Bill Maher: with his new film, Religulous, the comedian presses the world's oldest, hottest button

Interview, June-July, 2008 by David Steinberg

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Avoiding controversial, difficult, or polarizing subject matter has never been Bill Maher's strong suit. So it's appropriate that for his latest project the comedian would take on what is perhaps the most divisive subject in human history: religion. Directed by veteran comedy writer Larry Charles--instigator, helmer, and shaper of Sacha Baron Cohen's Borat (2006)--Maher's new film, Religulous, is a globe-trotting exploration of what we believe, why we believe it, and the mess it has all created.

DAVID STEINBERG: First of all, what a perfect match: you and Larry Charles.

BILL MAHER: You know, I've wanted to make this movie forever, and, as you well know, in the movie business, so often it is a case where you don't really do something until you find the right guy to do it with. And I finally found the right guy. Over 25 years, Larry Charles and I traveled in the same circles, played the same clubs, knew the same people, and somehow we had never met.

It's like a French farce, you know, where the door opens just as the other door opens and one guy goes out and the other guy comes in.

DS: You were everywhere together and just never saw each other.

BM: What can I say? Fate saved us for the right moment.

DS: Now, I don't know if you know how Larry Charles and I know each other. He was the only writer I could work with on The Tonight Show who could actually write things for me that I would say as my own--where Johnny Carson would say, "Oh, that was vintage Steinberg." Once that happened, I thought, Oh, I found a writer to work with.

BM: That's another thing about Larry Charles that I discovered while we were in so many different places together, with lots of time on our hands to just chat: He, over the course of his career, has written for everybody.

DS: Larry wrote for everybody. I was very sort of antiestablishment, or whatever the term was at the time when he was writing for me, but it was never enough for him. He wanted me arrested and in jail. That's the only way he would have been happy.

BM: You know what? I had the same experience with him. He is a brave man, braver than I, and he wanted us to do things that were really quite ... We did get thrown out of a lot of places. I'm not saying that he didn't get his way. But we weren't killed making Religulous, and I think he's disappointed.

DS: Tell us about Religulous.

BM: I'll just tell you what I told the studio when I pitched the movie, which is that it's a topic that I have been talking about on television for the last 15 years, and I always thought I kind of owned it. Although I certainly owe a debt to George Carlin, who talked about religion in scathing terms early on. But as far as somebody on television on a regular basis speaking out against religion, I kind of own that.

DS: Yeah, no question.

BM: So when I pitched this, I just said: "For a comedian, the topic of religion is the side of a barn. If you can't hit that ..." Because as a comedian, I think we all look for those areas where the truth diverts from what people are saying. That's why politics is such a rich area for us, because politicians make promises, and they don't keep them, and when we point out the difference, we get the laugh. And politicians will promise some pretty ridiculous things. They will promise a chicken in every pot. They'll promise that they'll keep Social Security solvent. They'll promise drugs for old people. They'll promise lots of stuff.

But it doesn't come near the kind of promises that religion makes. The Mormons promise that if you're good while you're on Earth, you get to rule over your own planet in the afterlife. Now, there's an entitlement that goes a little bit beyond prescription drugs for old people.

DS: Religion is still the most volatile topic. More than politics--more than anything else, really.

BM: Oh, yeah. And let's be honest. This country has a long tradition of not even talking about religion. I interviewed my mother for this movie, and she made an interesting point. I don't think we used it in the film, but she said, "When you kids were growing up, you knew all our friends, and we never even knew what religion people were. It was just something people did not discuss--even close friends." It's like, yeah, we knew the Ladds were Catholic, but we didn't go there. We knew they weren't Jewish. But what denomination, how often did they go to church--it just wasn't a topic of conversation. Just like you didn't talk about it when John E Kennedy was fucking around. That was just not something people ever discussed. That was the time.

DS: Our religion was private. Is that what it was?

BM: That's just the way the country was. It was just something that people didn't discuss. Of course, I think one reason why this movie has resonance now, or maybe Americans are finally coming to a point where they're accepting of religious criticism, is because George Bush is the first president who really put religion so front-and-center. He's the most Christ-y president we've ever had--and he is, not uncoincidentally, the biggest disaster we've ever had. I think even people who are religious don't like it shoved down their throat. I think people kind of get it on a certain level, that this is an antiscience administration, and we're living in a time where we can't afford to be antiscience--for environmental reasons, for educational reasons.