We’ve enclosed the article in full today (as well as a nice new publicity shot from the film), since we’ve got the space. For the devout Dogma purists, there ARE some MINOR SPOILERS relating to the film’s plot here, but nothing that we feel ruins anything for ya:
 Chris Rock, Kevin Smith, Jason Mewes and Linda Fiorentino in a scene from ‘Dogma’. |
Deflator of the Faith? Director Begs to Differ
by Dave Kehr(NY Times)
Cannes, France
Crisis of faith are not the usual topic of discussion on the roof of the Martinez, one of the great, white luxury hotels that line the waterfront of this storied Cot’e d’Azur resort town.
During the commercial frenzy of the annual Cannes International Film Festival, conversation in high places is more likely to turn to back-end deals and ancillary rights.
But here is Kevin Smith, the 29-year-old director of the ribald, raucous independent comedies “Clerks” and “Chasing Amy,” explaining the complicated history of his relationship with the Roman Catholic Church.
“I was raised a strict Catholic,” said Mr. Smith, an earnest, outgoing, slightly pudgy child of Red Bank, N.J. ” I came to my crisis later, when I was about 22. Sooner or later, no matter how devout you are, even if you’re the Pope, you have to step back and say, ‘What’s the difference between this book, the Bible, and Greek mythology?
“A thousand or however many years ago, people used to adhere to Zeus and Hera. They believed; that was the religion of the time. Two thousand years later, we just kind of chuckle. They’re fine literary stories, but how could anyone ever believe in this nonsense? In a few thousand years, will people view the Bible and my religion as the same?”
The occasion for Mr. Smith’s confession was the world premiere of his new film, “Dogma,” a free-form theological fantasy that pits two fallen angels, Loki and Bartleby(played by Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, the “Good Will Hunting” team),against Bethany(Linda Fiorentino), a counselor in a Chicago abortion clinic who happens to be a linear descendant of Jesus Christ. In the balance: the fate of the universe if the two angels can take advantage of a loophole in Catholic dogma – a plenary indulgence to be granted at the rededication of a New Jersey church – to reclaim their positions in heaven.
Along the way, there are encounters with a muse who moonlights as a striptease dancer(Salma Hayek), a sarcastic seraphim who likes his tequila neat(Alan Rickman), a man who proclaims himself the Thirteenth Apostle but who says he has been overlooked because he is black(Chris Rock), and a supreme being of a distinctly female persuasion(the rock singer-songwriter Alanis Morisette).
Among the members of the American press in Cannes, the reception was ecstatic. But Mr. Smith’s additions to the standard text have disturbed some religious conservatives, including William A. Donohue, the president of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, which describes itself as the nation’s largest Roman Catholic civil rights group. Clouded by the threat of protest, the film’s release in the United States has been delayed.
“Smith says his movie is ‘intended as a love letter to both faith and God Almighty’ “, Mr. Donohue said at a press conference in June. “But in the movie, Joseph and Mary have sex and a descendant of theirs works at an abortion clinic; God is played by a singer known for her nude videos and songs about oral sex; the Thirteenth Apostle resembles Howard Stern; Mass is compared to lousy sex. This sounds more like hate mail than a love letter.” (Mr. Donohue said he had not seen the film but based his objections on a draft of the script posted on the Internet.)
“Dogma” was produced by Bob and Harvey Weinstein, co-chairmen of Miramax Films, the art house subsidiary of the Walt Disney Company. In April, shortly before the Cannes festival, let it be known that “Dogma” would be “inappropriate: for the Disney label, and the Weinsteins agreed use their own money to buy the film back from Disney for a price(variously reported as $10 million or $12 million) close to its production cost.
With Disney demurring, the Weinstein brothers have since been looking for another distributor to take on the film, a package, Mr. Smith says, that will come complete with the Weinsteins’ famous marketing savvy. Although a deal has been rumored, no announcements have been made.
Mr. Smith remains confident that “Dogma” will arrive in theaters this fall, though the Catholic League – which takes credit for the cancellation of the ABC series about a freethinking priest, “Nothing Scared,” and which organized the protests against the “Terrance McNally play about a gay Christ-like figure,”Corpus-Christi” earlier this year – is not abandoning its efforts. The League’s most recent press release identifies the Weinsteins as “among the top fund raisers for the Clintons” and calls upon Hillary Clinton to “summon the courage to slam ‘Dogma’, with its filthy humor targeted at Catholics.”
Mr. Smith however, remains a regular churchgoer, though he prefers not to identify his parish: “So far I’m kind of anonymous, I can slip into church and nobody says anything. Sometimes I sit there and think ‘Please don’t mention me in the Homily!’ But so far it hasn’t come up. I’m under the radar.”I went out and sampled other religions, but eventually I came back to Catholicism, because that’s where the groundwork is. I’m Catholic because of my belief in God and my belief in Jesus Christ, so I don’t want to get lost in whether or not the Church is right in its stance on abortion or whether the Church is right in everything they play out in their dogma. Let’s just agree to disagree and do what we came here to do, which is worship God.”
Dressed in black Bermuda shorts and a hooded sweatshirt(with a “Clerks” T-shirt peeking through), Mr. Smith looks more like a kid who checked his skateboard at the door than a satirist following in the footsteps of Swift and Voltaire. In fact, his main frame of cultural reference is comic book art – “It’s the ghetto of all entertainment mediums, because no one owns up to reading it” – and he was the author of the first draft of the planned new “Superman” movie starring Nicholas Cage under Tim Burton’s direction.
“I didn’t treat Superman like a Messiah,” said Mr. Smith, “But I did treat him as more of a god than in the other versions. Warner Brothers seemed to like it, but then Tim Burton just wanted to go another way.”
“Dogma” blends the gross-out humor that has recently found so much favor at the box office(there is a demon named “the Golgothan” who emerges from the nether regions of a men’s room) with loopy metaphysical speculation of the kind that keeps caffeinated college sophomores up all night. Mr.Smith creates unchecked verbal disquisitions on free will to sexual references that would make a broadminded stevedore blush. Seldom has the Catholic distinction between body and soul been so fiercely and funnily drawn.
“I think ultimately that serious-minded people will be embarrassed to protest this film,” said Mr. Affleck, its leading man. I mean. come on, it’s not like ‘The Last Temptation of Christ.’ ” It’s really pro-faith. It’s somebody who’s trying to reconcile what he was taught in the church with the things he saw in the world., and the way that those things sometimes seem to contradict one another.
His co-star, Ms. Hayek, jumps in here. “And Disney is right not to distribute it!” she said, seated with Mr. Affleck at the Martinez’s rooftop patio. “Many years ago, they decided to do one specific product. This is what they do for a living. They work for a specific audience. They know that, and we can’t look down on them for what they are.”
This, teased Mr. Affleck, is evidence that “Salma’s just trying to get into ‘Jungle Book II.’ ”
On another corner of the terrace, Mr. Smith seemed unconcerned with brute commercial considerations. He concluded , “This movie, for me, was a way of exercising my faith, of showing my passion for something they’re not showing me in church.”
“To me, hell would be the absence of God. You want to be with him or her, and take that splinter of the divine that’s in you and add it to the whole of the divine that’s waiting, presumably, in the next life.
“I don’t know if hell is something that the Catholic Church created or something we just bought into. But I can’t risk it – I’m too chicken.”
