Word: smithing
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Smith calls the film "a bizarre mix of lowbrow jokes and highbrow concepts and then vice versa." Ain't it, though? He mixes poop and prophecy, scatology and eschatology; he crams his script with enough belly laughs for six Adam Sandler movies and enough citations of angelology and the Gnostic gospels to make a Jesuit's head split. This is a Shavian debate--Don Juan in New Jersey--with potty mouth. Dogma, recall, comes from the Greek word meaning "to think." And that's what Smith wants the viewer...
...then does a handstand. In the drama behind the film, Lions Gate, an independent distributor, opens Dogma this week after successful screenings at festivals in Cannes, Toronto and New York City. "Now we can put the rest of the stuff behind us and start fretting about the box office," Smith says. "I'm hoping that when people see the film, they'll say, 'Oh, it's not the movie that flips the bird at the church. It's actually kind of devout...
...skeptical Bethany travels from Illinois to Jersey, occasionally accompanied by a hot-wired demon (Jason Lee), a celestial muse (Salma Hayek), the 13th Apostle--and a pair of unlikely prophets, motormouthing Jay (Jason Mewes) and Silent Bob (Smith), the cynical chorus from the writer-director's previous films Clerks, Mallrats and Chasing...
...Smith gets steamed when he thinks about the Dogma protests. "Every week I go to church, and sooner or later the priest makes a joke! How come a priest can mix religion and jokes, but if I do it, I'm anti-Catholic? That just burns my ass, because I'm out there trying to get people to think about God. I am working the good cause--and I'm anti-Catholic? I tithe! I don't bend down and tie my shoe when the basket comes around...
...Smith has already done that by raising profound issues in a pop context, bringing God to the mallrats, making a good movie. That should be O.K. with the Lord...