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.