Unholy warriors

Bill Maher and Larry Charles lampoon the faithful in Religulous

Last Updated: Thursday, October 2, 2008 | 12:21 PM ET

By Martin Morrow, CBC News

Bill Maher, left, interviews an amusement-park Jesus at The Holy Land Experience in Orlando, Fl. in the documentary Religulous. (Thousand Words/TVA Films)

This feature originally ran during the 2008 Toronto International Film Festival.

Bill Maher has a hate-on for religion. In his new satirical documentary, Religulous, Maher rips into religious faiths of all denominations, confronting their adherents and demanding they explain why they believe what they believe. It’s an attack cloaked in the U.S. comedian’s trademark wicked wit – although he doesn’t have to try too hard to get laughs from subjects like the guy who plays Jesus at a Holy Land theme park and the creationist senator who questions his own IQ.

"If you believe in a talking snake and you believe that the world is 5,000 years old and if you believe that you’re drinking the blood of a 2,000-year-old space god on Sunday, ipso facto, you’re a rube."

— Bill Maher

The film, directed with guerrilla flair by Borat’s Larry Charles, could do for religion what Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004) did for the Bush administration – not topple it, exactly, but sow some pretty serious doubt. At least, that’s what Maher is hoping.

“I don’t expect that I’m going to bring religion down – I’m throwing a pebble against a giant wall,” Maher says, flashing his familiar smirk. “But I hope it opens up a debate, that people just start talking about the subject. This is the last taboo.” He says he’d like audiences to ponder the question he raises in the film: “Why is faith good? Why is it good to stop thinking, which is really what faith is all about – ‘No critical thinking here, I just go by faith.’ I don’t think it’s a good thing.”

Talking with reporters at the Toronto International Film Festival, where Religulous was showcased prior to its October release, Maher showed his passion. Clad in a black blazer and turquoise dress shirt, his grey hair still wet from the comb, the man whose outspoken views have cost him at least one TV show (Politically Incorrect) made it clear he doesn’t suffer holy fools gladly. Or holy intellectuals, either. The film is chockablock with self-proclaimed messiahs, Holocaust-denying rabbis and other extremist quacks. When asked if he goes after too many soft targets, Maher bristles.

“Excuse me, anyone who is religious is a soft target and an extremist,” he says vehemently. “People say, ‘There are these smart religious people, why don’t you go after them?’ Excuse me, if you believe in a talking snake and you believe that the world is 5,000 years old and if you believe that you’re drinking the blood of a 2,000-year-old space god on Sunday, ipso facto, you’re a rube. I’m sorry, that’s not clear thinking. You can’t have it both ways: you can’t be this religious person who somehow also is enlightened about metaphysical matters.”

Believers who distance themselves from their sacred texts don’t cut it with Maher, either. “People want to somehow disassociate themselves from the Bible. Well then, why be religious?” he asks. “The Bible is to the religion what the constitution is to the country – you can’t have one without the other.”

Charles is more tolerant. Sporting a fedora, dark glasses and his usual lush beard, the director looks like a cross between his buddy Bob Dylan and a Hasidic scholar. “I believe that you can believe anything you want,” he says, crossing feet shod in purple Crocs. “All we’re saying is, ‘Don’t impose your views on me.’ The problem is when [religion] becomes governmental policy, when it’s used as a weapon against others, when it breeds intolerance and violence. The person who wants to pray or wants to do good works — I’m thrilled with that idea. Although you don’t really need God to be kind to your fellow man.”

A former Seinfeld scribe who earned his rebel stripes shooting Sacha Baron Cohen’s edgy provocations as Borat, Charles says Religulous was the perfect followup feature. “I only want to do things that have an urgency, that need to be out there, in my view,” he says. Even if it means taking huge risks. Like Cohen, Maher is nothing if not gutsy: over the course of the film, he confronts 300-pound truckers on their love for Jesus, needles Muslim fundamentalists and even sneaks into the Vatican.

Protesters at the Religulous premiere at the 2008 Toronto International Film Festival. (Teresa Barbieri/Getty Images)

“My feeling is, if we get murdered, it’ll make a good DVD extra,” jokes Charles. “My filmmaking philosophy could simply be boiled down to: Try not to get punched in the face.” It helps that he admires Maher. “He’s a very courageous and singular performer,” Charles says, comparing him to Michael Moore. “There are very few people who are out there in the front lines saying the things that those guys are saying.”

Maher claims he doesn’t think about the risks while shooting, or the anger this film will likely spark. (The TIFF premiere drew a parade of chanting protesters – perhaps a harbinger of things to come.) “I’ve been mixing dangerous chemicals for a number of years on television and have had a number of people angry at me,” Maher says. “It’s part of the territory.”

The movie will also continue the debate on the ethics of the “stalkumentary.” Like Borat, many of Religulous’s interview subjects don’t seem to know what they’ve gotten themselves into. The sensitive may cringe for that loose-lipped senator, or the pair of solemn gay Muslims who clearly don’t get Maher’s jokes. Charles is unapologetic for the film’s ambush technique. “We’re not pranking, we’re not punking for the sake of it,” he insists. “We’re using our satirical tools to make a point.”

Sometimes, the filmmakers themselves were taken off guard. As in the scene with a senior Vatican priest who, in the shadow of the Holy See, blithely repudiates most of the tenets of the Roman Catholic faith. The 52-year-old Maher, who is part Jewish but was raised Catholic, found that particularly startling. “To hear someone of that rank in the Vatican say, ‘Ah, these are all stories; people need their stories’ – it’s eye-opening. It’s breathtaking in a way, to think that they are just feeding the masses what the masses need, but they don’t believe it themselves. Almost like a politician, eh?”

Some may complain that Religulous spends most of its 100 minutes attacking Christianity, Judaism and Islam. Charles says the film’s budget and limited time frame didn’t allow a foray into Buddhism and Hinduism. “To fly to India or places like that – and to even do the tutorial that would be required to get [Western viewers] up to speed on how [those religions] work – just would have taken too long.” However, he says the final feature represents only the tip of the Religulous iceberg. He shot 400 hours of material and has a 14-hour cut of the film. He’s currently pitching it to studio Lionsgate as a television series.

Getting back to what they want to accomplish with the film, Charles hopes its seed of doubt will flourish. “I’m a big believer in this concept of the meme, an idea that catches on in society,” he says. “I believe this has the potential to be a meme, to plant an idea in people’s minds that they hadn’t had before, and in doing so, to shift the paradigm ever so slightly to start raising these questions.”

Maher says the real indicator that Religulous has succeeded will be the laughs it gets — especially from believers. “I know from standup that there is a kind of laugh that, when you hear it, you know it’s a laugh against people’s will. They didn’t want to laugh at it; you literally pulled it out of them,” he says. “And that’s a special kind of laugh, because it tells me that they might actually think about what they were laughing about. That’s all I can ask that they come away with from this movie.”

Religulous opens Oct. 3.

Martin Morrow writes about the arts for CBCNews.ca.