Celluloid resurrection: Clerks & Dogma creator Kevin Smith
American filmmaker Kevin Smith created a cult following with his film Clerks, and now his comedy fantasy film Dogma has been remastered as Dogma: Resurrected!
Once, at the Apple store’s Genius Bar in Bondi Junction, when I had a problem with my computer, the tech guy told me it would be around a week before it could be fixed. Then he noticed I was writing a story on Kevin Smith. Clearly impressed, he fast-tracked my repair to the following day.
Young geeky men are huge fans of the American filmmaker, who sold out Sydney’s State Theatre on his 2015 tour. Some older women, like me, also appreciate his daring, expletive-ridden films, which he makes under his View Askew banner.
Kevin Smith in Cannes.
I have been interviewing Smith since the beginning of his career and, indeed, in Cannes in 1999 I spoke to him and stars Ben Affleck and Salma Hayek about his comedy fantasy film, Dogma.
The film is celebrating its 25th anniversary and has been remastered and restored in 4K, with the latest Dolby sound, as Dogma: Resurrected! After a tour of the US, where the great talker and hilarious raconteur delivered a long Q&A for his fans, the film screened in Cannes Classics in May.
I caught up with the now 54-year-old on the night of his film’s premiere when, among other things, Smith spoke of making a sequel.
New Jersey-born Smith achieved cult status with his 1994 low-budget buddy comedy Clerks, filmed in a convenience store where he worked. He directed, wrote and acted (as Silent Bob, who rarely speaks) alongside Jason Mewes, who played his fellow stoner Jay. The characters would feature in Smith’s future films.
He followed up with 1995’s Mallrats in which a little-known Affleck would make an appearance (before taking a starring role as a comic book artist in 1997 romantic comedy Chasing Amy, alongside Smith’s then girlfriend Joey Lauren Adams, on whose relationship the film was based). Matt Damon played a cameo in Chasing Amy and would go on to star with his best friend Affleck in Dogma, which focuses on the Catholic religion.
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Chris Rock, Kevin Smith, Jason Mewes and Linda Fiorentino in Dogma.
Alan Rickman as Metatron, the Voice of God, in Dogma.
Ben Affleck and Matt Damon in Dogma.
In Dogma they play fallen angels on Earth, Bartleby and Loki, who are trying to return to heaven through an archway in a New Jersey church. Alan Rickman plays Metatron, the Voice of God, who appears to Bethany Sloane (Linda Fiorentino), an abortion clinic worker with a special heritage, and tasks her with preventing their return.
Her friend Serendipity (Salma Hayek), also a secret earthbound Muse, helps her in dealing with her dilemma. Chris Rock brings his trademark humour to Rufus, the overlooked 13th apostle, while Alanis Morisette plays God and also performs her beautiful song Still over the closing credits.
“I remember doing the Cannes photocall with the actors in 1999 and it was crazy,” Smith recalls. “Back then the film was controversial. There were three death threats and 400,000 pieces of hate mail.”
The haters particularly didn’t like Smith’s depiction of a statue of a winking, smiling Buddy Christ with one thumb raised.
“People get pissed off about this guy. Now he’s the main image on our American (release) poster, for heaven’s sake,” says Smith. “The marketing people were like, ‘but what about the cast?’ You’ve got all these famous people. I was like, ‘Who’s more famous than Jesus fucking Christ’?”
“Things have changed considerably from when we were in Cannes last time when they installed metal detectors in the Palais because of the death threats. Tonight, nobody is threatening death. The only threats I get now are people telling me online that I suck at my job, but I’ve been getting that for 31 years.”
A long-time friend of Affleck, Smith lives with his wife in a Hollywood house that he purchased from his friend in 2003. He recalls casting Affleck and Damon in Dogma.
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“They’d just got famous, and they chose Dogma as the movie they wanted to do after Good Will Hunting.” (Affleck and Damon starred in and wrote Good Will Hunting, for which they won the original screenplay Oscar.) “I told them I needed them for a month-and-a-half and they would be paid scale (rate). ‘You’re gonna get paid nothing,’ essentially, and they still did it.”
Smith notes how the pair came back for 2001’s Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, Affleck starred in his 2004 movie Jersey Girl, and both returned for 2019’s Jay and Silent Bob Reboot. Most recently Jay and Silent Bob appeared in Affleck’s Dunkin’ Donuts 2025 Super Bowl commercial, where the star noted he had appeared in six of Smith’s films.
“Ben’s made these commercials where he plays an idiotic version of himself,” Smith says. “It seems like he is doing zany, but that’s who he is in real life. That dude is one of the funniest people I’ve ever known.
“I’d never got to see him direct anything, so I was sitting there watching him all day, and it was cute to see him in charge. Right before he said action he looks up at me. He’s like, ‘Do you realise this is the first time in 31 years that I’m directing you?’ And I was like, ‘Oh my God, you’re right’. He goes ‘Watch and learn, bitch! Action!’
“So yeah, he’ll come back for the Dogma sequel. Maybe he’ll want to beef up the part, which would be nice. Though I can’t count on that happening, because we won’t have any (more) money to pay the guy.”
‘I now feel like I can talk about the mortal coil and what exists beyond’
While Smith says the original movie was about him “trying to work out something” about his Catholic faith, he has since given it away. So the sequel will be about his lack of faith. It will also draw on his near-death experience in 2018 when he had a massive heart attack, which led to him losing an enormous amount of weight.
“I now feel like I can talk about the mortal coil and what exists beyond,” he says. In 2023 he also had some mental health issues that led to him giving up marijuana – “Kevin Smith has quit weed for good” social media posts roared – and he says he has since developed a healthier mindset.
He hopes that the original cast will return for Dogma 2 and laments that the scene-stealing Alan Rickman has passed away. He recalls how the British actor, who died in 2016 from cancer, pursued the role and ultimately leant his unmistakable deep tones to the Voice of God.
“The late great man,” Smith calls him. “I loved Alan Rickman’s acting so much I would never have put him in a Kevin Smith movie. He’s too good an actor for that shit. But he loved Chasing Amy and wanted to work with me.
“I sent him a copy of the Dogma script and the fastest answer I ever got from an actor in my life was from Alan Rickman. We didn’t work together again but he actively attempted to stay in my life. If I was in England, I would get a phone call out of the blue, ‘Kevin, it’s Alan Rickman, you’re in my country. I’m taking you out to lunch’. And I would do likewise if he was in the US.
“He liked our world very much, and I never understood that. Alan was an absolute gift. And every night on our recent Dogma: Resurrected! tour,\ I got to see him up on the screen. When we’d do a curtain call the audience would howl and scream when Alan came on.”
Dogma: Resurrected! will be released in Australian and New Zealand cinemas by Umbrella Entertainment (date to be confirmed).
Helen Barlow is a Paris-based Australian freelance journalist and critic. In 2019 she received the La Plume d’Or for her services to French cinema.