Kevin Smith’s latest film, The 4:30 Movie, is a brisk affair, with hefty end credits. He tells us the story of what happened.
If you look on the end credits of Kevin Smith’s career-turning film Red State, you’d find a short sentence thanking the people who never questioned why, and instead asked why not. Fast forward to his latest release, 2024’s The 4.30 Movie, and the special thanks goes on, well, quite a bit longer.
Smith pens a note in the end credits of The 4:30 Movie, a missive of thanks to the people who helped him to get to where he is, and I had the chance to question Smith as to why he’d approached things that way. Turns out there was a practical bit of thinking involved.
“I’m going to disabuse you of the notion that it was ‘he knows what he’s doing”, Smith told me with a massive grin on his face.
“I wrote a very short script, 75 pages. I’m an editor, first and foremost, in my head. I only shoot what I need to cut together… so I kept the script relatively short”.
The cut of the film he produced once filming was done came in at a lean 72 minutes. Still long enough to be considered a film, and when three or four minutes of credits are added to that? Bingo, job done.
Only problem was that Smith hit a contractual issue. He discovered once he thought he’d locked the film that he’d signed a contract for an 82 minute movie. He now found himself six minutes short. You can see where this is going.
“The first thing I said was we’re going to slow down the end credits, I’ll tell you that much now!”
There was a blooper reel that had been produced too during the making of the film. That got added in. A scene that Smith had dismissed on day one of shooting of his cast walking past the old Quick Stop store from Smith’s previous films was back in play too. He’d wanted to leave that out, looking for The 4.30 Movie to be a standalone piece of work. Now? Needs must, a scene was shot with the cast walking past the aforementioned Quick Stop.
And one last job? “I create this big long list of thanks of every one and everything that figured prominently in my life in that era, from cradle to age 16. It’s nice, it’s kind of a road map when you read it, but it’s necessity being the mother of invention.”
The final running time of The 4.30 Movie, available now on video on demand services? 88 minutes including logos, credits, and little extras. Contract met, job done. You can find the film here…
