BY Gil Kaufman (SONICNET)

Singer/songwriter Alanis Morissette went a step further than simply providing a new song for the soundtrack to "Dogma," the controversial new comedy by "Chasing Amy" director Kevin Smith. She also has role in the film — and not just any role.

Morissette portrays God.

"Kevin Smith and I both believe that God is us," Morissette said in July about the challenge of preparing for the part. "So there's really no preparation needed. It's really small, it's a small role."

The film, due to be released Nov. 12, stars the Oscar-winning duo of Ben Affleck and Matt Damon ("Good Will Hunting"), comedian Chris Rock ("Boomerang"), veteran comic George Carlin, actresses Salma Hayek ("The Faculty") and Linda Fiorentino ("Men in Black"), and Morissette, playing God as a mute.

The new Morissette song, "Still," will be released exclusively on the soundtrack album, Music From the Motion Picture Dogma, (Nov. 2).

Backstage at Woodstock '99 in July, Morissette expressed excitement about recording "Still."

"I just wrote a new song and produced it at Abbey Road for 'Dogma,' " she said. "And it got me really excited about the next record."

"Still" marks the second year in a row Morissette has debuted a new song in a film, following the success of the Grammy-winning ballad "Uninvited" from 1998's "City of Angels."

Morissette, who directed the video for "So Pure" , the latest single from her 1998 album, Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie, said she got the role in "Dogma" after years of building a mutual admiration society with Smith.

"I just think he's brilliant, and he was very supportive of me," Morissette said, "and we met a few years ago and he showed me his script for 'Dogma.' [He] had invited me to take part in it with him when I first got off the road for Jagged Little Pill. But I was so burnt out that I didn't think I'd be of much value to him. But once I'd rejuvenated a year later, he had that cameo role still left".

Apart from Morissette's song, the "Dogma" soundtrack features music composed and conducted for the film by Howard Shore ("Philadelphia," "Seven"), performed by a scaled-down, 30-piece version of the London Philharmonic Orchestra. Titles include "Dogma," "Behold the Metatron," "The Last Scion" and "Stygian Triplets."

Like Morissette, Shore said he found the best method for preparing for the film was not to prepare at all. "I approached it as a religious epic," said Shore, a 20-year veteran of film scoring with 50 movies to his credit. "But the score has a lot of humor in it, a lot of winking and nodding to other religious movies [such as 'The Ten Commandments'] and what we think of as religious music and music from epic movies we've all seen."

The controversial film reportedly was shopped around by indie powerhouse Miramax after parent company Disney refused to release it, because of objections to its irreverent depiction of Catholicism.

Shore said he didn't know much about Catholicism before studying about it for the film. He said that study helped him obtain a fresh perspective on conducting the pseudo-religious score.

"We wanted it to be a small group trying to sound big and important," Shore said. "There's a humor in the idea of small forces trying to be important that's also in the movie, where a small group of people are trying to affect large things, like existence as we know it."

The film, described on its official website as a "comic fantasia," is set in New Jersey on the eve of the millennium, a time when "angels, demons, apostles and prophets (of a sort) walk among the cynics and innocents of America and duke it out for the fate of humankind."

In addition to starring director Smith in his usual cameo as one half of the duo Jay and Silent Bob — who portray prophets in the film — the movie stars Fiorentino as Bethany, a woman questioning her faith in God. Among the characters she encounters are a revenge-seeking apostle (Rock), an irate demon ("Chasing Amy" star Jason Lee) and a Muse (Hayek).

Back to Dogma Press...