Kevin Smith’s 1994 directorial debut “Clerks” put him on the map, kicking off his long and lucrative relationship with Miramax, the studio founded by Harvey Weinstein and brother Bob.
In a new interview with Variety, Smith reveals that Weinstein — currently serving a 23-year prison sentence after being convicted on sexual assault charges — still owes him money from the movie, more than 25 years later.
“He was notorious for that,” Smith says of Weinstein’s reluctance to pay his bills. “I did encounter that. And I’m still out money. But you got to understand, I never cared about the money. My whole career, my reps were like: ‘You’re supposed to be making far more.’ Money’s never been a motivator for me.”
He continues: “This much I know. They bought ‘Clerks’ for $227,000. And the movie went out and made $3 million at the box office and stuff. And it took seven years for us to see any profit from that movie. For seven years, they were like: ‘Nope, the movie is still not in profit.’ And we were like ‘How?’ And then there were things.”
According to Smith, he got a crash course in shady Hollywood accounting after he was one of four films that Miramax took to the Cannes Film Festival in 1994.
“I get flown over by the festival. I was given a free hotel room from the festival. This is a long way of saying Miramax didn’t have to pay for anything,” he explains. “There was a yacht, the Miramax yacht, it was called. That’s where all the stars were. We hung out on it, hung out with Quentin [Tarantino] after he won his Palme d’Or and stuff. But that yacht wasn’t for us. When the festival was over, we got the financial statement. They had taken the entire Cannes bill, everything they spent in Cannes, and just chopped it up into four and ‘Clerks’ was charged as much as ‘Pulp Fiction’. So we all paid an equal share.”
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Smith’s lawyer was incredulous, and insisted on auditing Miramax. “And I said, ‘No, I can’t audit people I’m in business with. That’s gross.’ And we never audited them for years until after ‘Clerks 2.’ And then we audited them years later and got a bunch of money,” he says. “If I was a better business person, I would have gone for more money. But it felt like — ‘Oh, there it is. That’s their process. Movie math.’ And, to be fair, I worked at studios and they have way more paperwork and you can see where every dime is going. But the nature of this business is everybody wants to keep as much money as they possibly can.”
Asked why he continued to work with Weinstein after that, Smith answered, “Because I got paid upfront for each movie. Believe me, I ain’t crying poor. And I got ridiculous escalating salaries. By the time I did ‘Zack and Miri Make a Porno’, I think I made between $5 or $6 million. So come on, that’s ridiculous. But that was my salary. Upfront money was so good. I was never like, ‘Hey man, where’s those nickels and dimes on the back end?’ And perhaps that’s why they kept making movies with me, even though my movies weren’t box-office profitable. Home video, they were goldmines. That’s really why they kept me around.”
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