Put on your reading glasses tt.
LGF and their movies are getting a ton of coverage in the Toronto Film Festival. They do take chances with movies [ I like that ] and they do get the coverage...good and bad.
This was page 3 - full page from the National Post today.
The last paragraph has some comments from an analyst covering LGF...I love the last sentence!
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Saturday, September 11, 1999
Does Alanis have the right to play God?
Dogma, in which Canadian singer Alanis Morissette portrays God, was dropped by its U.S. distributor because Catholic groups found it offensive. Lions Gate Films, which owns Canadian rights, is used to dodging controversy
Luiza Chwialkowska
National Post
The Associated Press
Alanis Morissette, shown in concert, plays God in the movie Dogma, a role that the Catholic Civil Rights League says is not appropriate for the singer, who has openly denounced her Catholic upbringing.
Darren Michaels
Matt Damon, left, and Ben Affleck play fallen angels in the movie who try to exploit a loophole in Catholic dogma to sneak back into heaven.
Darren Michaels
Director and writer Kevin Smith, left, and Jason Mewes in a scene from Dogma.
Written by a practising Catholic, but condemned by his fellow believers, a U.S.-made film opening this evening at the Toronto International Film Festival is raising a debate about the ethics of the Canadian film industry, which seems to increasingly embrace movies rejected as offensive in the United States.
At the centre of the controversy is a Canadian film distributor denounced as a cynical profit-seeker by some and hailed as a protector of free expression by others.
Already criticized for distributing the intergenerational love story Lolita and for producing the violent American Psycho, Vancouver-based Lions Gate Films has now bought the rights to Dogma, a satirical take on Roman Catholicism that was drummed out of the U.S. after protests from Catholics who said the movie was an attack on their faith.
The film was dropped last April by its U.S. distributor, the Disney Corporation, after religious groups strenuously objected to its casting of Canadian singer Alanis Morissette as a no-less holy figure than God Herself. Ms. Morissette, who appears nude on the cover of her latest CD and in a music video, also once penned lyrics about performing oral sex in what now seems to have been an unfortunate choice of venue: a movie theatre.
The purchase of Dogma has alarmed some Canadian Catholics who fear that by undertaking to distribute the movie, Lions Gate is sending a signal that Canada is willing to disregard values of ethnic and religious tolerance.
"Unlike previous Hollywood attacks on Catholicism, the film attacks the core beliefs of serious Catholics," the Catholic Civil Rights League (CCRL) said in a public statement yesterday. "Lions Gate, in purchasing the film, has turned Canada into the dumping ground of morally offensive entertainment trash. This acquisition makes Lions Gate the cash-strapped distributor of last resort. Along with its other films in production, which include American Psycho, Lions Gate is single-handedly destroying Canada's hard-fought reputation for tolerance and equality."
In Dogma, Linda Fiorentino plays a descendant of Mary and Joseph who works in an abortion clinic. Filled with profanity and sexual references, the film also stars Ben Affleck and Matt Damon as fallen angels who try to exploit a loophole in Catholic dogma to sneak back into heaven. Chris Rock plays a black man who claims he is the 13th disciple who was cut out of the Bible because of racial discrimination. Another character campaigns to replace crucifixes with a smiling "Buddy Jesus." In the film, the fallen angels kill victims with machine guns.
The film received warm reviews at the Cannes Film Festival last spring, but languished without a North American distributor until Lions Gate Films paid an undisclosed sum for the rights on Wednesday.
The lion's share of the controversy has centred around Ms. Morissette, who grew up a Catholic in Ottawa but has since discussed her disenchantment with the Catholic faith in public interviews. She has also written about her Catholic upbringing in lyrics such as: "I sang Alleluia in the choir/I confessed my darkest deeds to envious men."
Ms. Morissette has said that Catholicism had taught her not to have sex because, "if you are a virgin, then you are clean and men will love you." When she finally had sex at the age of 19, she said she discovered "how beautiful and freeing and godlike it was."
Ms. Morissette's background disqualifies her from playing God, critics say.
"The actor/singer Alanis Morissette, who plays God in the film, has in interviews made clear her disdain for Catholicism and her rejection of her Catholic roots," the CCRL states.
William Donohue, president of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, which launched the successful U.S. protest campaign against the film, described his objections to Ms. Morissette this way: "If Jews can complain about Palestinian sympathizer Vanessa Redgrave in movies playing Jews, we can complain against this," he said.
Responding to the pressure, Disney head Michael Eisner pulled out of an agreement to distribute the film a month before its Cannes premiere.
Bob and Harvey Weinstein, co-chairmen of Miramax, then created a new corporation to buy the film rights for more than $10-million and began negotiations to sell the rights to an independent distributor. Lions Gate began pursuing the deal after seeing the film at Cannes.
Despite, or perhaps as a result of, the controversy, Lions Gate now says it is excited to release the film.
"Dogma is clearly the biggest film we've had to date," Jeff Sackman, president of Lions Gate Films, has said. "We like films that have an edge to them, that you can market effectively and that satisfy audiences. We have a great feeling about this one."
Kevin Smith, the film's writer and director, said he was thrilled to have landed the Canadian distributor. He commended Lions Gate for "standing behind our flick and giving audiences a chance to see a pretty funny pro-faith film."
The 29-year-old filmmaker has continually emphasized that he is a practising Roman Catholic.
"It was, from first to last, always intended as a love letter to both faith and God Almighty," Mr. Smith has said.
Mr. Smith, who says he was raised a strict Catholic, told The New York Times last month: "I went out and sampled other religions, but eventually I came back to Catholicism ... I'm Catholic because of my belief in God and my belief in Jesus Christ, so I don't want to get lost in whether or not the Church is right in its stance on abortion or whether the Church is right in everything they play out in their dogma. Let's just agree to disagree and do what we came here to do, which is worship God."
Film critic Roger Ebert, after viewing the film at Cannes, wrote, "Dogma, whatever its status as blasphemy, is more drenched in Catholic concepts, terminology and teachings than any other film I've ever seen. Non-Catholics should be issued a Catechism at the theatre door."
But Mr. Donohue, who led the campaign against Disney, dismissed the film as "hate mail."
The Canadian Catholic group is also not impressed by the Catholic credentials of Mr. Smith, whose previous films include Chasing Amy, a 1997 movie about a man who falls in love with a lesbian.
"The fact that [the] director is a Catholic does not justify his challenge to core Catholic beliefs," states the CCRL, which argues that Catholics face a double standard when it comes to religious tolerance.
"An attack of this commercial scale on any other faith or ethno-cultural group would have been met with harsh internal Hollywood criticism and condemnation in the world media. Similarly, it certainly would not be honoured by the Toronto International Film Festival," the statement said.
In an interview yesterday, a Lions Gate spokesman was reluctant to directly address the Catholics' criticisms.
"Everyone has the right to their own opinion. It's a free country," said Peter Waal, Lions Gate vice-president.
"We think we've got a very funny, very highly entertaining picture, and we're releasing it. That's what we're excited about."
Indeed, Lions Gate, which was behind such 1998 Oscar-winning films as Gods and Monsters and Affliction, has courted outrage before.
After undertaking to produce American Psycho, based on the controversial Bret Easton Ellis novel, Lions Gate was denounced for bringing to life "one of the most violent, vile, misogynistic books ever written," by Canadians Concerned about Violence in Entertainment. In response, Jeff Sackman, president of Lions Gate Films, said he looked forward to a confrontation over the film.
"I expect to hear from a lot of angry women's groups," he said in February. "I'm looking forward to it. I'm looking forward to a healthy debate."
Similarly, film critics wrote that controversy brought the poorly reviewed Lolita more viewers than it deserved.
When asked whether the controversy would help sell Dogma, Mr. Waal said: "Obviously controversy is something that attracts attention."
When asked whether or not he took the concerns of Catholics seriously, Mr. Waal declined to comment, repeating: "We think we've got a very funny film and we're releasing it. We believe everybody is entitled to their opinion and that's how we're proceeding."
The company has not announced a release date for the film, but says it will play "sometime this fall" on some 1,000 screens. The screenplay has been on the Internet for months.
After its screening at Cannes, a review in The Hollywood Reporter predicted, "Dogma is a likely commercial winner if not a fair-sized hit."
The controversy can only be additional good news for the company, according to Roger Dent, entertainment analyst at Yorkton Securities Inc., in Toronto, who follows Lions Gate stock.
"I don't think it's highly material one way or the other, but generally speaking it's good news. It's free publicity. The people who won't go to see it, would not have gone anyway, while [media attention] could encourage other people to go," he said yesterday.
Dismissing the notion that Lions Gate is following a deliberate strategy to seek out controversy, Mr. Dent says Canadian distributors often end up with a disproportionate share of controversial titles because of differences in the film industry landscapes on both sides of the border.
Since many "independent" film studios in the U.S. have been taken over by large media conglomerates, their tolerance for potentially offensive ventures has decreased, he said.
"The reality is that the major studios have too much at stake to risk dealing with these films. The independent studios don't have the same constraints," he said.
Lions Gate belongs to a cadre of independent Canadian film companies that can get away with financing and distributing risque films because they do not answer to parent companies.
"A company like Miramax is basically controlled by Disney," said Mr. Dent. "In the Canadian marketplace, the independents are independent ... It's not surprising that they are landing controversial films.
"I think we have a better system," adds Mr. Dent. "I don't want Disney telling me what movies to see."
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I just found the review in another section of the paper but not electronic.
This reviewer was not too happy - seeming to feel that the movie was trying too hard to be hip. Liked the directors past work - Chasing Amy - and I guess this didn't hit the same spot. Sounded like the reviewer was affected by the hype.
IMO.
spiney |
