This Is the Only Movie That Used George Carlin Correctly
Though he was arguably the single most influential stand-up comedian in history, George Carlin’s inimitable talents only ever translated perfectly onto the silver screen one time — but thank Lady God that Hollywood got it right, even if it was just once.
I mean this with no disrespect to the sizable fandom of the Bill & Ted film franchise, nor do I intentionally invoke the ire of the oldheads who miss when big-budget production companies like Universal Pictures made comedies like Car Wash. Hell, even Tarzan II has its apologists, and I’m not interested in upsetting all four of them and their favorite shitty movie.
When it comes to Carlin, comedy fans tend to get testy, and he’s had plenty of passable performances in other movies that hold a special place in people’s hearts, and I’m not trying to take that away from anyone. But when you look at Carlin’s filmography as a whole, it’s utterly, objectively and indisputably true that only one movie ever captured the tone and tenor of Carlin’s comedy: Kevin Smith’s Dogma.
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Yes, the lone moment when Hollywood really got Carlin’s sense of humor came in a movie famous for its giant rubbery shitmonster. And if that's not silly enough, Dogma also had that poop demon in addition to Harvey Weinstein.
The perpetually controversial Dogma told the story of two fallen angels, banished from heaven and played by Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, who seek to regain their place in the the holy kingdom (or destroy all of existence trying) while God is trapped in a corporeal form. Smith crafted the world of his divine comedy from the Catholic, well, dogma, with Carlin’s character, the marketing-minded dignitary and showman Cardinal Glick, playing a pivotal role in the scheme. In order to craft a hip, cool, modern rebrand to attract potential young Catholics, Glick plans on unveiling the church’s newest symbol, the crucifix-replacing “Buddy Christ,” at a ceremony that will offer all who enter his church a plenary indulgence on the house, including any secret angels.
According to Smith, Carlin’s importance to the success of Dogma started even before he agreed to appear in the project. In a talk with The POZCAST, Smith admitted that he wrote the script of Dogma under heavy influence from the atheist and anti-Catholic comedy stylings of Carlin. And when Carlin read the script, he noticed. Smith claimed that, when he finally sat down to talk to Carlin about his new screenplay, “I was like, ‘You can see you’re a big influence on me,' and he goes, ‘Oh yeah, in some places I feel like I should be getting co-writing credit.’”
That inspiration is most plainly apparent in the above speech, and it’s hard to imagine anyone besides Carlin ever delivering the delightfully iconoclastic monologue. It sounds like Carlin wrote the part himself, and it’s easily the most true-to-form speech he’s ever made in a film — no other movie managed to balance Carlin’s crafty playfulness with his wry, cynical and sometimes mean-spirited sense of humor, as all the other entries in his filmography leaned too far to one side or the other. Additionally, no other director ever gave Carlin better subject matter to tackle onscreen than when Smith asked the comic to essentially give Catholicism the Kevin Smith movie version of a makeover montage.
In fact, Carlin’s comedy and his performance in Dogma was so powerful that it helped Smith find his own answers to the existential questions he asked in the film. “George disabused me of my faith,” Smith admitted on the podcast. “I was a struggling Catholic at that point, and he asked me at one point, he said, ‘You really believe in this stuff still, don’t you?' And I was like, ‘Yeah, I do. You don’t?' And he goes, ‘No, I’m smarter than that.'”
Not only was Carlin the perfect casting choice for Cardinal Glick, but he was so good in the role that, for a brief moment, he actually made Smith believe that he was still a Catholic. If that’s not a miracle, then we’re all damned.
