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Filmmaker Kevin Smith sits down with WhatCulture to discuss the long-awaited return of his cult classic film, 'Dogma.' Smith talks about the 25th-anniversary theatrical re-release, the film's legacy, and what it's like sharing it with a new generation of fans.
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Hello and welcome to What Coach You? With myself, Andrew Pollard. I hope you're good, I hope you're well, I hope your week is going as well as possible
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My week is going fantastically. As you can see, I'm joined by a very, very special guest today
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The one, the only, the man who helped popularize the number 37 and introduced us to his viewersque universe and beyond, Kevin Smith
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Kevin, how are you? Kids, so good. How's the sound? I keep moving the mic around, but I feel like..
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Yeah, all good. Kids, how are you? Such a pleasure. Yeah, absolute pleasure to get you in that week
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And by the way, if you're looking for some discount Bullwinkle things
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this is the discount Bullwinkle market. Aside from these Buddy Christ posters for the Dogma re-release and whatnot
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clearly I have far too much Bullwinkle. I like that. So folks, write to Kevin Smith at Bullwinkle.com
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and I'll start selling you stuff cheap. We have no money over here
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The economy is falling apart. So I got to start selling everything I got. Always shilling
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I like it. Always working on the hustle. I mean, there is so much we can talk about with your career, your movies, the small cast stuff, the live Q&As, the TV work, bringing back Masters of the Universe
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Thank you very much. Comics, books, a bunch of those are sat next to me
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But today, specifically, we're mostly talking about Dogma, which is back in UK and Ireland cinemas from Friday, November 7th to mark the 25th anniversary of its release
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A phenomenal movie about two fallen angels who were, I guess, essentially trying to exploit a loophole to get themselves back into heaven for those who may not have seen the movie
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now obviously there was rights issues with dogma for the longest of time where it became
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really hard to track down unless you got that original like dvd back in the day which i was
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lucky enough but how excited are you to bring this now to not just to a new audience but to
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the big screen 25 years later for i mean obviously there'll be old fans like myself who will go and
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check it out but just to have those those new kids who this is like oh this is this film i've seen
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and well i've heard about for ages now i can watch it in my theater uh you know i i know we're
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celebrating the 25th on the surface, but it is technically the 26th, just like the Catholic
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church. We stretch our truth a little bit. It has been so lovely here stateside to bring it out
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I did a 20 city tour and every night I got to sit there and see some of my favorite people I've ever
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worked with at their absolute youngest for heaven's sakes. Matt Damon looks like Matt Damon's
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daughter in this movie he's so young that's how long ago we made it so going out there with the
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flick every night i would do an informal straw poll where i'd be like how many people have
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seen dogma before put your hands together and it sounded like almost everybody how many people
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have never seen dogma in a theater put your hands together and then you know like half of it
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and i'd say how many people have never seen dogma before tonight and there would always be like five
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percent of the audience applauding and i'd be like why would you overpay to see a movie because
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i was there with it that you haven't seen yet and stuff so it brought in a small percentage of new
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folks and seeing the returning people for whom i mean i watched this movie with my grandmother back
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when she was alive this was her favorite flick or i watched this movie with uh the guy that i've
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been married to now for 20 years you know that means that my work as a filmmaker isn't nearly as
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important as their work as an audience member or as a fan of the movie they carry it in their hearts
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so much so that 25 years after the fact when i'm standing there with the movie going hey come see it
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they'll shell out they'll overpay to see a movie that they could watch on youtube for free
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so that has everything to do with not so much me and my abilities as a storyteller but more where
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that movie occurred to people in the journey of their lives and the longer i'm in this game
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the more currency that particular viewer has you got to remember like in the beginning
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people were jumping on board nobody knew what was going on will he be good you know will he be a
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great filmmaker no but he did make a lot of films by the time we get to this point in my career 31
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years in almost every year is like some anniversary right like this year we're saying is the 25th
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anniversary of dogma technically it's the 30th anniversary of mall rats and because of that like
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you get to bring these movies back up and you get to see the audience that has grown with you we had
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two mall rats screenings at my movie theater i got a movie theater in new jersey smock castle
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cinemas so last weekend we did a mall rats 30th anniversary screening with me and jay doing a
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start stop screening where you start the movie and then after the first scene you pause get up
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both of us tell stories about that one scene then we sit down unpause watch the next scene then pause
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get up then we take a 90 minute romp and turn into a grueling five hour endurance trial
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and you know charge six and nine bucks so looking out into the audience to see of faces that look
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like mine you know like white in the beards white in the hair wrinkles crow's feet we're all aging
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and stuff but then it a like a descent into fresh young faces teenagers like what the audience used to look like when I began my journey And you realize why why they there One will get up and ask questions You like
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what, why would you come see this old man movie? And like, because my parents like used to, you
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know, make me watch this when I was a kid. And you know, you're like, what rep, a disreputable
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parent, reprobative, a parent, and that parent will stand up and be right there with them. So
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So in the beginning, the journey was all about like, oh, man, I want to tell these stories for me
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I hope the audience would go along with it, but it was more about how I felt
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The longer you're in the job, it's way more about how the audience feels
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The movie captures how you felt in a moment in time. But the audience then dictates how you get to feel about it for the rest of your life
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my audiences make me feel wonderful about dogma so much so that it's beautiful that it's come back
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and people get to go see the theater the bill a hell of a steel book at the end of the year and
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stuff but for me this movie never died like all the movies are active in my life because the
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characters pop up in other flicks or you know like there's an issue of my quick stops comic
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that comes out next week which is a we call it requiem and it's a metatron re-meets jay and
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silent bob for the first time in like 25 years um mad damon popped up as loki in reboot so for me
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these movies never end you know like i've said many times if you're good at your job the movie
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begins for the audience long before they get in the theater and if you're a magician at your job
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you don't have to let the movie ever end you could just keep that experience going so in my world
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which is easy to manage because it's not everybody i don't have like chris nolan or ardent fans i
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have kevin smith already but to be able to like keep the story going for those cats dogma coming
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back to the theaters is not only oh i get to watch dogma again it's part of the dogma narrative now
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it's like oh my god he took it to can twice and then i went to see him years later he had white
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in his beard and he was talking about it and and you know suddenly that extends the life of the
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movie and and the longevity of the movie of course but also the legend of the movie and and sometimes
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that's something that the filmmaker can't do anything about you could help foster it by being
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available to the audience and stuff but the audience is going to decide if stuff lasts and
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my audience decided a long time ago that they were never going to let dog dogma go so now with the
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larger audience kind of re-embracing oh yeah i remember that movie that's just you know whipped
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cream on top of a ridiculously large sundae full of ice creams that i love better vegan with peanut
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butter poured all over it a great way to sum that up well you kind of you touched upon obviously
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matt damon but the cast itself is like this stacked i mean linda furan's you know just absolutely
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killing it affleck damon chris rock sama hayek alanis morissette musing yourself of course my
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boy, Jason Lee. But there's two in particular I'd like to highlight
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Alan Rickman and of course, George Carlin. Now, George Carlin, one of the
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greatest comics comedians of all time. Alan Rickman, one of Britain's greatest thespians
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Firstly, with George Carlin, I know to yourself you're a massive fan, but how was it for you getting to work with him
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that first time? And also, I believe you got to introduce him to your dad, which must have been very cool
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And also, I believe Alan Rickman and Jason Mewes became the most unlikely of best
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pals. They did. For me, having Carlin in the movie, having both of those dudes, Carlin and Rickman, let me untold credibility that I still eat out on today
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Like we're having a conversation about it and stuff. The two absolute icons of their field who have since left us
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but because I convinced them to come play with me once or twice
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forever now I'm associated with absolute legendary icons who also gave me their best on camera
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George, I was a massive fan of since childhood. My father gave him to me like a gift
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gave me a class clown when I was nine years old, way too young for that and he was just like don't ever let your mother hear you listening to this
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and i never gave this to you and stuff so it was like you know sometimes in a movie or tv show you
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see a father like share a beer with a son be like you're a man now i never had that but my father
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giving me like a george carlin album was the closest thing to that i had him going like i could
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trust you with this and george was hysterical but he's also brilliant he was smart you know he used a
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lot of colorful language uh words but still absolutely brilliant prescient his material
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still holds today and in some ways is even more relevant today than it was when he first said it
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but he loved to act never mind like being a comedian man he kind of backed into that like
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you know that was not his aim he wanted to be danny k in movies because he would go to movies
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with his brother and his mom and his mother loved danny k so a young george carlin was like that going on be a song and dance band in movies and whatnot But it didn work out for him that way And he kind of backed into being a comedic legend
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So whenever we made a flick, even if it was a Kevin Smith movie
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and we were like, hey, you want to come play? He came running because he loved to act, man
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Sorry, garbage truck going by. Loved to act. so he popped up in my movies you know multiple times and one of the first times dogma i got to
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introduce george to my dad my dad was visiting set and george was there and i was like you know
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george this is my father the reason that like i'm a george carlin fan he gave me the album george
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was like oh yeah you're the bad parent that passed it on and stuff so absolutely beautiful moment that
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you know dogma a movie about spirituality uh afforded you know it if you trace it back
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thank god i was born a catholic otherwise i never get to introduce my father to george carlin
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everything's connected and with rickman i got this movie theater in atlantic islands new jersey
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smodcastle cinemas where we do stuff all the time in that theater back when i didn't own it
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when I was a kid, just going to it as the Atlantic Highlands Twin Cinema
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is when I went to see Die Hard and I went into that theater to see Bruce Willis
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But I came out going, who's the other guy? Oh, my God, Hans Gruber is amazing
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And I was instantly an Alan Rickman fan. Now, if you were an Alan Rickman fan, naturally
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the progression takes you to Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves, the next big studio role he had after Die Hard
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But I tracked everything he did, man. We were in the video store age
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so I would go to the cool video store big choice or choice video and find movies from overseas like
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he was in this movie closet land with Madeline Stowe of course um truly madly deeply um January
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man he took like a bit part just because he liked the script and stuff so I was an ardent fan of the
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artist man um not just like the big mainstream hits and stuff so it was never my idea to put him
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in the movie but john gordon who was our exec at miramax those days called me up one day and he
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was like um you'll never guess who we had here for a general meeting i said who he goes alan rickman
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i said hans gruber was in the miramax building did he blow it up and he goes no man we were
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meeting with him trying to convince him to be in this merchant ivory movie and i was like what'd
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he say he goes all he wanted to talk about was whoever directed chasing amy i was like i directed
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chasing he's like yeah man we should send him a script for dogma so we sent him a script for dogma
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fastest yes i ever got in the business generally is always from jason muse i don't finish the
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sentence and he's like i'm in but we sent alan the script two hours after he received it the fedex
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he called him was like i'm in and started to be helpful uh right away man originally got us our
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first god which was emma thompson and then emma thompson like had to drop out and stuff so alan
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didn't just bring himself he was like oh i got a friend who'd love to do this as well um he
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was you know you you would imagine like this was a guy of course we have a thought of him in our
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heads like as snape i mean we all know he's an actor but when you think of alan most people of
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a certain age probably think of either hans gruber or snape dude was a soft absolute soft puppy in
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real life one of the greatest actors ever lived but just such a sweetheart and weirdest thing i
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ever saw on a movie set still holds to this day was we're in the third act of dogma in front of
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the church and whatnot all the characters are there so every famous person in the world who's
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in that movie is there in front of the church and i'm going to get a snack after i set up a shot
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and i look at the front steps of the church as i walk by i see weirdest thing i've ever seen
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jason muse and alan rickman engaged in deep conversation i remember thinking what the
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could these two possibly have to say to one another so i see alan later on i sidle up to him
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i was like hey man if jason muse is bothering you let me know and i'll make sure and he goes
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jason could never bother me he goes uh jason muse is the best that america can be and i was like
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stop it and he goes jason muse is an american icon so he loved muse he thought he was so
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fascinating and original and adorable and stuff like that um and he gave us you know like i don't
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a gallon ever gave a mid as the kids used to say performance um so like every movie where he
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probably got paid lots of money he gave us a performance of a lifetime even though he got
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paid scale in our movie so when i was touring the movie around the u.s earlier this year in april and
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may um i spoke to jay on the phone about midway through the tour he's like how's it going because
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normally he goes with me but it was just me by myself for this so he's like how's it going i was
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like oh my god they still love you dude i was like you know at the end of the movie during the
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curtain call uh credits like you get the second loudest applause and he like second i said alan dude alan gets the loudest applause and jason goes wait till i die um which i think alan would have absolutely loved um i know we very uh short for time so just a
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very last quick kind of double-headed cheeky question where are we at dogma 2 and also hell
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hath no fury uh like a woman's gone for sega um what about more rats 2 all right it's too man is
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like oddly enough it's going to be easier getting dog a dogma sequel made than a mall rat sequel
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universal has just no interest in it so all i do is play the waiting game and where it's like
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periodically i resubmit periodically we find a department where it's like oh maybe they'll be
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sympathetic periodically we go back into peacock and pitch it first as a movie a tv movie then as
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a series whatever it's it's been an uphill battle um to say the least because we've been trying to
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do it for well over 10 years now and trying to do for so long that we lost shannon man like so
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it's i i can't imagine not walking in there with shannon makes it any easier at this point you know
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so i don't know the mall rats too will ever happen i'm starting to lose hope and but the
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good news is i can always make it a comic book publish it as a comic book and stuff but life is
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long turns happen all the time i always you know i'm like all right if it ain't today perhaps it's
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tomorrow and stuff meantime i've learned not to sit around and wait i move forward on other things
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So in March, we go make our next Jane Silent Bob movie, Store Wars
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But I've been writing Dogma follow up and taking my time. It's interesting because the kid that wrote Dogma believed in everything you see here, like everything on the screen
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That was not like Christian mythology. That was his fate. The guy who's writing the sequel is not that person, doesn't have the same feelings
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So the first time was the guy who believed in all that writing about somebody who doesn't
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And the second time around, oddly, is a guy writing about somebody who believes in all this, but he doesn't
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So it's going to be interesting to see how it plays out. I would hesitate to call it a sequel because it's not like Rufus, Marlby, Jay and Zalbop are back
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It's not like everybody returns and we do the same thing again
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But there's a place at the table set for anybody who was in the first dogma
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um you know the ones you'll see the most i guarantee you are me and jay because we're
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the cheapest element to bring back to the movie you know um if you wanted to use ben and matt for
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as long as we had ben and matt on dogma it would cost me a lot of money at this point like you know
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those are dudes that can go over there make 10 15 20 million dollars working for netflix
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so for the same amount of time so for me like on dogma everybody was young and upcoming and stuff
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like that their agents used to hate us back in the day patrick whitesel who was ben and matt's
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agent like hated us because ben and matt would like do our movies even though we weren't paying
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even though we were paying like scale and stuff so if i were to go back and be like i need ben and
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matt for two months like that is so incredibly cost prohibitive i don't make those types of
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movies that being said everybody who was in the first one gets to come back if they want to and
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And Bartleby and Loki, where they come in, is like one of my favorite things in the movie
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It is beautiful. And I get a little emotional even thinking about it right now. Brilliant
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Well, hopefully we see that at some point somewhere down the line. Oh, Star Wars. But in the meantime, Dogma is back in UK and Ireland cinemas
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November the 7th, Friday, November the 7th, to mark the 25th anniversary, cheekily 26 years later
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And I can't wait to check that out on the big screen again. Kev has been an absolute blast, man
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Been a fan for a long time. So it's always good to sit down and chew the fat with yourself. Any quick final words to share with your fans
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And it has to be quick. You know, honestly, kids, going to see Dogma in a theater
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is a singular experience at this stage in the game with the state of the world as it is
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And it's a beautiful throwback because, like, the issues that the characters are all dealing with in that movie
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seem quaint compared to the issues we deal with in the real world today
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But what I love about the movie is if you go see it, you'll see what I saw when I took it on tour here in the States a couple of months ago
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The movie is a child's prayer. This was what a young Kevin Smith believed church could be like
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He went to church his whole life, was dragged by his parents, was an altar boy for 12 years
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And he felt that everybody in the church wasn't celebrating their faith
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As we say in the movie, they were mourning it. So dogma is that young, spiritually filled
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Christian Catholics attempt at presenting what he thinks would be the best version of the Catholic
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mass like fun story with jokes in it to keep you interested so do with that as you will as you
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watch it just know that that was a early 20s I mean at late teens early 20s Kevin Smith ideal of
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how religion could be. Brilliant. A fantastic way to end it. Again, November 7th
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Go and check it out. Kevin, it's been an absolute pleasure. This has been What Culture? I've been Andrew Pollard
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This has been Kevin Smith, and we will catch you soon