Dogma Commentary?
 

I know there was probably a thread regarding this but couldn't find anything.

Of course it was a great all around commentary, but why were certain Kevin Smith comments geared towards certain people constantly being bleeped out? Isn't that pretty much the reason for having a disclaimer, so that everyone can say what they want, while conveniently covering the studio's butt? Anyone know what was bleeped out and for what possible reason?

I think the comments referred to Disney/people associated with Disney subsidiaries (i.e. the distributor that dropped the flick), and Dogma's distributors wanted to avoid action by Disney, who, historically, a very litigious company.

My $.02 on the subject.

There was a court order towards mentioning Disney people and 'symbols'

Most of the bleeps are the names of the Weinstein brothers, heads of Miramax. the Disney subsidiary who bought the flick from Miramax themselves, and resold it to Lions Gate Films, who released it.

Columbia/Tri-Star is just afraid of Disney's legal team. If you watch "An Evening with Kevin Smith", you'll find that Kevin Smith goes on at length on a bunch of subjects but Disney remains unbashed, although he definitely did have stories about Disney at his college Q&A's.

Most of the edited info in the Dogma commentary had to do with Linda Fiorentino, who apparantly was a royla bitch to work with. Some comments made it in, though. One of my favorite lines was when Smith says this about a certain scene: "Oh, Linda wasn't talking to me on the day we shot this scene".

There's no flat-out court order against talking about Disney. It's just that by opening your mouth to anything that could be even remotely considered to be slander or libel towards Disney, you're opening yourself up to a lawsuit by a company that has the best lawyers in the world. Of course, Columbia/Tri-Star is owned by Sony, which most likely has equally impressive lawyers, but they obviously just wanted to avoid the *possibility* of any legal woes.

To borrow a phrase from Harlan Ellison, "Nobody ****s with The Mouse."

Check out the bits of commentary with the video option - They forgot to beep that!
Though I think its just one reference that gets through.

My fault, I meant 'contractually' rather than 'court order'. I should have searched NewsAskew first.

Q: And how about the bleeps in the disc's commentary tracks?

Kevin: It's not "bad" at all- I've already explained that as a part of the deal wherein Columbia Tri-Star licensed the rights to DOGMA from Beauna Vista Home Video, Disney and none of it's affiliates could be mentioned in relation to DOGMA. So, we had to bleep any references to Disney of Miramax, and specifially JUST the words "Disney", "Miramax", "Harvey", "Bob", and "Weinstien".

Yeah, I forgot about that. That's also the reason why "Judge Not: In Defense of Dogma" was removed from the DVD. In any case, the lack of Disney-bashing on "An Evening With Kevin Smith" proves that whether Disney forces them to or not, they're still deathly afraid of lawsuits.