You can take the filmmaker out of New Jersey, but you can't take New Jersey out of the filmmaker.

Kevin Smith, the auteur from Redbank, New Jersey, connoisseur of comic-book art and director of Clerks, Chasing Amy and the forthcoming Dogma, is sprawled in an easy chair at the Plaza hotel.

We have a lunch interview scheduled, and I've ordered a chicken club because it is the ultimate reliable hotel food. He's ordered peanut butter and jelly on white toast. With potato chips. The kitchen staff must have gone nuts trying to figure out how to garnish that order.

Disliking travel in and of itself -- "I can experience Egypt through my remote, and I don't have to sweat" -- Smith is quick to identify the best thing he has learned from taking his films to festivals.

Universal pizza

"Travelling in Europe, I came to really appreciate the universality of pizza. When I heard we were taking Dogma to Cannes, I called my producer and said, 'Remember that great pizza we had in 94? We can have it again!'"

That such a quiet, Jersey kinda guy should find himself at the middle of a controversy involving Disney, its subsidiary Miramax and the Catholic League is improbable enough. That it should be over a movie that features what Smith himself describes as "a rubber poop monster" is even more so.

"It's a bizarre thing. All I've seen for six months is 'the controversial Dogma.' I'm thinking of retitling the film. It's a comic-book movie, a dumb movie with a lot on its mind."

Dogma deals with a pair of outcast angels (Ben Affleck, Matt Damon) who find a legal loophole that will end their eternal exile in Wisconsin and let them back into heaven. As this will prove the fallibility of god and thus end existence, they must be stopped by Bethany (Linda Fiorentino), a lapsed Catholic who works in an abortion clinic, the reincarnated 13th Apostle (Chris Rock) and Smith stalwarts Jay (Jason Mewes) and Silent Bob (Smith).

"We don't even traffic in the historical, and it's not blasphemous. We even make it clear that having God played by Alanis Morissette is simply a manifestation of God. I never thought the Church would protest."

Catholic protest

Or that Disney would react to the Catholic League's protest by ordering "independent" subsidiary Miramax to dump the film, which was subsequently acquired by Canadian-based distributor Lion's Gate -- a company with a nose for controversy, having already distributed Adrian Lyne's adaptation of Lolita.

"The one encouraging thing is that the Catholic Church tends to protest good movies. When I finally saw The Last Temptation Of Christ, I thought it was a movie that really broke down the barrier between man and god, but the religious right jumped on it. Yet it's a pro-Christianity movie."

Indeed, with all the discussion of the controversy, Smith fears that his audience won't realize that Dogma is a comedy. "It's weird and frustrating. The Cannes screening helped, because finally people got to see the picture."

Smith is as close as any movie writer to being "the voice of his generation." On the cusp of 30, he is the premiere chronicler of his contemporaries' concerns about love, work and the future, renowned for the wit of his dialogue and his acute casting sense. Unfortunately, he has, shall we say, a subpar reputation as a director. That is, no one will ever mistake one of his films for one by Martin Scorsese or David Fincher.

"I'll be the first to tell you how lucky I am to have a career. I found Slacker such an inspiring film, because it just points a camera at stuff happening in front of it. I can see the day when I stop making films -- if I run out of things to say. Because, let's face it, nobody's going to hire me to direct someone else's script."

Which would be unfortunate, as he's just moved into the next phase of ad ulthood, newly married and now a dad. Is the world ready for Smith's vision of thirtysomething?

That's in the future. The present is "the controversial Dogma." That, however, has been instructional in its own way. "If I've learned anything from the controversy, it's that you don't make fart jokes and then talk about Jesus."