As more women come forward with stories of sexual harassment and assault by Harvey Weinstein, some male filmmakers and actors he has worked with have spoken against Weinstein’s actions. These actors include Ben Affleck, Matt Damon, and Quentin Tarantino. Today we have words that Kevin Smith, whose career had been launched with Clerks, distributed by Harvey Weinstein’s Miramax, is taking this issue to another level. The filmmaker had announced on that he will donate residuals from movies which he made with Harvey Weinstein to a certain women’s charity.
After the sexual harassment allegations surfaced this month, Kevin Smith had released a statement on Twitter, saying that Harvey Weinstein had financed the first 14 years of his career, and he “feels ashamed” that “others were in terrible pain” while he made a profit from these movies. In trying to find something he could do about this, he had announced that he will donate the residuals from his Miramax movies and later The Weinstein Company movies to a charity called Women in Film. This helps female filmmakers realize goals while coming up through filmmaking industries. This is what Kevin Smith had to say:
“My entire career is tied up with the man. Everything I did in the beginning has his name on it. And I spent many years lionising him, telling stories. Whenever I tell the Clerks story, there’s, you know, and then we got bought by Miramax. I’m not a victim in this. This is not about me at all. We know who the victims are. But my s–t is tied up with this man. I just wanted to make some f—ing movies, that’s it. That’s why I came, that’s why I made Clerks. And no f—ing movie is worth all this. Like, my entire career, f—k it, take it. It’s wrapped up in something really f—ing horrible. Because I sat out there talking about this man like he was a hero, like he was my friend, like he was my father and s–t like that, and he changed my f—ing life. And I showed other people, ‘You can dream, and you can make stuff, and this man will put it out.’ I was singing praises of somebody that I didn’t f—ing know. I didn’t know the man that they keep talking about in the press. Clearly he exists, but that man never showed himself to me. So I’ve been trying to think of what to do. Everyone on the Internet of course has an opinion; a lot of people when I said that I’m ashamed, I wrote a tweet saying I’m ashamed, a lot of people of course were like, ‘Give all the money back.’ Well, I don’t have money from 20 years ago, do you? But that being said, I work in an industry where thankfully there are dividends that come out of a movie for the rest of your life, so there’s such a thing as residuals, where I still get money for those movies, for the movies I made at Miramax and for the movies I made with at Weinstein. The first thing I feel like I can do is, I don’t want that anymore.”
Since the allegations had come out, Weinstein was fired by The Weinstein Company’s board of directors, and the company is taken over by Harvey’s brother Bob Weinstein and David Glaser. He has also been expelled from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and this means that he cannot vote for the Oscars. There are reports that Bob Weinstein and David Glaser are trying to get this company back on the right track, Kevin Smith will not get more residual checks, and the filmmaker has promised to donate $2,000 every month to Women In Film, for the rest of his life.
Kevin Smith’s career had been launched when Miramax had picked up his low-budget indie film Clerks after the debut at Sundance Film Festival in 1995. With an exception of his second film, Mallrats, which had been distributed by Universal Pictures, his next 6 movies were distributed by Miramax/The Weinstein Company, Dogma, Clerks II and Zack and Miri Make a Porno Jay, Chasing Amy, and Silent Bob Strike Back, Jersey Girl.
