Hear & Now

RAINBOW COALITION Director Kevin Smith, whose comedies always get R ratings for language, may make his first G movie: He was asked by Prince, who not long ago swore off swearing, to direct a documentary centered on his upcoming The Rainbow Children, a jazz-fusion-y concept album ''steeped in biblical history.'' Smith says Prince sought him out because ''he seemed to dig on Dogma, particularly how we tackled race, creed, and religion.'' The docu won't be ''about him as much as what he refers to as The Truth'' and will consist largely of footage shot at a Minneapolis fan festival, where Smith and Prince led focus groups discussing everything from the ridiculous (i.e., the record industry) to the sublime. ''Lifelong fans talked about how he'd been so reclusive until recently,'' says Smith. ''He agreed and gave the credit to God.'' When the director finishes August's Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, he hopes to do a one-on-one with Prince that would help viewers ''get their heads around why he's suddenly more into Jesus....[But] the first question I'd like to ask him is 'Do you ever just wear sneakers?' ''

GIVE HIM AN INCH Fans of the Off Broadway musical Hedwig and the Angry Inch (now a movie) might have noticed that some of Stephen Trask's songs have a Meat-y flavor. Indeed, Trask says Meat Loaf's 1977 Bat Out of Hell ''was a huge part of my adolescence.'' The admiration is mutual: Loaf heard Hedwig and, spotting a writer who shares collaborator Jim Steinman's flair for the dramatic, contacted Trask to discuss reworking a few songs for nontheatrical purposes. For his next album (due in 2002), they settled on the hard-rocking ''Tear Me Down.'' ''I've made [lyrical]changes, so it's more appropriate to Meat and less appropriate to Hedwig,'' says Trask, lest Loaf get mistaken for the show's victim of a botched sex-change operation. The singer probably won't don drag for the video, either, even though he did wear fishnets in the stage version of Rocky Horror.