Oh yes, get ready for this bombshell, which is scheduled to hit theaters on October 3rd. I'm sure this will be one big, fat controversial film for the religious right to rally around a month before the election. But you have to give credit to Bill for taking this subject head on in his unabashed, humorous fashion.
Last night, I saw Bill Maher in concert in Phoenix at the Dodge Theater. Even for Arizona, he had a packed crowd of around 5000 people. Prior to his act, they were showing this preview of his upcoming movie, "Religulous:"
"Religulous" Link
The clip is worth watching alone just for Bush's comment in it--God, the man is so stupid (no pun intended). Just from the clip, you can tell Bill is going to offend many people with this movie.
The Los Angeles Times did a review of the movie and here are some highlights:
In Bill Maher's new documentary, "Religulous," the film's protagonist--Maher himself--feels the same way about the film's subject matter at the beginning as at the end: In other words, he thinks religion is a big crock of spit. You know irreverence is the order of the day when Maher, reacting to a smooth-talking black preacher's boast that he got a great deal on his $2,000 suits, drolly observes, "I find it interesting that you're a Christian, you used to be a Muslim but you buy all your clothes like a Jew."
"Religulous" doesn't open until Oct. 3, but after seeing the movie I couldn't wait to grill Maher about how he managed to get so many deeply religious figures to actually talk to him, since it's obvious to anyone whose ever watched Maher's act (on "Politically Incorrect" or HBO's "Real Time With Bill Maher" or in a comedy club) that he wasn't much of a believer. In many ways, the film is a comic bookend to Sam Harris' "The End of Faith," a humorless best seller that views religion as a bastion of superstition and moral hypocrisy. Although Maher embraces Harris' belief that religion is a destructive force that has brought great pain and suffering into the world--at one point he calls it a neurological disorder--Maher is always searching for the humor in every situation. A longtime acolyte of George Carlin, when Maher confronts a religious zealot or hustler, he prefers mocking over scolding.
Rolling his eyes, often full of derision, Maher gets in his licks with everyone, from a guy playing Jesus at a Holy Land theme park in Orlando to Muslims at a gay bar in Amsterdam to a rabbi who advocates the dissolution of Israel (he wears a card with the slogan "A Jew Not a Zionist"). As everything from "The Gong Show" to "Borat" has proved, real people and situations are often undeniably funnier than anything scripted by the best comic minds. In Holland, Maher is in the midst of questioning a somber Muslim cleric when he's interrupted by the cleric's cellphone, whose ring tone is Led Zeppelin's "Kashmir."
It appears that Bill also used some deception to get many of these religious people to talk to him during his documentary (along the same lines of the "Borat" film):
On how he got people to talk to him: "It was simple: We never, ever, used my name. We never told anybody it was me who was going to do the interviews. We even had a fake title for the film. We called it 'A Spiritual Journey.' It didn't work everywhere. We went to Salk Lake City, but no one would let us film there at all."
Get ready for the shit to hit the fan after this is released.
As for Bill's show last night, I was eager to hear what he would say about many political issues given that he's been on vacation from his show on HBO, "Real Time with Bill Maher," for the past couple of months. In a nutshell--
- He was kind to Hillary but mocked her for being too boring.
- He bashed Bush and the ignorance and hypocrisy of the Republican Party at every turn.
- He defended Barack Obama and Michelle from the lack of patriotism charges and mocked Republicans about how they view patriotism. Also tore apart the Republicans' attempts to paint Obama as the outsider.
- He made tons of jokes about McCain's age.
- He was not kind to John Edwards, and reduced the whole affair to a crude discussion about sex and fantasies (also throwing Elliot Spitzer into the mix.) The best line though was something along the lines of, "Well, at least with the Democrats, their sex scandals are with women."