“Dogma” with Kevin Smith and the faithful

In 1996 and 1997, I was a senior in high school and working in a movie theater. 

Life was good. I had no idea how good life can be when you are in high school or how hard life can get once you leave. You can’t tell any 17-year-old that stuff. They just have to find it out on their own. They have to live it.  

I watched everything that came in and out of the Carmike Cinema in Panama City, Florida for those two years. Fargo, Mission: Impossible, L.A Confidential, and Twister, among many others. The theater did a friends and family only midnight showing of Independence Day with the sound turned up to ear-splitting levels. It was a helluva thing. 

Again, you have no idea how good life can be sometimes. 

Chasing Amy came out in 1997. Chasing Amy is a movie about young people trying to navigate adult sexual relationships while also dealing with their own inadequacies, fears, frustrations, and religious upbringing. 

“I am not used to this sort of thing,” one character says about the sexual exploits of his girlfriend at one point. “I mean, I was raised Catholic, for God’s sake.”

It was a personal story that writer-director Kevin Smith had written about his own failed relationship. It is both incredibly frank about sex and also sweet and romantic in its own weird way. It’s one of the best movies of the 1990s and a personal favorite. 

Smith followed Chasing Amy with Dogma. A movie about how the Catholic Church is going to accidentally wipe out all of existence, at least in part, because they want to appeal to young people with a new, hipper version of the faith. 

In the opening scene, George Carlin, playing Cardinal Glick, explains that “Holy Mother Church” has decided to retire images of Christ hanging on the cross and replace them with a friendly version of the Savior. This one has a big smile and is giving the world a wink and a giant thumbs up. 

“Christ didn’t come to earth to give us the willies. He was a booster.” Glick said. “I give you the buddy Christ. … Look at it, doesn’t it pop.”

I’m giggling a little bit, just now, thinking about that scene.  

If Chasing Amy was everything Smith had to say about relationships, then Dogma featured his thoughts on religion and, in particular, the Catholic church of his alter boy youth. It was made by a guy who, at the time, still believed, and while it certainly takes the church to task, (and will go anywhere in pursuit of a laugh), it doesn’t waiver from the idea that there is a real God up there who loves his (her) children. 

Despite its tough subject matter, a huge protest campaign from the Catholic League, and several legitimate death threats, Dogma was a hit. 

Smith had been working with an unknown actor named Ben Affleck since Mallrats in 1995. He gave him the lead role of Chasing Amy in 1997. 

Then, when another actor bowed out of a role, he was able to pair up Affleck with his lifelong pal Matt Damon as rogue angels trying to return to Heaven. Only a year after the duo broke through together on Good Will Hunting.

These were still early days for Matt and Ben, but you can see on screen why they were both going to be massive stars.  

For reasons that Smith will recount to you in other places, Dogma has been unavailable anywhere since its initial run on home video. It never made it to the streaming services, and the rights to get it back out did not stay with Smith. However, recently, a company acquired it and asked Smith what he wanted to do with it. 

So he’s taking it on the road to AMC theaters and doing a Q and A  after the screenings. 

If you haven’t seen him, Smith is as good on the mic as any comic. His director career is almost secondary to a podcast career and a series of personal appearances that are essentially Hollywood tell-all, stand-ups. 

I saw him, and a lot of other interesting folks, at a sold-out screening in Chicago this weekend. It was a crowd full of both young people and those of us who were around for the initial run of Dogma. 

During the Q and A I asked him a poorly worded question about Affleck and Damon and got a hilarious response about how Damon always talked about how he sucked in every scene no matter how transcendent the acting was. Meanwhile, Affleck was the only actor who would come to the run-through of dailies and would sit there making comments about how thoroughly awesome his work had been that day. 

“Look at that guy. Pimp,” was Affleck’s assessment of himself according to Smith. 

You might recoil at that, and Smith was just telling a funny little story, but also, it’s true. Affleck is correct when Affleck tells you he’s awesome. 

He and Damon nail every scene, no matter how ridiculous, and while other parts of the movie might waiver, anytime the flick moves back to the angels, it delivers another miraculously funny bit. 

It’s nearly 30 years later, but there is still a chance that I might randomly yell at someone, “You didn’t say God bless you when I sneezed!”  

Hopefully someone who has seen Dogma, but maybe not. I’m quirky that way. 

Dogma has a lot of other things going for it besides the Affleck and Damon partnership. Kevin Smith can craft a solid joke: 

Cardinal Glick: Fill them pews, people, that’s the key. Grab the little ones as well. Hook ’em while they’re young.

Rufus: Kind of like the tobacco industry?

Cardinal Glick: Christ, if only we had their numbers.

Among his other talents, Smith can also pay off a setup. At the end of the film, Jay tries to call in a promise from one of the opening scenes, and it’s a huge laugh every time.  

And getting George Carlin to play a Cardinal, Alan Rickman to play the voice of God and Chris Rock to be Rufus, the 13th Apostle (who was left out of the bible because he was black) is perfect casting. 

Meanwhile, Linda Fiorentino has to thread a really tight needle of taking on all the sincere parts of a story. Bethany, still recovering from a divorce because she couldn’t have children, finds out that she is the last living connection to Jesus Christ, and must go on a holy mission to stop the end of existence. She is also required to be the straight woman to the Jay (Jason Mewes) and Silent Bob joke machine.

Sometimes you return to a movie and you realize how young you were when you saw it and it doesn’t hold up, Some comedies fail on the second or third viewing because the jokes just fall flat. You can only be surprised once

But it wasn’t that way for me with Dogma. It’s still really funny. It has some interesting things to say about religion. I disagree on some points and agree on others; your mileage and faith may vary. And beyond its dissertation about organized religion, I think Dogma has some real insights about human nature and about the God that Kevin Smith grew up believing in.

As a writer, Smith is up there with David Mamet, Aaron Sorkin, and Quentin Tarantino. He’s someone you can recognize just by listening to their dialogue. As a director, he’s usually worked on shoestring budgets, doing what he must to tell the story and not much more than that. 

Dogma has several moments where Smith plays with a bigger canvas, including the havoc of a near armageddon. It also has a giant fight scene with a poop monster that happens off camera because there was no money to film it.

When it comes to his fans, Smith continues to work hard to make them happy. After the movie, he did a lengthy Q and A. He answered one question from nearly everyone in the sold-out theater and did selfies with cosplayers. 

I want to tell you some of the amusing anecdotes, but I’m afraid I’ll drain the life out of them. The stories are funny when Kevin Smith tells them, but probably less so when I’m dryly regurgitating them.

But I’ll leave you with one.

Apparently, Buddy Christ has started to pop up in actual church campaigns from actual churches. Proving, I think, when you send something out in the world, you never know what will become of it. 

When Jason Mewes saw it, he turned to Kevin and said, “We should sue.” 

To which Kevin replied, “We don’t own Jesus, man.”