Dogma

Dogma is Kevin Smith's best film.  I realize that now.

I didn't in 1999, when I saw the film in a theater in Muncie, Indiana, with some friends from college.  We laughed at the platypus jokes in the opening disclaimer.  We laughed at the dick and fart jokes throughout, and we felt cool because we recognized all the Kevin Smith players — folks he put in most of his early films such as Brian O'Halloran, Jeff Anderson, Jason Lee, Dwight Ewell, and Walt Flanagan.  I was still a big fan of Clerks and Mallrats.  I just wanted another small story about losers.

What I got was a big story about existence, redemption, fart jokes, and the fallibility not of God, but of organized religion.  With a cast that includes everybody from Bud Cort to Alan Rickman, Dogma is equal parts Hollywood and indie, and is easily the best writing Kevin Smith has ever done.

At 24, I was relatively unfamiliar with Catholicism, and as such, I found the plot pretty convoluted.  I kept up, but man, he had ideas flying around here.  This is an ambitious project for a guy who was known for setting an entire movie in a convenience store.

Dogma isn't perfect, though.  For instance, Linda Fiorentino is terrible in this film.  Watch the scene between her and Alan Rickman in the Mexican restaurant.  Every line of hers is delivered in this weak, sardonic tone, plus most of her lines are questions, and the shrugging, the shrugging, oh, the shrugging, and that damned eyebrow.  She drives me nuts.  Without Alan Rickman to save the scene, the film would lose me right there.  If not for the writing and the rest of this ensemble, really, I wouldn't be able to get past her performance grating on me.

Of course, the dialogue is full of cardinal errors (no pun intended) such as too much Q & A, with the "A" being backstory and exposition for the religiously ignorant (redundant?), but I can forgive bad writing — I have a closet full of it.  What I can't forgive is bad acting.  Putting Linda Fiorentino across a table from Alan Rickman is sort of like chasing a 12-year-old single malt scotch with Coors Light.  She's so out of her league here.

You know how Bartleby and Loki march around this film, clad in black coats and blue jeans?  For a moment in the Mooby's corporate boardroom, they sort of seem like proto-Boondock Saints.  Given the release date of Troy Duffy's Golgothan of a film, in January of 1999, vs. the release of Kevin Smith's, in November of that same year, one might wonder if there's a connection with the look of the saints and the angels.  Or maybe they just had the idea at about the same time.  It happens.

What I appreciate most about Kevin Smith is his reverence to his inspiration and influences.  Bud Cort, the star of Harold & Maude (one of Smith's favorite films), is the human shell that houses God.  (Read into that all you want.)  Betty Aberlin, a regular player on "The Smothers Brothers Show" and "Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood," appears as a nun.  Guinevere Turner, an actress and writer who inspired Smith's Chasing Amy, has a bit role as well.

Alas, even though Dogma is Smith's best film, this is also where he started to veer.  The years between Dogma and Clerks II were more or less Kevin Smith's "walking in the desert years."  I get the feeling, looking back at his earlier stuff, that he sort of ran out of ideas and got too caught up in the Hollywood machine after Dogma.  His films became vehicles for inside jokes, and that's fine, but then he made an entire film out of that in Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back.  Then he focused on his kid, and how his life changed, and he made Jersey Girl.  He got it in his head that he had to make a film that showed his grown-upness.  Why bother?  Jersey Girl didn't work because the film didn't feel true to Smith's style.  Everything about that film felt forced and sentimental.

Dogma is a personal film that works.  Dogma represents much of what Kevin Smith believes about Catholicism and religion in general.  What can be more personal than one's relationship with God?  Everything after Dogma feels thin and untrue to Kevin Smith's style — Clerks II notwithstanding.

Smith could've made an entire franchise out of Jay and Silent Bob having adventures and saving the world.  Instead, he retreated, and then did this meta-filmmaking thing (Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back) that was pretty self-indulgent, all things considered.  Then his life changes made his work turn sentimental, and he embraced that direction (Jersey Girl).  In doing so, he forgot about writing, research, compelling stories, and creating what you know.

I look at Dogma and I see an extremely well written film (Q&A forgiven) that he's been trying to follow up ever since.  When he made Clerks II, I felt like he was turning a corner.  Coming back to his roots was and still is the best thing for him.  I still get a little teary-eyed when he goes to black and white at the end of Clerks II.  I thought he'd come home.  But then he started wandering the desert again.

For me, Kevin Smith films remind me of college and those big, irrational dreams and fantasies of succeeding as a writer.  As a college student and aspiring screenwriter from Indiana, like many other awkward geekboys, I felt a connection to what Smith was doing.  I saw his films and thought, "I want to do that," and he inspired me.  He was like Hal Ashby for my generation.  I typed — on a typewriter, mind you — my first screenplay with a copy of his scripts nearby for reference.

I miss the feeling I used to get when I saw a Kevin Smith film and walked out feeling charged up, inspired, encouraged, and ready to take on the world, to save my own.  I miss that feeling and I worry that I'll never feel that way again, never get that inspiration or feel that energy.  I come home from work too tired to think about this stuff.  I barely have the energy to blog.

Mostly, I miss youthful dreaming, and even though I'm only 35, some days the light looks dimmer.  

I read an article recently about a writer who was worried about his age.  Hollywood loves young people, and as aspiring creative types approach 40, the door basically shuts.  That is, unless you have a good story.  Age doesn't matter if you have a good story.

If you can write and entertain people, you don't have to be young.  Sometimes you have to be a little older to know how to do those things.  No one requires you to put your date of birth on your writing.  No one puts an expiration date on dreams.  If I keep writing and pushing, then maybe.  If I don't keep writing and pushing, then I have nobody else to blame.