone can see everything. You put your Social Security number on the blockchain, I can see it, right? Whatever you put on the blockchain, I can see it.

Guy (01:12:52)

In Secret Network there’s a spec that someone from our community talking about community. Someone from our community actually built which basically said, okay, normal NFTs, it’s a token.

Guy (01:13:10)

There can be some monetary value, you can buy and sell it and then there’s a list of metadata usually pointing out to IPFS or other places. But they can also be like actual data on-chain. That metadata is public again because everything is always public in a smart contract.

Guy (01:13:29)

On Secret, the same person expanded the spec and said, okay, there’s this public metadata so things that everyone can see. Then there’s private metadata, things that are encrypted in the smart contract and then the smart contract itself would only decrypt that information if you prove that you own the NFT, if you basically sign with your wallet transaction and you own the NFT in that wallet, that you cannot prove that you own the NFT.

Guy (01:14:01)

So give or take, this is basically just something that’s inherently baked into Secret Network and how it works. And we didn’t anticipate this. I just want to be honest, we don’t have that kind of foresight or vision.

Guy (01:14:15)

When we started working on these ideas of privacy and the blockchain encryption on the blockchain, we didn’t even think about any of these. We didn’t know this would become a thing.

Tom (01:14:27)

That makes sense. The privacy aspect is super exciting and for people to realize that, it’s also pretty cool. I mean, normal UI issue is just basically spinning up new wallets all day to buy NFT so people can’t track you. But it’s exciting to have that built-in customization.

Guy (01:14:45)

Right. By the way, that’s separate. We always focus on Secret NFTs about the idea that NFT has content and then some of the content can be private and only you can see, whether it’s a movie, a digital painting, a song, whatever.

Guy (01:15:01)

But what you mentioned is separate, which is also doable. If you choose, you can make sure that no one knows your wallet address. You own an NFT but no one knows to connect it to your wallet address, which is actually important.

Guy (01:15:19)

And I’ve heard this time and time again, people who collect a lot of NFTs, they come to you and they say, “This is great. I’m using this because I don’t want people to know and I don’t want to kind of worry about people knowing which NFTs I hold.”

Tom (01:15:36)

No, I totally agree. Nick, I’ll send it back to you. I know you might have a couple more last questions.

Nick (01:15:42)

Yeah. Before, I just kind of want to talk more about the actual drop itself. I hope people listen to this and gone, “I need that NFT on the 12th. How do they get that?”

Nick (01:15:53)

And also, kind of come back to a question I asked earlier. What’s happening with the funding from the drop itself? Are you building a treasury for that? Is that all going to Dave Shapiro to paying back for making the film? What’s the plan?

Kevin (01:16:09)

I always leave that to smarter people than me. That would be a David Shapiro question. He’s not here, unfortunately.

Kevin (01:16:17)

Money has honestly never been the emo of my career and I don’t want to seem like a dilatant who doesn’t know things financial. But like this is going to sound weird, but it’s been easier to do what I do for nearly three decades without knowing where the money goes. As long as somebody’s not like “We’re broke.”

Tom (01:16:47)

It takes away from your creative time. I mean, you’re able to have an expert handle it.

Kevin (01:16:52)

It’s such a weird relationship, right? Because using my voice, that’s what I do for a living, self-expression. And that’s free, everybody gets to do that. It’s beautiful. As a human being, we get to self-express. And yet, I have to take this beautiful thing that has given me so much in my life, defines who I am and I have to commodify it on a regular basis. It has to be the way I make a living as well.

Kevin (01:17:18)

So something like going to talk to 1,000 people, I should be doing that for fucking free. But instead, I charge to do that. That’s how I make my living, blah, blah, blah.

Kevin (01:17:30)

So I try to disengage from the financial aspect as much as I can. Again, I’m not aloof. I know it’s a big part of it. I don’t get to do what I do unless somebody eventually buys it and stuff. But my finger is never to that pulse.

Kevin (01:17:49)

And I’m not suggesting every artist be like that. I think it’s very important to know where your money goes and hopefully, you got people that you trust.

Kevin (01:17:58)

That’s the thing here. I got somebody who’s been with me for decades. I’m like, “You handle that. I’m just going to be over here, make it pretend and you tell me if I’m in debt or if we’re okay.”

Kevin (01:18:08)

But I know part of it, of course, is paying off the budget of the movie. And then I think if there was a profit of any sort, I’m going to use mine to buy up my hometown movie theater. Not very expensive. We don’t have to put a lot of money down and stuff. But it’s just an opportunity opened up to get that theater, which would actually-

Tom (01:18:30)

Kevin is that the theater in Redbank?

Kevin (01:18:35)

The one in [inaudible].

Tom (01:18:41)

Next to the ice cream shop.

Kevin (01:18:42)

Next to the ice cream shop, that’s right.

Nick (01:18:44)

We should go together.

Kevin (01:18:44)

We [crosstalk] Castle Film Festival there. That Roman Coppola and DCP, Decentralized Pictures, they just jumped in as a sponsor.

Kevin (01:18:52)

So the people who win prizes are going to get packages and services in the crypto space and stuff like that. So in speaking about doing the festival, there became an opportunity to buy the place arose.

Kevin (01:19:05)

So some friends of mine from back home are getting together and kind of doing it. So if there’s any profit from this, then I’m probably going to put it into that movie theater, which ironically, we’re talking about doing this film school that and if we do that, a big portion of it would be like, well, we can make a short every term and then distribute it as an NFT because David is involved as well. So it all kind of ties in a weird way.

Nick (01:19:34)

That’s really cool. Just a couple of questions before we finish. Do you own any NFT’s yourself? Have you bought any?

Kevin (01:19:46)

I do. I’ll be honest with you. Most of them are Kevin Smith NFTs. I was very happy with the ones we made, but I have two from outside of Kevin Smith’s world, but I do.

Nick (01:19:56)

Cool. What advice would you give filmmakers who are interested in Web3?

Kevin (01:20:03)

Investigate and get into the community. Talk to people. Filmmakers are isolationists. Storytellers in general tend to be a bit isolationist. It can’t be that way. This community is the only way you’re going to be able to move forward. And this community is insanely welcoming.

Kevin (01:20:23)

So spend time before you make a thing, make friends, make comrades, make people who are going to help you make your dreams come true. That’s the smart way to do it. I wouldn’t have been able to make Clerks if I hadn’t met Scott Mosier, Dave Klein, if I didn’t know Jeff Anderson, Jason Mewes.

Kevin (01:20:46)

So a lot of the building and the important filmmaking stuff doesn’t require a single fucking dime. It just requires your time to sit around and get to know people who can maybe help you make a dream come true, support you as your dreams come true. You could support them vice versa man. It’s the best part of community.

Kevin (01:21:05)

Engage heavily in the community if you’re even thinking about jumping into Web3. And you should. It’s a playground. Don’t be scared, kids. A lot of people, speculators, are fucking off at this point. That’s going to leave people who are actually serious about the space and what one could do with the technology.

Kevin (01:21:21)

People like you, a filmmaker, a storyteller. I’m not just talking to filmmakers. Anybody who could do a creative thing out there. Don’t forget this is a very creative medium working in NFTs. We’re just sticking a movie on the one.

Kevin (01:21:36)

People have been putting images onto it, music. The sky is the limit. It’s one more platform. Just make sure you engage with the community. That’s the best way forward. That’s how you’re going to build your audience.

Nick (01:21:49)

Can you tell us how we get an NFT? How we get Killroy Was Here next week? The drop.

Kevin (01:21:54)

That’s a Guy question. Guy, tell them how they’re going to get Killroy.

Guy (01:21:58)

Yeah, it’s very simple. Go to legendao.io, with the one d. It’s like legendao. Then you can get all the details there. You can join the Discord. You’ll have a link to the main site on July 12. If you’re not sure, again, follow us on Twitter. Either Legendao Secret Network or join the Discord. There’s a lot of people who are happy to help you.

Nick (01:22:26)

Great. Final question. I think this is more for me and Tommy because the people that are watching this aren’t going to get to see it for a couple of weeks. But the trailer for Clerks III is dropping tomorrow. Is there anything you can tease for us about the film or about the trailer?

Kevin (01:22:37)

It’s so good. Trailer making and marketing is an art form that I don’t have the skill set for. I can make the movie, but trying to encapsulate it in two minutes, I’m telling you, it really takes an incredibly artistic skill set I don’t have.

Kevin (01:22:57)

Trailer making is always a mystery and you’re fascinated by it. It’s the thing you dream about as the filmmaker. You dream about making the movie, but in the back of your head, you’re like, “I wonder what the poster will look like. I wonder what the trailer is going to look like.” When they finally present it to you, you clench your asshole and hope for the best.

Kevin (01:23:13)

They gave me a trailer on Clerks III where I had literally no fucking notes whatsoever. I don’t think that’s happened since the first time I got a trailer on Clerks. It was so beautiful and I’m almost scared because if people are like, “This sucks,” I’m like, “Then you’re definitely not going to like the movie because this really fucking encapsulates what the movie is.”

Kevin (01:23:32)

It is fucking joyful. I think it may be coming at the right time. A lot of people seem to be in a very shitty mood. Obviously, things in this country, in the world, not going the way a lot of people would like it to go. I think the trailer plays as like, “Hey, man. Shit is bad out there, but your fucking old friends are back at the store and they’re ready to fuck around.” It just feels very inviting. I can’t wait, man. It’s tomorrow morning.

Tom (01:23:57)

Kevin, we’re super excited. Nick, thank you so much for leading the discussion. Kevin, it’s an honor to have you on. Can’t believe we were neighbors so long and this is how we meet over video instead.

Kevin (01:24:07)

It really is crazy, man. To be so close from Jersey, but to meet here in the metaverse is…

Nick (01:24:11)

It was a line from Chasing Amy.

Kevin (01:24:15)

That’s true. Oh my God, we’re having that moment in the club.

Tom (01:24:22)

And Guy, it’s such a pleasure. Everything you’ve built with Secret has been amazing. Obviously, I’ve been friends with Tora for a long time as well. So it’s a pleasure to have you on and see you guys lead this for Kevin.

Guy (01:24:33)

Thank you very much. Thanks for having us.

Tom (01:24:36)

Awesome. Thank you.

Guy (01:24:37)

Thanks, everyone.

Kevin (01:24:39)

Thanks to you, Guy. Bye, kids.

Guy (01:24:40)

You too.

Nick (01:24:41)

Bye-bye.

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