- Congrats to Dogma for making yet ANOTHER Top 10 end-of-the-year list. The film rounds out the list from St. Louis Post-Dispatch Film Critic Joe Holleman. Here’s an excerpt:
- We’ve just been made aware that the Digital Entertainment Network has a site on Dogma, which you can find HERE. Nothing new really, but a nice package. We like the way this site handles things. May be worth a bookmark for ya for future reference.
- Wizard ran a small piece on Kevin’s infiltration of the Dogma protesters on opening night (When Kev joined up with the group undercover to protest his own flick). They ran down a few of the highlights:
- Picketers told Kevin some “nasty things about his parents” and “even nastier things about himself”.
- Kevin prayed the rosary in 40 degree weather, all the while holding up signs that read, “To hell with Dogma” and “Dogma is Dogshit”.
- Kevin apparently was so elusive, that he even answered some questions for an unknowing local news crew, all the while holding his ground as a protester of the film.
Nothing you didn’t really know already, but we figured we’d report it, anyway.
- Here’s a local copy of that interview from the Popcorn Website. In it, Kevin discusses his night out with the protesters as well as a few of the frightening results of making a movie about faith:
Stephen Applebaum talked to the writer/director about coming under siege from the God squad.
Kevin, is it true that you picketed your own movie?
When the movie came out in my town, I read in our paper that there was going to be a protest of 500 people. Now 500 people for a big city I can kind of get my head around, but 500 people for the suburbs? I wanted to see what was on their minds because I was really mystified by the whole thing. So my friend came with me and my wife, and we made up these signs saying ‘Dogma is Dogshit’ and ‘To Hell with Dogma’. When we got there,there was only about 15 people. And we had the best looking signs. Itwas really sad.
Did any of the protesters recognize you?
Their median age was about 55 to 60 and they wouldn’t recognize me from a hole in the wall. But it was really funny, because kids would periodically drive by and they’d be like: ‘Silent Bob!’
What do you think of the protesters?
I can’t really feel that bad about them because they remind me of my grandmother. I was just a little disappointed that there was no coffee and doughnuts. As much as they sat there demonising me, I couldn’t really be like: ‘Ooh, jerks!’ If that’s the way they feel about it,that’s the way they feel about it. They were acting out of ignorance.
Miramax wasn’t, it knew what it was getting and dropped the film….I was always a little disappointed that Dogma wasn’t going to have aMiramax logo on it. But at least Harvey and Bob Weinstein bought the movie. I just saw this weird fate with my film ending up on the back shelf with a great cast [Alan Rickman, Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, Chris Rock, Linda Fiorentino] and nobody ever seeing the damn thing until it came out on video a few years later. They kind of treated it like a bastard orphan. But instead of giving it to an orphanage, they made sure we got to the right foster home.
One of your casting coups was Alan Rickman, who plays an angel. What washis feeling about wearing a prosthetic that rendered him sexless? He seemed to go down with it quite well, but I think he found the part where they had to measure him for it awkward. He says it’s like the opposite of the Boogie Nights prosthetic. Whereas Mark Wahlberg gets the long fake dick, he got the no fake dick at all. The worst part was the mechanical wings. They weighed about a hundred or so pounds, and they jerked him back and forth as we opened and closed them. He put his back out and had to lay up in a hospital for a while. I felt really bad about it. I mean here’s the dude working on the movie for scale, and then to boot we threw his back out and removed his dick. It was one indignity after another. Welcome to America!
Have any of the letters you received from people about the film disturbed you?
The only one that I will take to my grave was the letter that said ‘You Jews had better take that money you stole from us and start investing it in flak jackets, because we’re going to come in there with shotguns’.Most of the mail was dripping with anti-Semitism. It was really hardcore.
Did it make you feel uneasy walking around?
There was a point in the office when we couldn’t open any packages. It was a little disturbing for a while to think: ‘God, we’re not opening our mail because we made a movie about faith’. I now realize that America is such a hypocritical country. They talk about how free we are,and look at Europe and the rest of the world and go: ‘We’re so civilized; we’re so far advanced’. Meanwhile, this year, I received death threats for a movie about religion. Yeah we have more TV channels than you guys [in Britain], but that doesn’t make us any more civilized or any more advanced.
Alrighty then. We’ll see ya.
