Kevin Smith needs your money to make his next film.

The director who found a cult following with Clerks, Mallrats, Chasing Amy and more recently Zak and Miri make a Porno, has had his latest pitch turned down by the Weinstein brothers. But that isn’t going to stop him, as he’s planning to fund it almost entirely through fan donations instead.

The film in question is Red State. A low budget ‘political’ horror flick about a group of misfits who encounter extreme fundamentalism in Middle America. Smith said it’s inspired by Fred Phelps, founder of the controversial militant anti-gay Westboro Baptist Church in Kansas.

Following an Interview on the Cinema Studies Student Union of the University of Toronto blog, Smith said he had come up with the suggestion from one of his Twitter followers…

I was on Twitter and people are asking about Red State, and then a dude tweeted ‘hey man, what if we pay for it?’ And all of a sudden, a bunch of people were like ‘Seriously, why not?’

It sounded like such an easy thing online… but now there’s lots of checks and balances to make sure we can do it, but if that’s the case, I would be into it, and I’ll match it. Whatever you raise online, like fuck it, you put it up, I’ll put it up.

Smith went on:

God bless them. Motherfuckers want to see the movie so badly that they’re willing to pay for it with their own money? Absolutely, put their name in the credits and that movie will be a reality.

After years of support it’s unclear why the Weinstein brothers have turned Smith down this time. Obviously he’s had quite a few critical failures, but he has always maintained a strong fan base for his movies. So either they’ve lost faith in him or they think it’s just too edgy for Miramax? Smith’s view on it is:

It’s so fucking vicious and nasty and mean and stark and it’s not funny.

he goes on…

It’s this weird fucking dark little seventies horror movie…that nobody wants to make.

I feel kind of sorry for Kevin Smith. When I first heard about this idea, I was eager to sign up and donate some money to help get this made. But to be honest, now that I think about it, what will I get out of it? Ok, so I’ll get a ‘blink and you’ll miss it’ credit, but if it’s successful he makes money… not me. Why would I want to invest in something that I’m not gonna get a return on? Perhaps I’m just being as cynical as ever. I mean Kevin Smith is one of my all time favourite directors, and I’ve been pretty loyal to his movies (with the exception of Jersey Girl) so maybe I’ll give a small donation, just so I can say I had a small part to play in making a movie possible.

While the idea of funding a movie entirely through donations seems like a new idea, it has been done before, although not with such a prominent director. Stephen Fry has been promoting the idea through his Twitter feed for quite some time now with BuyACredit.com.