Bullets Over Hollywood

Miramax and the Catholic League have been brawling for months over Dogma, a film about holy men behaving badly, which will hit theaters later this year. But even as the filmmakers invoke artistic freedom to defend Dogma's edgy religious scenes, they are quietly considering whether to re-edit other scenes, including one in which a pair of pistol-packing angels, played by Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, bullet-spray a board meeting at a large corporation, and another in which they have massacred a group outside a church. "There's definitely the question of Columbine to consider," says director Kevin Smith.

A chill has settled over Hollywood on the subject of violence. Washington's attacks hit a fever pitch last week, as Republican Congressman Henry Hyde blasted "toxically poisoning" entertainment and tried but failed to get an amendment passed making it a crime to expose children to violent movies. Hollywood lobbyists continue to attack such efforts as a violation of the industry's First Amendment rights. Nevertheless, the Columbine High School shootings and the national kids-and-violence conversation it set off have left Hollywood in an unusually reflective mood.

At pitch meetings and script sessions, in agents' offices and at poolside, the talk is of how many shooting sprees and explosions are too many and how much psychotic knife slashing is more than enough. Scripts are quietly being buried or reworked, movie websites reviewed and ad campaigns rejiggered. "Littleton had an effect on everybody," says Michael Pressman, new executive producer of CBS's Chicago Hope. "People are reeling creatively."

There have been a few highly publicized retreats. The WB network pulled the season finale of Buffy the Vampire Slayer last month because it had Buffy and her pals squaring off with a 60-ft. serpent at a high school graduation. No guns and no fatalities, but the network was still worried that it would be Exhibit A if anyone in a cap and gown were injured anywhere in the country. (The show has been rescheduled for next month.) And the Bravo cable network yanked Teen Sniper School, a guess-you-had-to-be-there satirical segment on Michael Moore's show The Awful Truth that imagined students being given course credit for learning to shoot.

There's even more punch pulling going on behind the scenes. Warner Bros. has turned down a chance to be a partner with Disney on Gangs of New York, a Martin Scorsese-Leonardo DiCaprio historical drama in development, in part because of its violent subject matter, sources close to the production say. (Warner Bros. declined comment.) And Disney executive vice president Rob Moore told TIME that the studio will proceed with the movie only if the script's violence is toned down. Sony has been in angst mode for months over its Jeff Bridges-Tim Robbins movie Arlington Road. The paranoia-fueled tale of a man who thinks his next-door neighbors are terrorists, scheduled for release on May 14, was bumped back to July 9 largely because of Columbine, says a marketing source close to the studio. Sony denies it, saying it was just trying to avoid entering a box-office Pod race with The Phantom Menace. Then there's Fight Club, a bare-knuckle-boxing drama starring Brad Pitt that's been roundhoused from its planned Aug. 6 release date and moved to the fall. Fox says the film needs more editing and would face too much competition, but there's no doubt that a little more distance from the Littleton shootings cannot hurt.

Disney Studios chairman Joe Roth says the climate is affecting production of projects like Gone in 60 Seconds, a Nicolas Cage car-theft action pic being made by Jerry Bruckheimer, producer of bone crunchers like Con Air and The Rock. Bruckheimer "is being careful that it's not overly violent, that there's enough humor in it, and there's a dramatic and clear moral message," says Roth. "We didn't not make the picture, but there's more conversation about its specific content."

If nothing else, a title change can help. Miramax was planning to go with Killing Mrs. Tingle, a dark teen comedy about a student's plot to get revenge on her teacher for a bad grade. But after a teacher was killed in Littleton, the studio renamed it Teaching Mrs. Tingle, and it's being billed as more of a lighthearted kidnapping-and-physical-abuse caper. Forrest Gump producer Wendy Finerman has expressed qualms, insiders say, about the violent content in Sugar and Spice and Semiautomatics, in which a high school cheerleader becomes pregnant with the star quarterback's child and turns to crime to support herself. The film has been retitled simply Sugar and Spice. And an Ellen Barkin comedy originally called Crime and Punishment in High School is now in production under the not quite so catchy name Untitled '99.

Movie marketing departments are also toning down their act, keeping guns out of the advertising artwork and playing down violence. "We're thinking about it up front at the sketch stage, long before we execute," says Tony Seiniger, whose Beverly Hills ad firm does work for several top studios. He says his clients are thinking hard about whether actors who are popular with kids should pose with weapons. "Everybody's aware that there's a definite responsibility, the same way we don't have people smoking in ads anymore."