Guy,

I always take shots at Kevin Smith, because he's vastly overrated and hasn't made anything worth a damn in a decade.

How many writers could write something better than Clerks? That's actually your question? Let's see...

Billy Wilder (about a dozen times)
Woody Allen (a good seven or eight times)
William Goldman (maybe five times)
Joel and Ethan Coen (five or six times)
Orson Welles (four times)
Charlie Kaufman (three times)
Frank Darabont (three times)
Mel Brooks (three times)
Quentin Tarantino (three times)
Paul Schrader (at least twice)
Gary Ross (at least twice)
Paddy Cheyefsky
Joseph L. Mankeiwicz
Ernest Lehman
Robert Towne
Robert Bolt
...and a lot more that I don't even need to come up with.

Furthermore, I wouldn't say Zack & Miri will make $75 million. Pineapple Express slowed down in a real hurry, and marketing a movie with "Porno" in the title won't be easy. Some networks may refuse to take ads. Clear Channel Communications - and that's over 2,000 radio stations - won't run those commercials. You won't see it on any of their billboards either, and Clear Channel Outdoor is in most major cities. I'd like to know why you think it'll make that much money, or are you just blindly guessing?

Yeah, well, it's interesting that in your box office breakdown, you never mention that Kevin Smith has never broken $31 million in the U.S. Clerks II made $24 million and that's his most recent movie, released during the summer, and it's the brand name he's known for.

I especially like that you fail to mention his box office performance in light of the fact that three of your seven reasons are related to Smith or View Askew. Of course, you also have Seth Rogen listed three times. Basically, that means one reason for each of those guys, plus the word "Porno" and advertising. Do you know what a list does? It delineates separate reasons, not the same two over and over again. So your seven-tiered argument has been cut in half already, and I'll take another swing at the rest of your reasons.

Elizabeth Banks has no box office pull. Zero. Love her to death, bet she smells great, but a star she is not.

You're wrong about the advertising. The Weinsteins don't do a lot of it these days - or have you witnessed a deluge of Vicky Cristina Barcelona and Hell Ride ads that I missed? It certainly won't get a blockbuster-sized blitz the likes of which you seem to expect. One more note about The Office: Those Leatherheads and Last Mimsy commercials didn't really stick, and those movies feature two of the four main characters on the show. One of those movies was distributed by Universal - the same company as NBC - and the other was directed by the head of his own studio, New Line (back when that was a studio). Didn't matter. And since Craig Robinson just got arrested, the show may not want to put a spotlight on him for a couple of months.

Thirdly, I didn't say "Porno" would turn away moviegoers, I said it would turn away media outlets. As I said, Clear Channel just won't run their ads. I can tell you that right now. Those stations won't even play "Imagine" because of the reference to no religion. Incidentally, they own more radio stations than any other company in the world.

Bonneville Broadcasting, which is owned by the Mormon Church, also doesn't seem likely to run the ads, now do they? That company own stations in L.A., D.C., Chicago, St. Louis, Phoenix, Seattle, Cincinnati, and Salt Lake City. They also have an NBC affiliate, which means they sure won't run the ads during The Office or at any other time.

Other advertisers, real big deal outfits like Coke and GM, have morality clauses in their contracts. Howard Stern couldn't get a lot of national advertisers for that reason, which is why he pimped TrimSpa 40 times a day back when he had a significant number of listeners on terrestrial radio. If Coke says, "We don't want our ad next to one selling 'porn,'" Coke would win. No question about it. I've seen it happen in radio for two decades.

So there will be no media blitz; these commercials will run primarily on Comedy Central and youth-oriented networks, but not a lot on the majors. You won't hear an NFL halftime show announced with, "Now, from the 'Zack and Miri Make a Porno' sports desk, here's Curt Menefee."

I like how in your own example of Seth Rogen's track record, the numbers have diminished with each release, but if his star were rising to the point that he could carry this movie where you want it to go, the opposite would be true. Or do I not understand how someone becoming a more reliable box office draw works? Pineapple made over $10 million on one day. That's it. That's one-eighth of its draw in 23 days. And it opened as the major release of the weekend in over 3,000 theaters. I doubt seriously Zack and Miri will be in more theaters, and it has competition for a big chunk of the same audience, with RocknRolla opening that day.

So in addition to not really having a case for such a bold prediction, I'd like to throw one more number at you: 4. As in Scary Movie 4, the only movie released by The Weinstein Company since it was re-formed in 2005 that grossed over $75 million in the United States. The company is notorious for failing to aggressively market their movies once they hit theaters, which is why Forbidden Kingdom opened at number one and promptly died and why Halloween made $30 million on its opening weekend and less than $30 million in the next three months combined. They don't advertise their movies and they don't keep them in a lot of theaters for very long.

I hope you've regained your strength from being right and choose to dispute anything I've said. The bottom line is this: Smith isn't a draw, the movie won't be marketed as heavily as other things in the marketplace, the studio makes films fend for themselves after two weeks (by which time, you know, we'll have 007 to think about and all the fall and winter movies...), and it won't be in a Dark Knight-like 4,000 houses. Tough to make $75 million that way. Makes $100 million the kind of prediction you'd throw out there if you never stopped to think about these things.