THE MAN WHO SUED GOD Movie Interview by Toby White

After a widely-appreciated screening of THE MAN WHO SUED GOD, London’s press up-camped to the curious but somehow appropriate location of St Anne’s Church in Marylebone, London for a press conference with the star of the film, Billy Connolly. Waiting in the wings, with microphone, were the film’s director, Mark Joffe, and producer, Ben Gannon. Billy, in the production notes you’re quoted as saying that initially, when you read the script, you liked the premise but found it a little cutesy-pie… BILLY CONNOLLY: Aye… …so what persuaded you it could be made less “comfy”? BILLY CONNOLLY: I found that with a lot of scripts and especially comedies that they tend to lead to comfortable situations and happy endings and everybody’s quite nice and everybody gets a funny line whereas I think that when it comes to politics and religion, whether it’s comedy or not, the situation should carry the comedy, not the writing of comedy lines. There should be a funny situation that carries the comedy along and when you let it become more absurd and abstract real stuff happens. I mean people are funny when they’re angry and people are funny when they fight and I much prefer that than the old way of doing comedy, the comedy you now see on television where it’s obvious that people have argued for a funnier line. I think discomfort creates funny. Like when I do my act, if I’ve got no trousers on and everyone else has…or sex is funny if people are watching. I read something last night…it was about morality in a book about Scottish history. What was it [thinks]…it was David Hume, the philosopher, quoting Adam Smith and he said that morality is the feeling that somebody’s watching you do whatever you’re doing. And I think that’s where the fun lies, being an observer of a situation rather than them perform it for you. I hope I haven’t gone on too long. What do you think of comedy writing these days? BILLY CONNOLLY: It’s getting better all the time. Some people can survive ordinary stuff that isn’t that good, like Eddie Murphy. For what’s it worth, I think he’s the best comedy actor in the world, you can go and see a pretty ordinary film and he’ll be brilliant in it. But more European the writing gets, the better it gets, allowing the situation. And it’s lovely to see American film going that way. What was that one about Mary? THERE’S SOMETHING ABOUT MARY. I thought I would need an ambulance in that film. When he got caught in the zipper I thought I was going to have to be carried out of there. It happened to me once, in an aeroplane, for Christ’s sake, I mean what can you do? You can’t send for a stewardess [laughter]. But yes, I’m sorry, comedy writing is getting better. It’s been suggested that the film’s appeal is Capra-esque about the little man roaring against the establishment, in this case he’s pricking the pomposity of the Church. BILLY CONNOLLY: Well, it’s not so much that, it’s pricking the fraudulence of the insurance situation. I had never read anything like this until I was doing the film but Mark and people showed me stuff where in a flood, where you’re flooded from above or below; if you’re flooded from above you get the money but not if you’re flooded from below. In both cases you’re flooded…it smacks of fraudulence. Is there anything as absurd and abstract as an act of God? It’s not so much the little guy against God - that just happens to be the situation. Continued on page 2

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