Kevin smith’s latest movie, Dogma, has outraged US church-goers, with its “blasphemous” humour. So is he telling the Church to piss off? Let’s ask him…

Are you expecting any trouble in Britain, as there has been in America?

I don’t think so. You guys are mainly Anglican, for what it’s worth. Thanks to good old Henry VIII I’ve probably avoided a lot of heat in England.

So what resistance have you met with?

We had some protesters outside the theatre at the New York Film Festival. They weren’t really screaming or whatnot, they were singing Cumbyah. I wanted to invite them in and show them the flick, cos they just didn’t seem to know what they were protesting about. I mean, none of ‘em had seen it and the people who urged them on to protest hadn’t seen it either.

What were they so upset about?

It’s that the film was ever made. There were some news reports I saw where this guy was going, “This movie maintains that all of the apostles had active sex lives – and I’m guessing not with just their wives!” I mean, bizarre conclusions like that, things that are not in the movie. Some people think the movie says that Christ had sex. They’ve come up with these plots that don’t exist.

Have you shown it to your family?

Yeah. My mother and father were there for the New York Film Festival. My mother kinda dug Dogma, because she’s a devout Catholic as well, but she’s ever riding my ass about the language. “Must you use all that bad language?” Well, must I? No. Do I? Yes. Must we talk about this…?

The people you cast in this movie seem to have done very well for this movie since you cast them…

Boy, they really have. Everyone we cast seemed to get famous. Which puts a lot of pressure on yours truly because, now, if this movie tanks, it’s really my fault.

Whose idea was the speech in which Ben Affleck talks about people thinking he’s gay?

That had been in the script since 1994, since before I even knew what a Ben Affleck was. But he read the script in 1995, before he was very famous, and he wanted to do it then. It’s kinda funny cos Ben has been defending his, uh, heterosexuality quite vehemently as of late!

Are you worried that audiences will think of this as a Matt Damon and Ben Affleck vehicle?

There’s more of a degree of panic over people paying to get a polemic, a blasphemous film. My fear is that people are gonna be going in saying, “Can’t wait – this is the movie that tells the Church to piss off for several hours.” And then they get there and it’s not. It’s actually kinda devout.