#139 — Sacred & Profane
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Summary
Bill Maher and Larry Charles discuss the 10th anniversary of their documentary Relidialist, which was directed by Larry's good friend and former Seinfeld co-creator, David Letterman. They also discuss how they got to where they are today in their careers, and what it means to be a comedian, a writer, a producer, a director, a podcaster, and a man who has touched the lives of so many people in so many different industries. They also talk about how they met, how they became friends, and how they ended up working together on Borat and other projects they've worked on together. And, of course, they talk about their favorite movies and TV shows they've ever made, and why they don't care what other people think of them. This is an [Expert] level episode, which means some parts of the conversation may not make sense unless you ve watched the film. We don't run ads on the podcast, and therefore, therefore, it's made possible entirely through the support of our listeners, who are the ones making the podcast possible. Please consider becoming a supporter of what we're doing here, by becoming a MMS subscriber. You'll get access to the full-length episodes of the podcast and access to all the best episodes of The Making Sense Podcasts available on the network's other platforms as well. Thanks to our sponsorships, including Vimeo, Audible, iTunes, and Podcoin, as well as many other perks, including shoutouts, shoutouts and shout-outs, and much more! and The Huffington Post, and thank you for supporting the podcast! Sam Harris and The Daily Beast! Make Sense. Subscribe to the Making Sense to keep up to date with the latest episodes of Making Sense! Subscribe on your favorite podcatcher! and let us know what you're listening to and what you think of it? What's your favorite podcast? Subscribe and what s your favorite thing you're watching and what do you're up to in the making sense of it's going to be listening to? - Sam and Sam would love to hear about it? Let us know about your thoughts on the latest episode of The MNING SENSING MADE SENSUARELLA? in the comments section? and we'll be checking it out on the next episode! Tweet us out on Insta: in your feed!
Transcript
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Today I am speaking with Bill Maher and Larry Charles.
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You know him principally from his HBO show, Real Time, which I've been on a few times
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Bill is certainly one of our most politically engaged comics.
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He still does a ton of stand-up, and he's also an executive producer on Vice Media on
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Anyway, the occasion of this podcast was the 10th anniversary of his documentary, Relidialist,
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which was directed by my other guest, Larry Charles.
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Now, Larry has been hugely influential in comedy.
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He wrote for the Seinfeld show for the first five seasons.
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He also directed Sacha Baron Cohen's films, Borat and Bruno.
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He's also worked on Curb Your Enthusiasm and Entourage.
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He's just one of the 800-pound gorillas of comedy, and also a very nice guy.
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I'd never met him before, but it was a real pleasure to sit down with him.
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And because we were celebrating the 10th anniversary of Relidialist, the first half of our conversation
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So I think you'll enjoy that part more if you've actually seen the film.
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So it's not that you'll have no idea what's going on if you haven't, but I recommend that
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And again, even if you've seen it before, you just can't believe where people are at on
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It's really, it's quite a view of the human mind.
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We're mostly focused on the state of comedy and public conversation in general and politics.
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It was fun to have an excuse to get these guys on the podcast.
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And now I bring you Bill Maher and Larry Charles.
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So I'm here with Bill Maher and Larry Charles, which is quite an honor.
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Bill, you actually need no introduction on my show.
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I will introduce you, but it will be superfluous.
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Yeah, there's a few people out there going, oh!
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So, Larry, I've been, I think, a bigger fan of yours than I realized because I read your
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bio in preparation for this conversation and realized that you've touched half of comedy.
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So give us your potted bio, maybe from Seinfeld on, because it's amazing.
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I think from Seinfeld, I thought that I was going to be a showrunner and make a lot of money
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and do that, and I did that for a few years, and it was a lot of fun, but I wasn't feeling any
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I kind of had thought about directing for a long time.
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I was giving up on that dream as I sort of reached about 40.
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And Larry David literally came to me as he was doing Curb Your Enthusiasm.
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He was starting that show and said, hey, why don't you direct one of these?
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And from there, I met Bob Dylan, which is a long story, but we wound up collaborating
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But while we were writing the script, I was thinking I'd go home every day and go, you
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How am I going to ask Bob Dylan to direct this movie, you know?
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And one day, I just kind of blurted it out, and he went, okay.
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And then I directed that movie, and then I moved in that direction.
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I never made as much money again, but I wound up doing a lot of cool things like
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No, nobody made money on Borat, believe it or not.
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I mean, I made some money on Borat eventually, but I was paid pretty much the minimum to
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If you've also dealt with a lot of great religious themes on Curb Your Enthusiasm as well.
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The happy occasion is it's the 10th anniversary of Religious.
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Was it 9-11 that put religion as a problem on your radar in a way that it hadn't been,
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or had you been vocally worried about it prior to then?
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So I tend not to look back at my work because all you could do is obsess on,
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I should have said this, I shouldn't have done that, I shouldn't have said this.
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But I think we did cover it in there that I was raised Catholic and never liked that very much.
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My father stopped going to Mass when I was a teenager, which was a hallelujah moment for me.
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And then for just the longest time, I didn't have Catholicism for sure.
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And I just had God in my life as like when I got in trouble.
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And then at some point that became ridiculous and I realized I was making a fool of myself
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And I don't know if 9-11, I don't remember that having a giant impact on me religious-wise.
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But in terms of your perception of it being a social problem that you had to comment on,
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now you had to be a vocal atheist talking about Islam.
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Of course, it also caused me to lose the show as a forum.
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And those are my favorite nine months of Politically Incorrect because we were able to do a more
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And we were able to not do the show with Carrot Top and Pauly Shore and do one with State
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The tragic events of 9-17, as we called it when I said the things that got me fired,
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that we didn't go off the air until June, end of June 2002.
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Well, how did it gain traction after nine months?
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Was there a continuous drumbeat to cancel you or just?
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I was never mad at ABC for canning us because it's a broadcast network and the advertisers
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I was just mad at them because they lied and said we lost our viewership and our ratings
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So you said the most frequent slur was that they were cowards, the 9-11 hijackers.
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Of course, he was at a cab when the controversy came.
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But he was the one who said these are, he went on a whole rant about it.
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You know, strictly speaking, there is not a moral dimension to this.
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That's what my enemies chose to interpret it as.
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We were cowardly lobbing cruise missiles from thousands of miles away.
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But yeah, we were on for another nine months and those were good months.
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I mean, did you know that eventually it was going to come to an end?
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I mean, I'm surprised also to hear that it went on nine months.
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No, I thought it just the guillotine came down.
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Um, no, uh, we had a contract and it was really to the end of the year, but then we
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And, uh, I think one, uh, newspaper column referred to it as dead show walking, which is
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what it was, but it was a good dead show walking.
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So now had you guys been professionally connected before Religious or how did you guys?
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We had a lot of overlap in terms of friends and colleagues, but we had never hung out or
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And the great thing was once we did, it was like, it was very natural.
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You know, as if we had known each other all those years.
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And I interviewed a number of directors, but I wanted to make a comedy.
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And, you know, what, as I watched this movie last night, I realized, boy, this could have
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gone terrible with a director who didn't fit it.
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But I mean, this is, it was the movie I wanted to make, but it really is like any movie.
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It's, I mean, Larry made this movie with the cuts and the pacing and there's a lot, we
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worked on it together, but I give him so much credit because there's so much funny stuff
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that is the result of these quick intercuts and juxtapositions and just the structure.
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And, uh, it's not a job, most jobs in showbizers, I think, yeah, I could do that.
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But I think again, uh, not to throw it back at you, but that it was an amazing collaboration
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and a great synthesis of our sensibilities and one of the greatest, uh, uh, projects
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So yeah, it was a, it was a joy from beginning to end.
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We did it with a band and we had so much fun doing it.
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I don't like traveling, especially overseas, but having said all that, I'm so glad we did
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it and, uh, thanks for, uh, celebrating it with us.
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And I hadn't seen it since, I mean, it's been close to 10 years since I'd seen it.
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And we were talking about this just before the, we turned the mics on that the comedy
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I mean, I, I would say probably half the time I go back to some cherished comedy.
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I'm just, you know, like to, to watch with, you know, with, with my wife who may not have
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It's just, I mean, it's just this stark encounter with the idiot you used to be or, or, you know,
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some time that some age of the earth that has elapsed.
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Uh, we just did last night and we, we, we, we walked out of North by Northwest.
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I mean, we, you know, it wasn't terrible, but it was not, it was just, I mean, I mean,
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we, we've learned a lot about making movies in the intervening.
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And also people just had a, their brains, this is your field.
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People's brains must've just been different because they were perfectly okay with things
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I watched the man who, what's the Hitchcock movie he made?
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I was like, wow, people, all I kept thinking as I'm watching is people were, yes, people
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Also there was fake kissing that I never noticed before.
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The fake kissing isn't even an attempt to simulate real kissing.
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We have too much violence now and it's too graphic, but then it was ridiculous.
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Especially Indians, of course, in the Westerns.
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I think if I may, I think the reason that Religious is still fresh, there's a number of really good
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First of all, we're drawing on a thousands of year old tradition with religion.
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So, in a way, it's kind of classic, classic subject that had never been touched humorously,
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I mean, Life of Brian is a brilliant movie also, but it's a fictional movie.
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And there have been other fictional comedies about religion.
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There had never been a nonfiction comedy, never been a documentary that tried to even be funny.
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So, we had a very ambitious agenda, as it turned out, to tackle religion, be funny about
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And so, the subject matter was always ripe and never tapped into.
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And as we know, not enough has changed since the movie's been made so that those jokes still
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And also, the subject matter, we were ahead of the subject matter.
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I cited the stat on my show last Friday that when we made the movie, 16% of people said
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And now that is, in some polls, as high as 26%.
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So, in a way, the movie's 10 years old and the public is still catching up to it.
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So, Bill referenced the technique you use of intercutting archival images, and it's
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pretty interesting because some of the shots that are landed against the interview subject
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So, it's like, you're amplifying the fun that's being had at the person's expense.
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I mean, some of the blows land on camera because you and your interviews are pretty...
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Yes, for the most part, I would say that's true.
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But, like, sometimes the person will be lying and you'll be subtitling their lies with,
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Oh, and there's lots of cutaways for one second to an old movie that's just completely forgotten
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And in the case of people that are getting abused after the fact, we were very careful
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And wouldn't you love to do that in all of life to be able to subtitle when people are
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It was funny and it was pointing out our basic itinerary on this journey, which was
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religion is really built on a lot of hypocrisy and lies.
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And we were able to illuminate that constantly through the movie.
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So, I don't think the viewer ever feels like you, unless they happen to be religious,
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But I don't think the viewer ever feels that you take an unfair shot at the targets.
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Now, how are you just not trailing a thousand lawsuits with shooting a film like this?
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Or, I mean, probably even worse, the Sacha Baron Cohen stuff, right?
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Well, in both cases, we had people, you have people sign releases beforehand.
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And so they, and they don't, people don't read the fine print, frankly.
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And it says we could do anything we want with what we're about to shoot.
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And, but the fact is that usually it's, it's the purpose of the interview, both with Bill
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and even with Sacha, was to illuminate some sort of underlying truth that's being concealed.
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And it takes sometimes interrogation techniques, comic interrogation techniques, as Bill uses
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so expertly, like with the senator, you know, you see people who are saying things they know
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are not true, but they're stuck because they're going to get voted out of office.
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And that's one of the great things about him as a, as a questioner, as an interviewer.
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So, I felt like, yeah, this has to be hard hitting, but it'll pay off because it'll be
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I also was struck as I watched it, that it is so not mean spirited.
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Because we're having a good time and we're laughing.
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And even when I'm, there's a number of times when I'm basically saying to somebody, in
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I say to that, hey, Zeus guy, I think he's dead now.
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He was the second coming of Christ and yet he died again.
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And I say, maybe you're the second coming of Carmen Miranda.
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And you should be, you should have fruit on your head.
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Um, the guy who sued us, the member, if you don't know me by now, singer.
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You know, he's, I'm insulting him, but it's with a laugh and he's laughing and that, you
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know, it just makes you think they all know it's a crock.
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I mean, it's, it's, they're, they're selling the invisible product.
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I often, you know, I often tell people cause people, I often say that I thought the people,
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I believe that the Vatican needs to be dissolved.
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I mean, there's no way back from what's going on in the Catholic church right now, but the
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most intelligent people we've might've talked to in the entire journey with the, with the
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priests at the Vatican, the Vatican priests were all PhDs, all know what's going on.
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The guys who define for us where religion begins and where science begins and why they
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They were very, very rational men who have to sell this, uh,
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And the one guy who we see outside the Vatican, but he's the one who took us in for that amazing
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There were, there was a, we weren't supposed to be in there in the first place.
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That guy who we see who's saying to me that when I say, doesn't this make you think, oh,
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of course, everything makes me think this is a crock.
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He, like, he should have been hosting this movie.
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He, he, he translated the, uh, the letters, uh, either from Latin to English or English
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He lived down the hall from the Pope and we were on that hall.
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No, I, I don't, I remember him telling us that he met the Pope the first week.
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He was Pope in 1979 and hadn't seen him or talked to him since.
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That was, that was how much the Pope cared about Latin.
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He looked, he looked like he was practiced in the art.
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But he was quick to say Christmas is ridiculous.
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And if Jesus was here, he wouldn't live at the Vatican.
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He'd live out in the hills with the poor people.
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He was like, he was an iconoclast standing right there in front of the Vatican.
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I mean, that's the ultimate mask drop to say people need their stories.
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That's not supposed, that's the magician going, see, the dove is right here.
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He was like the Penn and Teller of, of the Vatican priests.
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Well, there was one guy you legitimately hated though.
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The, the rabbi who, uh, at one point you, you, you make the Holocaust joke.
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And then I don't know if it was you off camera, Larry off camera says something like, well,
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He did not think the state of Israel should exist and that the Holocaust was justified
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He had this insane verbal tick where he would say, don't interrupt me.
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Even in those moments where you had interjected your question in an appropriate silence where
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He just like, whenever you started, he would say, don't interrupt me.
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I mean, you actually have the surprising, the same surprising fact in your bio that Hitch
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did, that you discovered your mother was Jewish late in life.
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He was like, he was an adult when he learned this.
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I mean, so you're technically Jewish, according to the Jews.
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And that always bothered me that other people are going to tell me what my religion is.
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And I'm a big supporter of the state of Israel, blah, blah, blah.
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All my memories of religion are from Catholicism.
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And as my mother states in the beginning of the movie, and that is always the highlight
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of the movie, my mother, for me, because she's just so funny.
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And when I asked her, first of all, big shock for me and my sister, and we found out why.
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This is the first time we ever asked her, why did dad quit going to church because of
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We thought, geez, they weren't doing it anyway.
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But when she basically said, yeah, we didn't think we needed to tell you, and we thought
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I thought that was very telling of the thought process of that era, that no structure was
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She was certainly not a Catholic, although she pretended to take Catholic lessons.
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But, yeah, just you needed some religion in your life.
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Even though one I don't believe in, and that's not good, but it's better than nothing.
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And that's so different than what we were saying, which is certainly not better than nothing.
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That's still a very common notion, but it was funny just to realize that you hadn't figured
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out that she wasn't going to church with you for a reason.
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It was like a kind of family secret that wasn't, it was in the open, but you hadn't even noticed
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So telling of why kids put up with anything in childhood, because whatever, you're so young,
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So whatever is the norm, you just think, for you, that's normal.
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And that's why kids don't report abuse and a thousand other things, because it's just
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My sister and my father and I went, and that was it.
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And then it just came up in conversation one Christmas when I was 13, and because I'm Jewish.
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Do you have a religious indoctrination you're rebelling against?
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I do, and I think what Bill said, first of all, is really important, because I think
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you see a lot of adults today who are very bright, very intelligent, very rational people,
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but they cling to this crazy idea because they have been indoctrinated as children.
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And even though it doesn't make sense to their adult self, that childhood part of their brain
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clings to this idea of God, and somehow there being some order, and it's very, very hard
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I grew up in Brighton Beach and was sent to the local Hebrew school, which happened to
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So I was immersed with these very orthodox rabbis who were like mean, like nuns, you know,
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hitting you and shutting down any discussions and punishing you and sending you into the big
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dark temple to sit by yourself and think about what you had done.
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And so I kind of was really into the ritual and the darkness and the weirdness of it.
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But I also knew right off the bat, very early on during the bar mitzvah lessons, that it
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was kind of nonsense and it was kind of ridiculous.
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And, you know, I was into it on one level and I was also kind of stepping out of it.
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And by the time the bar mitzvah comes along, and my father would constantly remind me,
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my father had a lot of very reductionist philosophies of life, like do unto others and
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And he said, you know, do the bar mitzvah and get the checks.
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Not any, there was no spiritual dimension to it.
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So like a lot of kids, you know, we did the bar mitzvah, we got the checks and I never
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Now I notice in adulthood that a lot of people are sort of starting to drift back because
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I think we were talking about a little bit about getting older and the fear starts to
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set in and I see people starting to drift back in, in a kind of way that they feel comfortable
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with, but still drifting back to the things that they rejected in religion.
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Sometimes these are the same people who start watching Fox news when they get into their
00:25:15.860
Some you would recognize because they're famous people who I knew 15, 20 years ago as Hollywood
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I hadn't seen them in a long time, talk to them.
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I remember one person, actor, you'd know who it was and was telling me a couple of years
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ago, not only did Obama ruin America, he did it on purpose.
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And now you're, and I, all I could think is, yeah, he started watching Fox news.
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And those are the things that give people comfort because they give you answers, even
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though you may know on some level the false answers, it's still answers and it helps you
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It's interesting to think about how the landscape has changed in the intervening years.
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I mean, I think it was changing incrementally, as you point out in that poll result, that it
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seemed like secularism was winning some steady gains and that, you know, atheism was far more
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And I was getting the sense that people were more visibly embarrassed by, I mean, just that
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you weren't meeting the same kind of Bible thumper.
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And then we were making clear gains politically on things like gay marriage.
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We had a brief moment of it in California, then it got rolled back.
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And then all of a sudden it was the law of the land in like 15 minutes.
00:26:41.300
And you got the sense that even fundamentalist Christians weren't poised to fight that particular
00:26:51.880
And it's like religion is just kind of a variable we don't even have to talk about.
00:26:56.260
And yet quietly behind the scenes, religious fundamentalists are getting a lot of what they
00:27:02.720
And it's, it's like, it's like, it's off, it's like, you know, it's off my radar.
00:27:05.840
I'm not spending time talking about Christian theocracy.
00:27:08.820
I mean, occasionally I'll hit the topic of Islam when, you know, something blows up, but
00:27:15.640
And yet out of the corner of my eye, I'm seeing the stealth theocrats in the U.S.
00:27:25.460
In a larger sense, we are becoming, my analogy would be Saddam under Iraq.
00:27:35.120
The majority of this country is liberal, but because it's rigged, it actually is on their
00:27:41.660
part with the electoral college, with gerrymandering, with voter suppression.
00:27:46.880
I mean, look at the Supreme court, as we see this play out in these weeks, the Supreme court
00:27:52.380
should be seven liberals because two people were appointed under George Bush who did not
00:28:03.580
So if the right person, if we had direct election, which we should, and the will of the people
00:28:10.140
had put Al Gore and Hillary Clinton into office, the Supreme court wouldn't even be in question.
00:28:20.840
The right wing and the evangelicals have enormous power, but they are a minority who are now,
00:28:29.360
this is very dangerous for America as it was a seething pot under Saddam in Iraq.
00:28:35.400
You had two thirds of the country who were Shiites ruled over by a third Sunnis.
00:28:39.820
And we're like a two thirds liberal country that's now going to be ruled what we are.
00:28:44.880
We own nothing power wise by this minority right wing base.
00:28:50.040
And they are, you're right, getting everything they want.
00:28:53.280
I think if I may, I think there's like two forces at work also.
00:28:56.540
To me, it seemed like from the day that Obama was inaugurated, the hate began to build.
00:29:02.240
And the backlash was just, it was going to erupt in some way.
00:29:06.340
And I think Trump is that eruption to some degree.
00:29:09.000
I think also the evangelicals and the Christian right made a conscious decision somewhere along
00:29:14.460
the line that they're tired of losing and they want to win and they will win at any cost.
00:29:18.760
And they're willing to abandon all of their morality, their false morality to win.
00:29:28.020
I think this minority has kind of amassed itself and organized itself in such a way
00:29:33.040
to really, as you, as you called it before, a kind of a slow coup.
00:29:40.320
They know how to organize on the local level, which they have done.
00:29:43.980
They had a plan from 30 years ago to put this guy in the Supreme Court, the Heritage Foundation.
00:29:55.360
They know exactly what they're doing from the beginning.
00:30:02.500
We gathered, you know, we got our pussy hats on.
00:30:05.680
We, we don't do that, that nuts and bolts stuff.
00:30:09.720
We got to learn how to do that better if there's time, because it may be over now.
00:30:17.600
As we see with Kavanaugh probably going on the court, you know, that'll, how long is that
00:30:26.620
I, it's a real concern that the left has pendulum swung into identity politics and a,
00:30:35.400
its own kind of almost theocratic censoriousness around speech and white privilege and male
00:30:42.740
And it's not to say those things don't exist and they're, they're obviously appropriate
00:30:46.160
targets of outrage with respect to every one of those variables.
00:30:50.000
But it is liberal outrage now or leftist outrage now is such a blunt tool is hitting everything
00:30:58.980
You can see how that it's just, if you call enough non-racists racist enough, at a certain
00:31:10.280
And also, if I may, as Bill pointed out, I mean, we don't need to worry about Russian
00:31:14.760
They have meddled with the elections all these years using the Supreme court, the gerrymandering,
00:31:19.520
all these different things were used, the electoral college to guarantee the Republicans
00:31:24.640
would have a larger percentage of the voters than they really are.
00:31:33.660
Just if ex-felons could have voted in Florida, many states.
00:31:39.920
I mean, the one thing Republicans are creative about is cheating.
00:31:48.480
If they channeled any of that creative energy into anything else, they could fix all the problems
00:31:54.920
Like the way they chipped away at abortion rights.
00:32:00.220
You know, you can't have abortion here unless the hallways are eight feet wide.
00:32:04.880
And, you know, those kind of laws that they're always thinking up.
00:32:08.600
All the environmental regulations are getting pulled back.
00:32:11.380
You see, the thing is, Pruitt's gone, but the environmental regulations keep on getting
00:32:15.580
We had this big moment of we were upset about the children being put in the detention centers.
00:32:21.380
It's going on every single day since then, you know what I mean?
00:32:27.220
And again, I think this is why people are looking for some kind of a simple, comfortable
00:32:32.620
And why some people retreat into simpler solutions to the problems instead of facing the
00:32:39.500
Before I feel the tractor beam of current events pulling us off the topic of religious
00:32:44.640
I wanted to say one thing to your last question about, you said, you know, in the last 10 years,
00:32:52.020
And, you know, I always make the joke when people say religious and I take all the credit,
00:32:57.020
but I know it's really not because of religious.
00:33:02.020
And I think the big thing that made the difference in the last 10 years is Google.
00:33:09.020
You know, Mitt Romney used to come to your house with a pamphlet.
00:33:13.720
That's as much as you could find out about Mormonism.
00:33:21.820
You'd, you'd be in the religion 10 years before you found out about the nutty creation.
00:33:30.920
You didn't have to get to like level six or something.
00:33:36.040
Not to derail you, but do you know the Paul Haggis story?
00:33:38.720
I think it was, it was in Lawrence Wright's book.
00:33:44.480
And they finally give him the secret teachings in a, you know, he has to take a briefcase to
00:33:48.820
essentially like a bank vault and, and, and contemplate them in solitude.
00:33:52.620
And he came and it's all the, just, you know, 70 trillion years ago.
00:33:57.140
They're brought here on something that resembled a DC eight and thrown into volcanoes and blown
00:34:03.100
And, you know, his summary of it was that he thought he was given, he was being given
00:34:09.100
Like, like he didn't know whether or not he should just laugh and then pass the test or
00:34:14.100
But that was what I'm saying is that you can look that up now.
00:34:19.100
And at a certain point it wasn't, you know, and Mormonism is just as wacky.
00:34:24.780
I mean, the Mormons will still deny that there's secret handshakes to get into heaven.
00:34:28.760
The Scientologists will definitely deny, you know, what was great in religious lists is
00:34:32.560
we were able to find clips, uh, like promotional footage that they shot, animated pieces that
00:34:38.920
sort of tell the origin myths of Mormonism and Scientology.
00:34:42.760
And those were, they were like Saturday morning cartoons, but they were real.
00:34:49.920
I thought they were great and they were hilarious because it's just, here they are as it is.
00:34:54.220
You know, it's like, we don't have to, we don't have to play with that at all.
00:34:56.780
How do you actually accomplish that as a director?
00:34:58.660
Do you just, you have some researcher who is just scouring the world?
00:35:02.600
I tend to myself, uh, uh, generate a lot of the, the clip thoughts because I'm thinking
00:35:07.940
all throughout what movies might be funny to draw on, what stuff we might need.
00:35:12.580
And then, yeah, I have great researchers who go out and find those clips, get permission
00:35:18.580
We had all these Middle Eastern, uh, clips from, from various, uh, terrorist organizations.
00:35:24.060
It's very hard to get permission to use those things, you know?
00:35:32.200
And that's one of the things that makes the film so much different than just the normal
00:35:39.340
You can just sprinkle it with hilarity, you know, more or less on demand.
00:35:44.160
Is there anything you would, either of you would do differently or that you regret?
00:35:49.820
Or is there any place where you felt like you don't, because one thing, one thing I don't
00:36:02.700
Both of us, both of us could watch that movie and imagine doing the entire movie over from
00:36:10.000
It's the kind of thing where it's, that's the, that's what happened then.
00:36:21.420
And, you know, I'm so glad people still like it.
00:36:25.400
And I still like it, but I can't, I can't watch it without thinking.
00:36:31.260
I could have been more eloquent there, or I could have thought of three other better examples,
00:36:52.720
Well, the Jesus Land, I forget what it's called.
00:36:56.560
Holy Land Amusement Park, you know, Disneyland for religious sadists.
00:37:00.880
I mean, the crucifixion scene there was insane.
00:37:10.220
And not only is it crazy, but it's like three times a day crazy.
00:37:13.720
I mean, they do the show, like, you know, the Disneyland shows.
00:37:16.360
They do them over and over and over all day long.
00:37:19.300
I hope he's getting paid well, because he's earning his money.
00:37:30.640
But he was also a legit believer who wanted to argue with you.
00:37:35.740
I mean, he came up with the best analogy of the, you know.
00:37:41.000
He was the best theologian you went up against.
00:37:44.020
That's one of the great things about Bill also, if I may tip my hat further.
00:37:48.880
And he is not, as much as it might seem like he's got an agenda, he's very open-minded.
00:37:53.600
And when people make good points all along the way in religious, when people make good points,
00:38:03.260
And when they speak intelligently, he acknowledges that.
00:38:10.240
You know, that one trucker walks out in the beginning.
00:38:16.220
But luckily, he went the other way out the door.
00:38:18.360
But the other guys and I wound up being very friendly.
00:38:26.040
Well, do you find yourself on camera going further in an adversarial direction than you
00:38:38.080
Like, if you were just in a social situation with these people and the topic of religion
00:38:42.200
came up, do you think that you would agree to disagree much earlier?
00:38:49.180
Because, I mean, I find myself at dinner parties, you know, rarely, but now.
00:38:56.620
But, I mean, I've had some, you know, I've gone to the mat with some people in just purely
00:39:00.840
social situations just because what they're saying is dumb enough and strident enough
00:39:05.240
that it just seems like, all right, this is a good time to dig in on this topic.
00:39:08.760
But I could imagine if this was being captured for a documentary, I might want to go further
00:39:16.020
because, listen, this, you know, this is the war of ideas that's going to go public.
00:39:21.060
Like, I'm just wondering if that, if you notice a difference between your on-camera self and
00:39:25.000
your off-camera self in these kinds of conversations.
00:39:27.620
Well, the good thing about me is really the same thing as the bad thing about me.
00:39:36.400
I don't think you feel pressure to perform once the camera's rolling.
00:39:40.320
Yeah, especially in that kind of movie, in that kind of setting.
00:39:44.740
And I'd rather let the comedy speak for itself.
00:39:48.900
I was doing a bit at the end of my show Friday night to really, at the end, I plugged this
00:39:56.460
because it was my tribute on real time for the 10th anniversary.
00:40:00.880
And April Ryan was on the panel and it came up before we even got to the end of the show,
00:40:11.040
And I said to her, you know, you are not going to like this end of the show.
00:40:14.980
And I could tell, you know, she's probably someone who goes to church every Sunday and
00:40:21.600
And I was afraid she was going to like really not have a good time or say something even during
00:40:30.400
We have cutaways of her, you know, and to me, that is the greatest thing about humor
00:40:41.480
And when it comes out that way, it must in some way say to your brain, ah, there's some
00:40:52.920
Because me, this religious person on the panel who doesn't really think that way,
00:40:59.000
So that's how I hope our message somehow got through to people who otherwise would
00:41:04.740
And I have found out to be, by the way, I just don't go to dinner parties anymore.
00:41:08.880
But I have found also in my travels that people, religious, even people who are religious
00:41:14.220
people, as long as they have a sense of humor, they love the movie.
00:41:18.640
Um, I have never met anybody who had a sense of humor who didn't like that movie.
00:41:23.480
I mean, it's a very pleasing movie in that respect.
00:41:26.500
And it's about the subject that they are interested in.
00:41:30.700
Was there any situation that you got into that, beyond the, the one trucker who exited
00:41:36.380
in something that looked like it was approaching real anger, was there anything that seemed
00:41:41.420
dangerous or sketchy that you, because you were, you were in the Middle East and, I mean,
00:41:46.500
when you went to the Al-Aqsa Mosque and all that seemed, as far as it was on camera, that
00:41:51.640
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