Bill Maher on his new documentary, 'Religulous'

TORONTO -- Bill Maher knows that some moviegoers won't want to touch "Religulous" with a 10-foot staff of Moses.

"That's OK. That's any movie. What movie appeals to everybody? Not even everybody went to see Batman."

But a comic documentary about religion is no "Dark Knight," although a worshipper at a North Carolina truckers' chapel looks like he wants to go to his dark side after meeting Maher. "I don't like where you're going," he tells the comedian. "You do what you want, I'm outta here."

Maher isn't trying to lose friends and alienate people -- although he does that in some encounters -- just raise questions about religion and God.

"What is the origin of the (movie) idea?" Maher repeats, sitting at the right hand of director Larry Charles at tables bumped together in a hotel restaurant. It's a noisy, improbable setting to talk about faith and films, but space is at a premium during the Toronto International Film Festival.

The idea sprang from Maher's evolution "as someone who was a Catholic, had it drilled into my head as a small child and then slowly had it drilled out by becoming an adult and realizing it was a load of nonsense and starting to talk about it."

As you might guess, Maher won't be nominated for Catholic Man of the Year in this lifetime or the next. Oh wait, he doesn't believe in the next.

In its earliest days, Maher's "Politically Incorrect" asked if religion did more harm than good.

"We had a modest proposal about putting a warning label on the Bible. And after so many years of doing it on television, I just thought this is one topic that is deserving of a broader canvas and then it was a matter of trying to get someone interested in doing it as a movie. That was not easy."

Neither was finding the right director, who proved to be Charles, director of "Borat" and a producer-writer on "Seinfeld."

Charles, whose sunglasses and long graying beard inevitably call to mind ZZ Top, acknowledges, "This is a hard subject, and it's a hard subject for people to hear their beliefs threatened and questioned -- these kind of core beliefs -- and by using comedy, it makes that a more palatable equation."

Maher, son of a Jewish mother and Catholic father, attended church until age 13.

Now, he says, "I have faith in doubt. Doubt is my product. Doubt suits human nature, not certainty. So yeah, I mean I do think that if you are adamant in your belief that you're certain that you know what happens after you die, you are lacking intellectually, yes. There's a certain amount of growth that you have to do."

Now 52, his "growth" took most of his life. "I have great admiration for people who reach it at 20 since it took me to, like, 43 to reach it."

Maher's bruising in 2001 over what constituted cowardly behavior (some ABC affiliates yanked "Politically Incorrect" as a result of his comments) hasn't tamed his tongue.

"I would say it only inoculated me, 'cause whatever they throw at me after that, it could never be as intense." He had the White House on his, uh, backside.

Maher, whose "Real Time With Bill Maher" has aired on HBO since 2003, and Charles consider the movie's release in an election year fortuitous.

"Do we really want people running our governments who believe the Earth is 5,000 years old at this point in the 21st century?" Charles asks. "Do we want people in charge who believe these absurd things and are making decisions that affect the world, the future of civilization, based on those kind of ideas?"

When asked what he wants the audience to take away from "Religulous," Maher quips, "Well, I'd like to take from them $10.50, but I'd like them, also, to laugh, first and foremost. I'd like them to say, boy, they made a funny, funny movie, but also, I would like them to at least feel like the questions that have never been able to be asked -- this ultimate taboo -- are on the table."

The filmmakers put the questions on tables in Israel, England, the Netherlands, Italy and several U.S. spots.

"I think there's a lot of really religious people who won't go near this movie, but I also think America is a place where a lot of people say they're religious but we're phony religious people mostly," the HBO host says.

"The people in Saudi Arabia, those are true believers. Everybody here likes to say we're people of faith. No, you fly a plane into the building because you're so sure you're going to get the 72 virgins, that's a person of faith. I mean, it's evil, but they really believe it."

In America, Maher suggests, people often cherry-pick, taking what they want from the Bible or their leaders but ignoring directives about birth control, abortion or other issues.

And then there are the uncommitted. "They're not anti-religion, they're not pro-religion," Maher says.

"They might pray to God once in a while when they feel like they're in trouble or threatened or they're making a deal with him and they're bargaining or they're, 'Please God, can I get the job, God,' but they're not really either one.

"I want those people to come to the movie because those people can be moved. I think they're open, they're like the independent voters."

(Pittsburgh Post-Gazette movie editor Barbara Vancheri can be reached at bvancheri(at)post-gazette.com.)

(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)