Kevin Smith Did Not Direct Cop Out For The Payday

Many have said that director Kevin Smith directed the movie “Cop Out” for the paycheck. Smith recently took to the his Twitter to set the record straight and admitted he even took a pay cut to direct Cop Out.

Here is a tweet from Smith on January 1st and January 2nd, 2011. He goes into detail explaining the extent of the pay cut he took:

Via @doubleplusgeoff “you’d do a lot for your credibility if you’d just come right out & say that CopOut was a ‘gettin paid’ movie” I wish I could. But I actually took an 84% pay cut to make #CopOut – because I wanted to work with BruceWillis. Lots of us did. Tracy got paid more than me, but not much. I also gave BACK half my already-way-less salary to get the film green-lit: there was a budget crunch to get to the $35million the studio wanted, so Marc Platt & I each gave up half our salaries IN ADDITION to the big dip in our quotes we’d agreed to. When all was said & done, we came in way under budget. Final cost: $32mil – $3mil less than we were allotted. Contractually, WB didn’t have to give me the money I gave up until they were in the black, but since we came in under budget, they cut me a check for the re-investment I’d made BEFORE the flick hit theaters. And even then, I still made 80% less than I did on my previous flick. I made MORE as the director of DOGMA in 1998 than I did as the director of COP OUT in 2009/2010. So please: enough with the “you musta got PAID” bullshit. I didn’t. Both my agent & my lawyer were like “Don’t do this. You can get paid more making a Kevin Smith movie.”

Directing Cop Out allowed him to make Red State. It makes sense, stars do that all the time He goes on to say:

But I knew if I wanted to make RedState, I had to make CopOut. There were things I needed to learn, and I learned them – while making a financially responsible buddy cop homage for a major studio, from a script I didn’t write. I’m sorry you didn’t like CopOut; feel free to skip RedState if you feel betrayed in some way. But to suggest I did #CopOut for the money is ludicrous – as it was the least I’ve been paid to direct a film since 1998 – 11 years prior. CopOut may not fit into your KevinSmith narrative, but I know where my story goes – and it was the keystone to everything that RedState is.

He concluded his statements by delivering an important life lesson:

We don’t live in STAR WARS, kid. Motivations aren’t always as simple & clear as “The Empire is bad! Save the galaxy!” You may not understand why I do what I do, and that must frustrate you. But in a couple years, it’s all gonna make sense. And by the time it does, you won’t care anymore anyway. But at least I’ll have the record of this exchange; that and it’s one more question I won’t have to answer again. So thanks.