Director Kevin Smith has long been known as one of the best talkers in the movie business, whether he’s doing a typically outspoken interview or delivering his raucous annual talk in front of sold-out crowds at Comic-Con. 
But over the past few years, the director has turned talking into a second career, launching several hugely successful podcasts, including his signature “Smodcast” with producer Scott Mosier. Smith recently signed a deal with Sirius Satellite Radio to carry his podcasts, which routinely sit atop the iTunes charts and are available on his Smodcast website. (He has more than 350,000 subscribers per week for the free shows.)
Over the summer, he took out a lease on a 50-seat theater in Hollywood and dubbed it the Smodcastle. The theater tapes live podcasts four nights a week, charging a modest admission price; typically, some feature Smith himself and others feature friends like Tom Green.
Smith met with TheWrap at the Smodcastle, which is furnished with fan artwork depicting the director and with a carpet sporting the logo of his beloved New Jersey Devils hockey team.
Why open a theater just for podcasting?
It kind of started on Twitter. I’d been doing a live tour with Mosier, and talking about how much I was enjoying that. And I was thinking, oh man, if you do a show every week, it’d be nice to have a theater where you could do it. So I became kind of obsessed with the notion of getting a black-box theater. So I started tweeting about it, and people got really into the notion.
Now, Twitter’s like hanging out with a bunch of your friends when you’re drunk. It’s like, “I wanna show my dick,” and they’re like, “Do it, dude, do it!” Nobody on Twitter’s going, “What’s it gonna cost?” But Matt Cohen, a dude that I’ve known for a few years through the website, got into the notion and became the point man. I was like, “Go find a theater we can rent for way under five grand, refurbish, paint it, do whatever we want with it.”
It's more than a theater...
Well, it became more and more personal. When it started, it was like, we’ll just have a place to go. And then it turned into a space to hang up the artwork. We were originally sharing it an paying what we pay now. But then we started getting real proprietary about it — it’s our f---ing theater, man.
Doesn’t that get costly, when the product is something that you give away for free?
If nothing else, I’m very good at turning a nickel. I’m not good at the big stuff, but I love to take a buck and turn it into three bucks -- and that works for a place like this.
