Re: Dogma Ptj 001
Joann Heavilin
Dogma is a 1999 American fantasy comedy film written and directed by Kevin Smith, who also stars with Ben Affleck, Matt Damon, George Carlin, Linda Fiorentino, Janeane Garofalo, Chris Rock, Jason Lee, Salma Hayek, Bud Cort, Alan Rickman, Alanis Morissette in her feature film debut, and Jason Mewes. It is the fourth film in Smith's View Askewniverse series. Brian O'Halloran and Jeff Anderson, stars of the first Askewniverse film Clerks, appear in the film, as do Smith regulars Scott Mosier, Dwight Ewell, Walt Flanagan, and Bryan Johnson.
The story revolves around two fallen angels who plan to employ an alleged loophole in Catholic dogma to return to Heaven after being cast out by God, but as existence is founded on the principle that God is infallible, their success would prove God wrong, thus undoing all creation. The last scion and two prophets are sent by the seraph Metatron to stop them.
The film's irreverent treatment of Catholicism and the Catholic Church triggered considerable controversy, even before its opening. The Catholic League denounced it as blasphemy. Organized protests delayed its release in many countries and led to at least two death threats against Smith.[3][4] Despite this, Dogma was well received by critics, and grossed $44 million against its $10 million budget, becoming the highest-grossing film in the View Askewniverse series to date.
Now a target, Bethany is attacked by the triplets, who are driven off by the two foretold prophets, drug-dealing stoners Jay and Silent Bob. Bethany and the prophets are joined by Rufus, the 13th apostle, and Serendipity, the Muse of creative inspiration, who now works at a strip club in search of inspiration of her own. Azrael summons the Golgothan, a vile creature made of human excrement, but Bob immobilizes it with aerosol air freshener.
On a train to Red Bank, a drunken Bethany reveals her mission to Bartleby, who tries to kill her; Bob throws the angels off the train. Bartleby and Loki now realize the consequences of their scheme; Loki wants no part of destroying all existence, but Bartleby remains angry at God for his expulsion, and for granting free will to humans while demanding servitude from angels, and resolves to proceed.
The group cannot persuade Glick to cancel the celebration. Jay steals one of Glick's golf clubs. Their only remaining option is to keep the angels out of the church, but Azrael and the triplets trap them in a bar to prevent them from doing so. Azrael reveals that he sent the news clipping to the angels; he would rather end all existence than spend eternity in Hell. Bob kills Azrael with the golf club, which Glick had blessed to improve his game. Bethany blesses the bar sink's contents, and the others drown the triplets in the holy water. They race to the church, where Bartleby has killed Glick, his parishioners, and assorted bystanders. When Loki (who is now wingless and therefore mortal, with a conscience) attempts to stop him, Bartleby kills him as well.
Before Smith began writing Clerks, he began noting down ideas for a film called God. During his brief period in film school, he essentially wrote the scene introducing Rufus, but this version did not feature Jay and Silent Bob. During the development of Clerks, Smith continued to jot down ideas for his God project, including having the main character be a high school jock, the conception of 13th Apostle, Rufus, and a muse named Serendipity; but, Smith didn't have a story to work off of.
By the time Clerks had been picked up for distribution, Smith began writing the first draft for the film. He felt calling the project God was inappropriate, and retitled it Dogma. The first draft was completed in August 1994, with 148 pages accomplished, and more additions; the high school protagonist was changed to a stripper named Bethany who meets Jay and Silent Bob at a nudie booth, Azrael (or known throughout the script as the "Shadowy Figure") was introduced in the final 30 pages, and Bethany blew up the church in order to not let Bartleby and Loki pass through the archway. After Smith and Clerks producer Scott Mosier reread the draft, they decided that they didn't want Dogma to be their sophomore film; they didn't want to tackle a bigger scale picture until they felt ready to do it. Despite including the line "Jay and Silent Bob will return in Dogma" at the end of Clerks, Smith moved to Universal Studios in order to develop his next film, Mallrats.
During Mallrats' production, Smith revisited the Dogma script and made some changes; Bethany's job went from stripper to an abortion clinic and included an orangutan for Jay and Silent Bob to hang out with. In 1996, he dropped the orangutan and reworked Bethany to be played by his then-girlfriend Joey Lauren Adams. During that time, he was writing Chasing Amy and got Ben Affleck to agree to be in both projects. After Chasing Amy was released to critical and box-office success, Smith felt confident enough to make Dogma.[5]
Smith and Mosier assembled a group of visual artists to realize their concept of a surreal, abstract environment "somewhere between reality and unreality": production designer Robert Holtzman, special effects supervisor Charles Belardinelli, creature effects supervisor Vincent Guastini, costume designer Abigail Murray, and director of photography Robert Yeoman.[6]
On the film's official website, Smith described a scene that did not make the final cut: a climactic face-off in the hospital between Silent Bob, a badly burned and half-decomposed triplet, and the Golgothan. The battle was to end with the triplet killing Bethany (temporarily), and God, newly liberated, transforming the Golgothan into flowers. Test audiences felt the scene had "too much Golgothan", and the film's run time already exceeded two hours, so the scene was eliminated.[14]
Another deleted scene has come to be known as the "Fat Albert sequence". In the strip club, a gang (led by Dwight Ewell) grows jealous that the stripper is paying more attention to Jay & Silent Bob than to them. The gang confronts them and draws guns. Jay & Silent Bob then defuse the situation by taking to the stage and performing the theme song from Fat Albert. Rufus realizes that the stripper is the muse Serendipity, and she actually deescalated things by giving Jay & Silent Bob the idea. The sequence was in the film when it screened at Cannes, but was removed before its general release. The scene gained notoriety as fans began speculating as to why it was removed. On the Dogma: Special Edition DVD, Smith said the feedback he received was that the scene ran too long and was not very funny.[15]
This film was originally scheduled for a November 1998 release by Miramax Films, but due to controversy,[16] the film was postponed for a 1999 release, and the rights were passed on to Lions Gate Films for the United States, although Miramax Films retained foreign distribution rights.[17]
Dogma was released on DVD and VHS by Columbia TriStar Home Video in May 2000. This was followed by a 2-disc Special Edition DVD in 2001 and then on Blu-ray in 2008.[19][20] A thirty-seven minute documentary produced for the DVD, Judge Not: In Defense of Dogma, was not completed in time for the release and was instead included on the DVD release for the Smith-produced film Vulgar.[20]
Dogma is unavailable to stream or purchase digitally due to the film's rights being owned personally by Bob and Harvey Weinstein in a deal that predates streaming.[21] In 2022, instead of the release of Clerks III, Kevin Smith talked about trying to buy back the rights to Dogma from the Weinsteins. He claimed that both of his offers were "scoffed at" and added that "my movie about angels is owned by the devil himself."[22][23]
The soundtrack album accompanying the film was released in the United States on November 2, 1999, by Maverick Records. It features an orchestral score by Howard Shore, performed by the London Philharmonic Orchestra; and the song "Still", written, performed, and produced by Morissette. Stephen Thomas Erlewine of Allmusic described the "rich, effective" score as "alternately melodramatic and humorous".[24]
Several songs used in the film do not appear on the soundtrack, including "Magic Moments" performed by Perry Como, "Candy Girl" by New Edition, "Alabamy Bound" performed by Ray Charles, and others. In one scene, Matt Damon's Loki recites the hook of the Run-DMC song "Run's House".
On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 67% based on 127 reviews, with an average rating of 6.25/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "Provocative and audacious, Dogma is an uneven but thoughtful religious satire that's both respectful and irreverent."[26] On Metacritic, the film received a score of 62 out of 100, based on 36 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".[27] Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times awarded the film three-and-a-half stars (out of four).[28]
Near the same time as the cancellation, just weeks before the Weinstein scandal broke to the public, Harvey Weinstein pitched to Smith about doing a sequel. Not much came from this pitch, but it was just a mere idea for Weinstein. According to Smith in an interview with Business Insider, he recalls:
I said, 'Hey, how are you?' And he goes, 'You know, we have Dogma, I just realized, and we got to get it out there again.' I said, 'We do! People online are always asking where they can get it. And he then goes, 'You know, that movie had a big cast, we might even be able to do a sequel.' And I was like, 'Yeah man, right on. I might think about that.' And he was like, 'We'll talk.' And a week later, the New York Times story breaks. I felt sick to my stomach.
Damon returned to reprise his role as a reborn Loki in Jay and Silent Bob Reboot. In a fourth-wall breaking monologue, he explains after the events of Dogma God once again banished him to Earth, this time to the Mediterranean Sea where he was rescued by Italian fishermen after getting amnesia, describing the plot of Damon's film The Bourne Identity: he remarks that would make his current form his "reborn identity".
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