I'm not responsible for this

Reason Online reminds me of a New York Magazine story from July that attributed to the Long Tail the strange success of Kevin Smith's DVD lecture series (featuring "thousands of young Canadians who came to a Toronto auditorium to hear Kevin Smith joke and whine about his life in the movies. The audience members range in age and gender, but the vast majority are young, awkward and male - late teens and early twenties.")

Reason asks::

How did these people become Kevin Smith fans? If you assume that people become fans of a director or movie star by seeing his/her movies, there hasn't been a reason to worship Kevin Smith in nearly a decade, since the well-constructed sex comedy Chasing Amy. But Smith hasn't made an influential movie or created any lasting characters since 1994's Clerks. If you're one of the 18-year old college freshmen who's buying a ticket to see Smith right now, you were six when Clerks was released.

New York Mag answers::

The long-tail economy makes a passionate fan base more important to entertainers than ever: In the same way that the real money for rock stars has been in merchandise and concerts, a filmmaker’s fortune isn’t just dependent on ticket sales but on video-on-demand, online downloads, DVDs, and then special-edition DVDs; in short, on the ardor of his devotees. So, naturally, every with-it director is on MySpace—but Kevin Smith has them all beat by a mile. “He was so ahead of his time, because he was always communicating with his fans,” says Harvey Weinstein.

Reason is not convinced:

Anderson produced a more compelling theory in his interview with Nick Gillespie.

The fact that you and I both watched American Idol last night probably doesn't define us, whereas our niche interests really do. We go deep and find people who share our affinities, which represent much tighter connections between us. So my suspicion is that we're going to have fewer loose connections with lots of people but tighter connections with fewer people.

That's why Kevin Smith's popularity is indestructible, while his friend Ben Affleck's career exploded then spent a few years tumbling back to earth. Smith doesn't produce movies; he produces new offshoots of the Kevin Smith brand. Just like they did 10 years ago, lonely/nerdy/smart teenage boys see in Smith a humor they identify with and a personality they want to emulate. The movies are incidental: Something like Clerks II has the relationship to the Smith brand that a communion wafer has to Catholicism.

Comments

[Hashim]

Smith is a very popular comic book writer, who has done Spider-Man and Green Arrow. Perhaps that is how these young people know him.

[Chad]

I would argue that Smith's success is more than just the Long Tail at work. The guy not only posts regularly at his message board (direct communication with fans - what a concept!) but also posts to his own blog and his MySpace. He is currently shooting a weekly webisode/mobisode show in conjunction with MTV-U and UCLA. He continues to be relevant to a large mass of pop culture fans.

Aside from all that, Kevin's fan base continues to grow the same way that Jim Belushi's and Cheech & Chong's does. His movie collection is passed down in dorm rooms & fraternity houses. You'll see posters of Clerks & Mallrats right next to Animal House. Clerks is as still relavant to an 18 year old working a crappy job today as it was when it first came out.

So it boils down to the chicken & the egg here. Is Smith's success because of his ridiculous amount of touch points, or does he put out so much merchandise and work so hard at communicating with his fans because of his success?

[Chris Saad]

His loyal and rabid fan base cannot be attributed just to his work in comic books or hand-me-down movies. As Chris says those were catalysts and symbols of his brand - but they are not the reason people engage with him as a creator so passionately.

Manual Trackback!
http://www.touchstonelive.com/blog/2006/12/iam-responsible-for-this.html

[ZuDfunck]

Who is Kevin Smith?

[Chris Anderson]

He's the director of Clerks and other indie cult classics.