‘Dogma’ Opens in New York to Protesters’ Jeers, Audience Cheers

A press agent couldn’t dream up “Dogma’s” launch in New York. Its American debut at Lincoln Center on Monday night, as part of the New York Film Festival, arrives as the latest volley in an escalating holy war here over censorship in the arts. Censorship has been Topic A everywhere for the past week from the front pages to the local bar stools to the boardrooms.

Monday night, the irreverent, bawdy, Catholic-questioning “Dogma” arrived amid death threats against the director, Kevin Smith; a protest outside Lincoln Center by 1,200 to 1,500 people joined by Auxiliary Bishop Francisco Garmendia standing in for Cardinal John O’Connor; and a repudiation of the film by Mayor Rudolph Giuliani.

Giuliani recently began a well-publicized quest to shut down a controversial exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum of Art. A few days later, police raided a swank Fifth Avenue art gallery and arrested its owner, who had offered live bullets as a party favor and publicity gimmick for a new installation.

Predictably, Friday’s first press screening was standing-room-only for the 125-minute film and press conference with director Smith, producer Scott Mosier and festival chairman Richard Pena. Practically the first words out of anyone’s mouth had to do with the controversy and the question of censorship, to which Smith quipped: “We thought we were going to have to battle the Catholics, not the mayor.”

And at Monday night’s post-premiere Q&A;, when the cast and director were detained for a few moments before reaching the stage of Alice Tully Hall from their mezzanine box seats, one of “Dogma’s” stars, Ben Affleck, couldn’t resist saying, “Sorry it took so long. We stopped to pray with the protesters.”

The protesters were undaunted by not having seen the film--which opens in Los Angeles on Nov. 12--though its first-draft screenplay had been widely and illegally distributed on the Internet, said Smith.

“You don’t need to drink polluted water to know that it’s bad for you,” countered Preston Noell, spokesman for the Virginia-based American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family and Property.

“We’re here to protest our outrage at this unspeakable blasphemy and to encourage Catholics here and across the country to stand up . . . and say, ‘No, we do not accept it.’ ” Noell said.

Reviews of the Brooklyn Museum show opined that, as with similar controversies, the art was less interesting than the censorship battle it had provoked. But “Dogma,” evidenced by early reviews and the film’s enthusiastic ovation at the press screening and Lincoln Center showing, overshadows the controversy. What sounds like “Animal House Goes to Heaven” was generally seen as a thought-provoking and faith-affirming exercise--with, of course, gross-out humor and toilet jokes to spare.

The outlandish-sounding plot involves Affleck and Matt Damon playing two angels who have been stuck on earth for eons because they defied God. They want back into heaven and have latched onto a seemingly ingenious scheme. If they enter through the portals of a newly rededicated church, whose cardinal, played by irreverent comic George Carlin, has devised a new, peppy, upbeat PR campaign, they’ll be eligible again for heaven. However, because they also will be duping God, proving her--she’s played here by pop singer Alanis Morissette--fallible, they threaten negating existence itself.

There are plenty of scatological humor, four-letter words and hypotheses about God’s gender and Jesus’ skin color. Elements such as those drove the Disney-owned Miramax to drop the American distribution rights, which were picked up by the newer Lions Gate. “Dogma” was written before Smith’s breakthrough hits--1994’s “Clerks” and 1997’s “Chasing Amy”--gave him the clout to attract the A-talent and financing for his pet project.

Smith, screaming over the din at the VIP party hosted by Lions Gate after the premiere, dismissed the threat of a large-scale national protest. “It’s easy to pinpoint one location, but the movie’s opening on 1,200 to 1,500 screens all at once,” the director said. “How are you going to move people around like that?”

Lions Gate President Mark Erman says his company has received no protests or complaints since acquiring the film this spring: “Not one person has said ‘boo’ to us.” And despite the protest Monday night, he insists that there is no controversy except that whipped up by the media. “As people begin to see it, they realize it’s a funny movie--even a fluffy movie--but it’s not really a film about which anyone can be angry.”