Director Kevin Smith refuses to play by the rules. Since his first film, Clerks, Smith has been doing things his way. Haphazardly directed in black and white using novice actors (consequences of the film's shoestring budget, perhaps?), Clerks comes across as more of a prank than a film. Smith employs almost no visual or technical finesse, letting the movie's appeal rest almost solely on the novelty of eavesdropping on a handful of ordinary characters who trade-pop culture references and talk about sex.

One of the funny things about Smith's no-rules policy with Clerks is that the film is one of few American movies that might actually qualify for an honorary Dogme 95 seal of approval. Not that Smith planned it that way, or even thought about it, for that matter. Still, when Danish directors Lars von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg (The Celebration) proposed Dogme 95, a strict code of creative restrictions meant to refocus cinema on its characters, they were effectively flipping Hollywood the same finger Kevin Smith had shown the star-studded city by succeeding with his low-budget anti-film.

Of course, Smith's bigger-budget Dogma breaks all the Dogme 95 rules, merrily reveling in the director's "mainstream" success. Yet Smith is still attacking the evil Rule-Makers, this time focusing on the silly tenets by which we Catholics constrict our lives. A project like Dogma gives Smith the chance to debunk all those strict, contradictory religious rules while still upholding the faith. I'll leave it to you to decide whether calling the Bible "hokey" and casting Alanis Morissette not-ironically-enough as God achieves either end.

Alas, it seems the Dogme 95 cine-revolutionaries have lost Smith, who suddenly appears to be in touch with his own arcane set of rules. It's my personal opinion that Dogma is the pioneer film to follow Kevin Smith's own closely guarded filmmaking code, which I have dubbed Dogme Zero. Don't believe me? How else can you explain the film's quirky, disjunctive and wholly uncinematic approach? Using Dogma as my guide, I've reconstructed the Dogme Zero "Vow of Chastity." If you still have your doubts, take a look and judge for yourself:

Dogme Zero — VOW OF CHASTITY

"I swear to submit to the following set of rules drawn up and confirmed by DOGME ZERO:

1. Thou shalt not take religion seriously. Jerry Falwell does, and he doesn't get any chicks. Religious satire has been done before, and well. In the glory days of Monty Python, the comedy troupe spent most of their time poking fun at silly church laws and undermining the meaning of life. A Dogme Zero film must take it one step further. Dwell on the minutest details. Name-drop key religious ideas, preferably the ones that always trip up the faithful. Try working in topics like transubstantiation and the hierarchy of angels, but don't bother to fool with their real definitions. If you pace everything awkwardly enough, audiences won't pay close enough attention to notice, and they'll come away impressed by the points they missed.

2. Thou shalt not take anything seriously. Especially sex. There will be no actual depiction of anything sexual on-screen, but characters should talk about the topic constantly. In Clerks we learned that even when explicit acts take place well off-camera, a movie can be so frank in talking about sexual topics that the dialogue alone can earn the film an X rating. One way to make on-screen fornication impossible is to use characters who are "as anatomically ill-equipped as a Ken doll." As a rule of thumb, if a male and female share the screen, sex shouldn't just be sloshing around in their minds, it should be constantly firing off the tips of their tongues.

3. The film must contain only superficial action. (Murders, weapons, etc. must occur. Senseless beatings, unwarranted stabbings and offhand bullet-riddling for visual punchlines are a definite plus: "Holy bartender." Get it?) Think of something really far-out and contrived, say, a plot involving two renegade angels threatening to unmake creation by finding a loophole in God's plan, and base your entire movie on that idea.

4. Plot must be moved forward by dialogue, not action. If the movie doesn't feel like it would work better as a trashy comic book, a dirty short story or anything other than a film, then it doesn't qualify for the Dogme Zero stamp. Fight scenes should figure prominently and should stress the director's incompetence with the medium of cinema. All action should occur off-screen (think of it as a tribute to audience imagination, like the stabbing in Psycho), focusing instead on the surprised reactions of characters standing nearby. Hey, if that method's good enough for Steven Spielberg, it's good enough for you!

5. Dialogue must be convoluted, self-consciously witty and constructed to defy all laws of human speech. Actors must not appear to be talking TO anyone, lest attention be drawn away from the cleverness of the script. Instead, they should present their lines to the audience while standing in the company of other characters, who can then "respond" in a similar fashion. The filmmaker may choose to disguise this technique slightly by inserting cutaways and reaction shots, especially if he desires to give dialogue scenes the smug, smirky feel of a Connie Chung interview.

6. Cast members should come from widely diverse backgrounds. Mix actors against intuition, allowing their radically different styles to play off one another. For instance, consider casting a loud-mouthed comic like Chris Rock (wouldn't it be funny to use him as the unsung, black "13th Apostle"?) opposite experienced stars like Matt Damon and Ben Affleck who can actually make overwrought dialogue sound normal. Why not rest the entire film on the shoulders of an actress as dramatically limited as Linda Fiorentino, giving her a wacky part like the abortion clinic worker who saves the world?

7. All Dogme Zero films must use Jason Mewes and Kevin Smith as recurring characters Jay and Silent Bob, no matter how out of place they might seem. Paying audiences understand that the witty repartee of a vapid stoner and the hammy gestures of his silent companion are the main attraction. The duo's gutter talk should take precedence over any other element of the film, particularly plot. [HINT: Scenes that might otherwise seem dull suddenly become funny when these characters are actively soliciting sex.]

8. Scatological details are a must. In fact, they can provide your movie's most memorable scenes. Clerks was constructed entirely on ribald sex banter and bathroom humor, and it was a hit. Therefore, all future films must also rely on these devices. If all your other material fails, you may rely on the last-resort gag-inducing sight gag: the "Shit Demon" (don't forget: the last film that desperate was John Hughes' Weird Science, which transformed Bill Paxton into a pile of shit).

9. When you don't have content interesting enough to fill the foreground, try littering the background with obnoxious and distracting details. Assume that cinema-goers have no attention span. When that plot becomes just too cumbersome, cover up with something that really rips the audience's concentration away from the story at hand. Something really outlandish, like an airport booth that sells headgear shaped like big blocks of cheese, works nicely.

10. The film is permitted to stimulate a few interesting reactions, but on the whole, it should appeal to the lowest common denominator in audiences. You may pick at established religions, for instance, because that brings an air of controversy to the project, but you shouldn't try to make any sort of important statement. Leave audiences with something pat and hollow, one of those "can't we all just get along?" morals. Ultimately, it's lines like, "We figure abortion clinics are a good place to pick up loose women," that really crack people up, so use as much of that kind of thing as you can. Remember, if the final cut of the film doesn't come across as either intellectual masturbation or immature posturing (or both!), you must scrap the whole project and start from scratch.

Furthermore, I swear as a director to refrain from narrative logic! I am no longer a comic book artist. I swear to refrain from creating a "film," as I regard the immediate payoff of a few really clever lines as more important than the whole. My supreme goal is to force the entertainment out of my characters and settings. I swear to do so by all the means available and at the cost of any good taste and any aesthetic considerations. Thus I make my VOW OF CHASTITY."

Signed,

Kevin Smith