…What do you have to do to get a little attention in Cannes? Try hawking a movie you don’t want. The usually attention-hoarding Miramax received the most chatter for Dogma, Kevin Smith’s raucous satire on Catholicism starring Matt Damon and Ben Affleck as homicidal angels. Before its first screening, distributors were clamoring to see the film that studio cheif Harvey Weinstein was shopping, following the decision to buy the movie from his own company for $12 million and spare corporate parent Disney any protest grief. But its screening sharply divided potential buyers; some eagerly canvassed audience members for reactions, while one studio exec summed up his opinion of the two-hour plu comedy by sticking his fingers down his throat. As for Smith, the director was hoping that Weinstein might release the film, perhaps via a one-time-only distribution company, as he did in the case of 1995’s controversial Kids. “Maybe there will be no backlash to duck,” Smith said, “and [Harvey] wil be like, ‘Yaeh, we can put this out ourselves.'”

…The festival took another turn in the final stretch: Kevin Smith, former clerk and mallrat himself, woke up torpis moviegoers with Dogma, the most raucous good-natured, raunchy big bash of an American movie ever to explain Catholic theology -as well as the sins of movie studio executives. (Thos who would protest Smith’s entertaining, loosely stiched homage to the Church as a dis to Catholics would do far better to picket Life Is Beautiful as a dis to Jews).