Fletch Won: To Smith or not to Smith?

Okay, now we're really confused. As recently as two weeks ago, as Erik reported, Kevin Smith was still officially affiliated with Fletch Won, and was pushing to have pal Jason Lee (Mallrats, My Name is Earl) cast in the role originated by Chevy Chase. Super. Then Martha reported earlier today that Smith is out of the picture. Martha got the story from the good folks over at Movieblog.com.

Also today, IMDB reports that Smith is officially off the Fletch Won project, citing as its source movie gossip site Moviehole.net. Moviehole.net, however, in a story headlined "Kevin Smith Walks Away from Fletch Won", quotes David List, the film's producer, as telling IMDB and NewsAskew, a website reporting on all things related to Smith, that Smith is no longer affiliated with the film either as writer or director. NewsAskew reports that Kevin has confirmed that he is off the project, and, well, you'd think if anyone would know, they would, right?

Dig a little deeper and unearth the NewsAskew story, though, and you'll find, as we did, that the quotes attributed by IMDB and MovieHole.net as being from David List actually came from a discussion thread on IMDB under the Fletch Won header. Keeping up so far?

So what we have here, is a story posted on IMDB that quotes as a source (without telling us the quotes in question came from one of their own message boards!) that is tenuous at best. Click on the user profile of the person purporting to be David List, and you'll find, as we did, that this person, signed in under the rather anonymous userid of "david1019" only registered as a user on August 22, the same day he or she posted in the thread.

Now, we perused the message board threads on Kevin Smith's own site at length, and as of now, while there is much speculation by the users of the site, Smith himself has not popped in to either confirm or deny the story that he has left Fletch Won. From what we can tell at this point, this whole story is based on a posting on an IMDB message board that may or may not actually be from David List. Color us cynical, but until we hear from a more reliable source than "david1019" that Smith is really, truly, officially off the project, we are going to work from the assumption that this story has about as much substance as a politician's campaign promises after election day.

If the real Kevin Smith or David List would care to contact us to let the real story be known, we'll be hanging out here watching our copy of Clerks. Again.