BUZZ-SMITH

“The Dogma director looks for a little Net religion”

Alanis Morissette is God. Linda Fiorentino is a descendant of Jesus who works in an abortion clinic. Ben Affleck and Matt Damon? They’re angels who take to gunning down innocent churchgoers. Sure, wilder rumors have sprouted on the Internet, but in these cases, the heresay may actually be true.

The object of speculation is Dogma, the contentious new film from Kevin Smith that follows a pair of fallen angels scamming a passage to heaven. As the Catholic League vigorously attacked the film and Disney subsequently backed out as its distributor, the Net buzzed with gossip.

Throughout this tumult, you’ll find Smith where few of his peers dare to go: online with his fans. The director, via his company’s site, VIEW ASKEW PRODUCTIONS [viewaskew.com], keeps up an online dialogue. Inviting visitors to the Chasing Amy premiere or asking them to be extras in Dogma are just two instances of Smith’s relatively intimate rapport with his fan community. “The main interest for me as a filmmaker is communication,” says Smith, ” Rather than just making a movie for people to watch, I can actually talk to them about the process of making it.”

So when the Dogma controversy started to simmer, fans swarmed to DOGMA RUMOR CONTROL. [newsaskew.com/dogmarc]. Now, “people are so anxious to see this [film] because of the anticipation levels out there,” says the site’s co-founder, Brad Plevyak. “For a guy like Kevin, who has only been around for a few years, the amount of traffic we’re seeing is pretty astounding.”

With the film due for release mid-month, the momentum at Dogma Rumor Control, the Kevin Smith newsgroup [alt.movies.kevin-smith], and Smith’s official DOGMA site [dogma-movie.com] is building to Blair Witch Project proportions. ANd that doesn’t surprise Smith: “Word-of-mouth pictures thrive on the Internet. That’s all it is out there anyway–word of motuh.”