Kevin Smith Shares How Harvey Weinstein Screwed Him Over and Explains He Doesn't Make Films For The Money

The 1994 film Clerks put Kevin Smith on the map and it’s the film that launched his career. The movie ended up being a box office success, a cult classic, a pop-culture touchstone.

We all know that over the years Harvey Weinstein has screwed a lot of people over and in a recent interview with Variety, Smith shares what his experience of working with Weinstein was like and how the producer refused to pay him the royalties he was owed for his first Clerks for seven years. He’s never been fully paid for what he’s owed. This is another thing that Weinstein was notorious for, but Smith explains that he was never in it for the money:

"He was notorious for that. 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.

"This much I know. They [Miramax] 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."

Shady things. Smith explains those “things” involved costs associated with the 1994 Cannes Film Festival. The Clerks' profits paid, in part, for a yacht used at the festival for Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction:

"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.

Ultimately, Smith’s lawyer ended up auditing Miramax years later so that they would finally get paid. While Smith wasn’t in it for the money, his lawyer and representatives wanted to make sure he still got what he was owed.

"I remember John Sloss, my lawyer, being like 'This is nuts. We have to audit them. 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."

As for any residual money Smith gets for the movies he made with Miramax, which also includes Mallrats, Chasing Amy, and more, the filmmaker is giving that money to the nonprofit Women In Film, which helps women in the film industry. Smith previously said:

"My entire career is tied up with this man. Everything I did in the beginning has his name on it. And I spent many years lionizing him, telling stories. Whenever I tell the Clerks story, there's, you know, and then we got bought by Miramax."

"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."

Well, as you know, Hollywood won’t have to deal with Weinstein anymore. Also, I just want to point out that I like the fact that Smith isn’t in the business to make money. He just genuinely has fun and enjoys making movies!