By 2:30 a.m. Friday, Kevin Smith's comic fantasy about religion and faith, "Dogma," is expected to have already sold to a U.S. distributor. The film screened three times yesterday (Friday): an 11:00 am invitation only press screening which was mobbed with journalists and young people, an additional press screening in the afternoon, and the midnight public showing in the Grand Palais, where Harvey Weinstein will be waiting to make a deal with the many distribs scheduled to attend.

After the morning press screening, Miramax Co-Chairman Weinstein made a public appearance outside of the Olympia theater, which turned into an impromptu press conference. Reporters from Newsweek and Time, critics like Janet Maslin and Harlan Jacobson, and the young fans of the film, were all in a tight circle around the Miramax giant. In between schmoozing the kids, Weinstein fielded a few questions from the journalists, among them the query on everybody's lips: who will buy the film from the mini-studio that financed the film? "This movie is not a small movie," Harvey said. "It's not an art house movie."

He went on to hype the potential of the film: "It's going to be the size of 'Pulp Fiction,' if they [whatever distributor they sell to] do it right." The Miramax chief told indieWIRE that he'd like to see the film in theaters by Labor Day, but "it's not up to me now." When asked if any major distributors had seen the film yet, Weinstein denied the claim, directly contradicting an indieWIRE report that there was a distributor screening in New York last week.

On Monday, indieWIRE reported on the screening that was held May 12th in downtown Manhattan. An insider who attended the screening clearly labeled the showing a "distributor screening" in a conversation with indieWIRE last week, while another branded it a "research screening without the research." indieWIRE has confirmed the attendance of acquisitions executives, as well as the head of a major Hollywood studio at the NYC showing. Harvey and Bob Weinstein, Kevin Smith, and producer Scott Mosier were also in attendance, along with a handful of Miramax executives. Reviews from the screening have been published on Internet sites including Harry Knowles' "Ain't it Cool News" and the "NewsAskew" site.

As for when the film sells, Harvey said he hoped to make a deal in the early hours of the night, after the film gets out in the wee hours of the morning. Weinstein also went on record regarding their parent company, Disney, whom the executives bought "Dogma" back from when rumors of religious controversy began to stir. "I've had a good relationship with [Disney]," he said. "I made some great movies with them, but there's a trade off." Regarding the alleged irreverent religious reputation, Harvey promised the small crowd that Catholics wouldn't have a problem with the film, "it's only the fanatics that will."

At a press conference later that day, director Smith was present with his own comic take on the supposed controversies. "The Vatican contacted me and asked me to make a recruitment film for the Catholic Church and I was like, I could do one of those if you don't mind the naughty parts," he joked. More seriously, he said, "It came from the time in my life when I felt a little disenfranchised from the church and found my way back -- and saw my way clear to where I stand on faith and my faith in particular".I think a lot of people go through crises of faith so I wanted to get on my soapbox and talk about that."

Written around the same time as "Clerks," the film is a sort of sophisticated theological debate crossed with Smith's adolescent Jersey comic-book humor. Starring Ben Affleck as Bartleby (an outcast angel of repentance) and Matt Damon as Loki (the angel of death), the story traces their efforts to get back into the Kingdom of Heaven no matter what the cost to human existence and the unruly righteous band who try to stop them. This group includes Linda Fiorentino, Salma Hayek, Alan Rickman and Chris Rock, as well as Jason Mewes and Smith appearing as two unlikely prophets: Jay and Silent Bob.

At the morning screening, the youth audience was taken by the film, laughing steadily throughout the film, while the critics preferred Smith's smart screenplay to his mild direction. At the press conference, Smith himself admitted, "Visually I don't think I have much going on. But I think I can write, and I think that's my strength." Describing the process of writing and editing of his script, Smith told the packed room of journalists, "I write like I shit, which is quite a lot." Continuing, he explained, "We didn't have to lose any complete scenes, so I just cut out some of the more 'Kevin-being-impressed with himself' dialogue."

Smith also addressed the question of the religious controversy which supposedly abated when Disney sold the film back to the Weinstein brothers. "Our relationship with Disney is still pretty strong. The next flick we're working on is Disney's 'Martin Luther,'" he joked. "I'm not so worried about the controversy, because I've always felt that I wasn't stupid into going to it; I knew that there's the potential the moment you start talking about religion to offend some people and I didn't want to offend anybody."

Rather Smith hoped "to kind of inspire people to think about their spirituality or God; so often we get lost in the politics of religion and forget why we're in church in the first place. I took great cautions to try not to offend as much as I possibly could. For me, I always thought how can anyone really be offended by it -- it's got a rubber poop monster."

When asked about the film's tenuous U.S. distributor status, producer Scott Mosier told indieWIRE, "We just wanted to concentrate on coming here [Cannes]. There's been so much discussion about the film, the film in general, and the distribution, we're really just concerned aboutŠshowing it to people and getting a reaction to it." Contradicting Harvey's hope to close a deal today, Mosier said, "As far as the distribution, we'll start getting into that a lot, once we get back from Cannes." Smith added, "We're kind of anxious. It's nice that Harvey and Bob are still involved with the movie, eventually it'll find a home, hopefully, you know, if there's people out there. I guess it's good enough; it's got those 'Good Will Hunting' guys so maybe we'll make a dime off it."

Smith also said that for future projects he hoped to make lower budgeted films. Quoting the film's budget at $10 million (incidentally, Weinstein claimed to have paid $14 million for it), Smith said, "I'm usually very budget conscious. I like to make smaller stuff, 'cause I'm not very comfortable as a director".After this, I don't think I want to keep doing movies at that level, or build up. I know a lot of my contemporaries seem to jump in their budgets and I think the next one will be way cheaper than that."