NEW YORK -- Over in the next borough, the shitstorm has already begun, as thousands of marchers protest the opening of the "Sensations" show at the Brooklyn Museum of Art and its infamous painting of the Virgin Mary festooned with elephant dung. But Kevin Smith, whose film Dogma has been dogged by Catholic groups long before it premiered last spring at Cannes, isn't worried about its opening at the New York Film Festival in Manhattan later that night.

"I guess somebody has petitioned for a 2000-person protest," he says. "The Christian Coalition said they're going to deliver a bunch of bodies today, which is kind of like, who has that much free time to get out there and stand outside and go `You guys stink' and then go home and not even get to see the movie? If they're really good at delivering people, maybe we'll hire them to market the film."

In a sense, though, the protesters are helping to market the picture -- it's free publicity. "They say any press is good press," says Smith, "as long as they spell the name of the movie right. But I don't agree. I'd much rather have people not know about the movie as a polemic and know about it as entertainment. The intention was not to make a controversial movie, the intention was to make a movie that celebrated my faith and just make a lot of dick and pork jokes at the same time. So it was kind of disconcerting to see so many people getting up in arms about the movie -- people who hadn't seen it.

"Nobody could look at this movie and say that our portrayal of God isn't devout. It's not like we have God jive-talking or carrying a gun or something like that. She does do a handstand, which I don't think is very defamatory, but She's gentle and loving and ethereal, so I thought we were okay. I thought the worst thing we would go through was audiences would see the movie and say, `Did you see the Clerks guy's new movie? It's just two hours of him talking about Jesus. It's too preachy. Fuck it.' But I find it confounding that people can be offended by something like a movie or a fucking painting at the museum. And these same people aren't offended by a couple of cops in a room raping a guy with a broom handle or the Holocaust or just murder in general."

Dogma indeed does seem at times like two hours of catechism laced with four-letter words, but there are moments that strain orthodoxy. Essentially the tale of two fallen angels (Matt Damon and Ben Affleck) whose plan to achieve redemption entails the annihilation of all creation, it features Chris Rock as the 13th apostle, Linda Fiorentino as an abortion-clinic worker who's a descendant of Jesus, and Alanis Morissette as God. Perhaps more disturbing are scenes in which bloody divine justice is taken against adulterers and other transgressors. If those protesting the movie ever got around to seeing it, might not these images encourage them in their intolerance?

"Really, do you think so?" asks Smith dubiously. "I guess anything can be interpreted in different ways. I mean, you can take the Bible and go like, `Jesus says all this stuff about love.' Or you can take the Bible and go, `But it says we should hate the blacks and Jews, too.' Anything is open to interpretation, but anybody who can watch this movie and go like `Maybe we should go in there and blow people away because that's what God wants' wasn't led that way by me. It wouldn't be the first time in history. But it'd be the first time for me. Nobody ever saw Clerks and said, `I'm going to go work at a convenience store.' I don't really make movies that give people ideas."