Kevin Smith Got 3 Death Threats And 400,000 Pieces Of Hate Mail Over 'Dogma'

Last week, I was lucky enough to have Kevin Smith back to the Barstool office in New York to discuss 'Dogma' and its current 25th* Anniversary Celebration and re-release!

*It's actually the 26th anniversary, but hey - 25 looks/sounds better on a poster!

If you didn't know, 'Dogma' - Kevin Smith's fourth film starring Linda Fiorentino, Ben Affleck, Matt Damon, Chris Rock, Alan Rickman, George Carlin, Salma Hayek (and of course, Kevin Smith and Jason Mewes) - has been nearly impossible to watch in recent years due to it being owned and locked up by Harvey Weinstein. Smith tried to purchase it back (after he had been assured the money would not go directly to Weinstein) for a while but never made any progress, until recently when Harvey's assets were liquidated, and a random firm that bought a lot of 12 movies he owned fell backwards into 'Dogma'. 

They reached out to Kevin Smith to see if he'd be interested in doing anything with it, and of course - he was delighted! They re-released it in theaters on Friday, he took it on a 20-city tour around the country, and he's even writing a sequel as we speak! They screened it at Cannes this year too! We talked about all of that and more in this interview, including the initial controversy around the movie, which brought on 400,000 pieces of hate mail and 3 explicit death threats back in 1999. That wasn't just internet haters, either....it was real hate! Sent via postage! And there were protests! One of which Kevin Smith joined undercover!

We wound up discussing 'Dogma' for over an hour in what was one of my favorite interviews I've ever done, so please check it out now! I could listen to Kevin Smith talk for days....