Summary
"I feel terrible. I have the thing, the illness," he says, his voice fighting not to be a deep, constricted, scratchy, sniffly rasp when I finally contact him by phone at his home. "My wife had the same thing recently," he coughs, "and I'm pretty sure she gave it to me, so I've just been speaking with my lawyer, and he thinks I have a strong case."
I've called [Geoff Bolt] to talk about the philosophical comedy/documentary Religulous, which opened in theaters last fall and is set to be released on DVD Feb. 17. Directed by Larry Charles (the same guy who directed Borat), and featuring controversial commentator Bill Mäher as he travels the globe confirming his suspicion that extremely religious people are easy to make fun of, Religulous is made up of interviews in which Mäher goes head-to-head with evangelical Christians, Mormons, Catholics, Jews, Muslims and a well-dressed Hispanic gentleman who thinks he's the second coming of Christ. As a former teenage Christian fundamentalist myself (Shameless plug: Look for my upcoming one-man-show Wretch Like Me, coming this summer to a well-insured theater near you), and with Bolt being a semi-skeptical standup comic with a respectfully irreverent attitude toward the extremes of religion (his routine includes a bit about a guy attending mass but not appreciating the stale crackers they serve with the wine), Religulous seemed like a good launching pad for discussion. But with the always sly-humored Bolt currently incapacitated and probably contagious, we've decided not to "fellowship" in person, but rather to talk by phone, even though, as Bolt repeatedly reminds me, I can't hold him responsible for anything he says because he might possibly be hallucinating."[Bill Maher] wasn't trying to say anything," Bolt says, "he was just asking questions. No conversions to any point-of-view are attempted, Bill had no holster and pistol, no badge of truth. All he had were questions - "What's the point? Why are we here? What's going on? Who are we? Why do we exist?" So he went around the world just asking questions, and if he discovered anything, if he ended up with any point to make, it's that it really is our diversity that defines us, it's the different things we all believe - that's what we have in common.See the full content of this document
Extract
Losing Their Religion
Marin comedian/actor Geoff Bolt is a very sick person.
"I feel terrible. I have the thing, the illness," he says, his voice fighting not to be a deep, constricted, scratchy, sniffly rasp when I finally contact him by phone at his home. "My wife had the same thing recently," he coughs, "and I'm pretty sure she gave it to me, so I've just been speaking with my lawyer, and he thinks...See the full content of this document
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