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<\/a>The \u201cbiblical comedy\u201d Year One<\/a><\/i> comes out next month, and at least two websites posted new stories last week describing their visits to the set last year; one of them also posted several interviews with the director and members of the cast.<\/span><\/p>\n
The main report at ComingSoon.net<\/a> focuses on costumes, production design and the like \u2014 though it also notes, without quite saying so, that the film seems to have shuffled the chronology and geography of the Book of Genesis somewhat. Describing what they saw in the city of Sodom, they write:<\/p>\n There was a giant golden bull\u2019s head<\/a> prominently displayed in front of a wide-open courtyard where the villagers could gather for the main event, the ceremonial sacrifice of virgins to the Gods by the High Priest (played by Oliver Platt). Apparently, Sodom has been suffering somewhat of a drought and the High Priest has been getting a lot of stress from his King (his brother-in-law) to fix the problem, so he\u2019s been trying everything to get the Gods to bring water down from the sky. Even though the bull\u2019s head was impressive, it was hard not to be even more awed by the giant phallic structure that towered over the entire city, which was clearly in the process of being built, going by the scaffolding that surrounded it. In fact, this scaffolding was not there for the production team as much as for the half-dozen barely-dressed extras playing the slaves working on the construction of what was meant to represent the Tower of Babel. They\u2019d be actively working in the background whenever they were shooting a scene in that general direction.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n The individual interviews bring up some interesting subjects, too. For example, Jack Black<\/a> discusses some of the linguistic issues that have affected his improvising:<\/p>\n CS: Have you ad-libbed lines that you realized you couldn\u2019t say because it doesn\u2019t exist yet? In a similar vein, co-star Michael Cera<\/a> adds:<\/p>\n CS: I heard you use the word \u201ccompulsory\u201d to the slave driver in the scene\u2026 CS: And bullets aren\u2019t even invented. CS: Usually do discussions move forward with you saying it anyway? CS: Is that creating limitations on how you improvise? Meanwhile, David Cross<\/a> reveals that his character, Cain, will have a considerably bigger role in this film, beyond simply killing his brother Abel:<\/p>\n ComingSoon.net: You play Cain in the movie, but it seems like you have a bigger role than Cain in the bible. CS: The mark of Cain. CS: This isn\u2019t in the movie though? CS: How did you put a comedic twist on playing Cain? Finally, director Harold Ramis<\/a> discusses some of the ideas behind the movie:<\/p>\n CS: You mentioned \u201cLife of Brian<\/a>\u201d before. We were talking earlier about other great Biblical comedies like \u201cHistory of the World Part I\u201d or \u201cWholly Moses!<\/a>,\u201d which is a bit of a forgotten film. What\u2019s going to differentiate this movie from some of the other classics? What\u2019s your spin on it, basically? CS: Do you think that the Old Testament is inherently funnier than the New Testament?
Black:<\/b> Oh God, every day. Yesterday, what did I say? We\u2019re forbidden, while we\u2019re here in Sodom, to go into this room, it\u2019s called the \u201cHoliest of Holies,\u201d where the Gods are in the room, supposedly, and if you go in there, you\u2019ll be totally vaporized, unless you\u2019re the High Priest. He\u2019s the only one allowed to go in there and talk to the gods. And I went in there, and the King and the Queen were there, and I was busted, and I said, \u201cOh, I was just looking, for the crapper.\u201d But you\u2019re not allowed to say \u201ccrapper,\u201d because the \u201ccrapper\u201d doesn\u2019t exist. Of course the crapper is based on Sir Thomas Crapper<\/a>, inventor of the first toilet. (laughter) So we changed it to, \u201cI was looking for the grunt hole.\u201d Sometimes it is okay, when you set up the rule never say anything that \u2013 I mean English wasn\u2019t invented back then so every word you say is breaking the rule but try to keep it back in that time period. Once in awhile you zing in a new thing and it is extra funny so it is about picking the places you get modern. Grunt holes are not modern, grunt holes they\u2019ve had since the beginning of time.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Cera:<\/b> Yeah, think it pre-dates that word? There have been a lot of discussions about words that pre-date like \u201ctotally\u201d or accidentally saying \u201cdodged a bullet there.\u201d<\/p>\n
Cera:<\/b> And Jack said like, \u201cSue me!\u201d (Laughs.)<\/p>\n
Cera:<\/b> No, no, Carol comes over and says \u201cYou can\u2019t say that.\u201d Like, I said \u201ctextbook\u201d one time. \u201cOh, it was a textbook suicide.\u201d And textbooks aren\u2019t invented yet. You can\u2019t say \u201ctextbook.\u201d<\/p>\n
Cera:<\/b> Kind of. You just don\u2019t think about those things. I think it\u2019s gotten less and less, but it really wouldn\u2019t have occurred to me unless someone had said, \u201cIt doesn\u2019t make sense for you not to say that.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
David Cross:<\/b> Cain keeps popping up. His descendants are cursed right?<\/p>\n
Cross:<\/b> Yes. I know this because I bought something called a \u201cParable Bible.\u201d It\u2019s easier to read (laughs). The words are the best approximation of what they meant. Prefacing that the Bible is all made up and it\u2019s fiction. It\u2019s a formalized fiction, but I\u2019ve been reading it and Cain\u2019s descendants are cursed. Wait, I was wrong. The mark of Cain is that Cain felt really bad about what he did, he had a lot of recrimination, he was lonely and upset and God banishes him. Which I never saw as much of a punishment but he has a wife and he\u2019s given a family, mysteriously, and says he thinks people are going to know he killed his brother and not gonna like him and cause harm to him so God gives him the mark of Cain so everyone knows it\u2019s Cain and everyone knows that if you f*ck with Cain you\u2019re gonna die.<\/p>\n
Cross:<\/b> Oh, no. This is just for your online edification.<\/p>\n
Cross:<\/b> Well, unfortunately we shot those scenes already before I got my Bible. [everyone laughs] I just had fun being duplicitous. And mean. And nasty. And murderous. And conniving. And I end up ratting Jack and Michael out. I get promoted because of it. And it\u2019s fun. I mean anytime you get to do that. I usually only get cast in two things. It\u2019s either nerdy guy or sarcastic, nasty guy, but this is kind of a new twist on sarcastic, nasty guy, so I like it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Ramis:<\/b> Well (chuckles) our spin is that \u201cWholly Moses!\u201d was awful! [laughter] And that\u2019s well forgotten, and \u201cHistory of the World\u201d I looked at again and it\u2019s very old school. It\u2019s very Catskills. It isn\u2019t really expressing any kind of philosophy. Whereas the Python films do contain some kind of social commentary, and there\u2019s a sense of playing with real literature with the Pythons, and that\u2019s sort of what I was going for here. I\u2019ve been looking at the Old Testament for a very long time, starting as a Hebrew school student, and just thinking about it every year. I\u2019ve had some really enlightening contact with a progressive rabbi that I know, and these ideas, suddenly after 9\/11, seem much more important. The role that religion plays in the world, the power of Fundamentalism over people\u2019s lives. I thought, maybe I can take all of those ideas I had about the early world and use them in service of this idea. And to somehow find an interpretation of Genesis that would hook directly into where we are today. All our problems go all the way back right to the beginning.<\/p>\n
Ramis:<\/b> I don\u2019t know about funnier, but I was explaining to someone that the New Testament is a much better narrative, that\u2019s why it\u2019s more popular, because it\u2019s like a hero\u2019s journey. It\u2019s one character, the story takes place in one person\u2019s lifetime, it has a beginning, a middle and an end, and a redemption. You look at the Old Testament, and it\u2019s one dysfunctional family after another. Somehow, when we tell Bible stories to kids, they turn out to be little morality tales, but they\u2019re not! You read the Old Testament, and people, they\u2019re more than flawed; they do some terrible things to each other, and there are no happy endings; there are no resolutions. These stories just go on and on in the Old Testament. I noticed that, and I also noticed that they\u2019re all journeys in the Old Testament. Everyone\u2019s on a journey; they\u2019ve either been expelled from somewhere or exiled or they\u2019re fleeing from something or they\u2019re out seeking something in the world. When I thought about doing the Old Testament, there was no single story that has a good enough arc to be a movie, unless you\u2019re doing \u201cThe Ten Commandments<\/a>\u201d again. So I thought I could take all these stories from the early part of Genesis and smash them into one story. I\u2019m sure most of our young audience will not know the difference anyway. (laughter) So it was a way to try and forge a narrative out of a bunch of Genesis material.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n