The Man Who Sued God [DVD]

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Some might find The Man Who Sued God audacious, perhaps sacrilegious, certainly rebellious. Most will find it very funny. So far as Bille Brown’s character is concerned, write Don Watson thinks it comes straight out of the nexus between the Catholic church and Australian politics. He suspects the character might easily have been a seminarian before jumping the fence and going into law. The link between him and the Cardinal is organic - they’d gone to school together - and as a lawyer he’s as tough as nails, a “Catholic hard man”. It's modest fare, but there's something rather sweet about the cranky relationship between Connolly and Judy Davis (as the journalist who decides to help him with his quest), which is well served by director Mark Joffe's willingness to take the little man versus the system theme with a huge pinch of salt.

Mrs Brown showed Billy Connolly in an entirely different light, showing that he could play a character. Immediately he seemed the ideal person.An old friend of Joffe's, Davis had expressed interest in the script in the early '90s. “Although she varied her performance, Judy got in to her character very easily. In fact both of them were on top of their form from the beginning.” To emphasise the extended period of script development, director Mark Joffe notes that the line where the Jewish rabbi hopes that God exists - he spent half the morning singing to him - had stayed in the script for some twelve years.

In the DVD commentary, director Mark Joffe notes that one of the earlier drafts of the script had Billy Connolly’s character nearly drowning in the opening storm sequence, and to save himself from drowning, chopping off his toe. He jokes that to be truthful, the reason they didn’t do it had nothing to do with the concept; it was expediency - they couldn’t afford to go underwater, and do all that, but he doesn’t think it affected the film. Writer Don Watson agrees, though he thinks the drowning scenes were terrific. Joffe adds that the budget for the special effects etc, were astronomical. Billy Connolly stars as Steve Myers, bringing humour as well as the kind of depth and realness to his character with which he touched audiences around the world in Mrs Brown. Judy Davis is Anna Redmond, a well known but jaded media personality who inspires Steve to teach the insurance companies a lesson. After praising the crew as top of the line, Joffe signs off (again suggesting that Watson and Bridie might have finished their duties a little earlier).The film opened strongly, and David Dale provided a contest between Lantana and The Man Who Sued God in the Sydney Morning Herald on 10th November 2001: Joffe is very happy to finally “give birth” to this project so long in the making. The welcome completion of The Man Who Sued God prompts Joffe to impart an insight into the fleeting nature of the business. “The film was very close to not being made, really close to not being made. We decided that it had to be made for a certain budget otherwise it wasn't going to be what we wanted it to be and you can only compr

As offensive as this portrayal may be for some viewers, it is worth staying to the end of this film to see how well religious faith comes out of it. Together with Lantana, The Man Who Sued God was one of three big domestic box office winners in 2001. Joffe says that the opening sequence was shot over a few days - overall the unit spent a couple of weeks on location on the south coast, trying to fit quite a lot of filming in. Because of technical requirements and the weather, they shot with two cameras (as they did elsewhere in the film). We sent Billy the material when he was on tour here about 18 months ago and he responded straight away - he liked it immediately.”Steve Myers is the protagonist in the feisty, frighteningly relevant romantic comedy THE MAN WHO SUED GOD. As for the film, it mainly serves as a comedic vehicle for the two stars, Billy Connolly and Judy Davis. Billy Connolly plays a barely disguised Billy Connolly, pretending to be a fisherman, who, when his boat gets zapped by lightning, decides to take on his insurance company and assorted churches, all satirical targets for Don Watson’s screenplay. I can't imagine many Jews would be too pleased with the portrayal of the Rabbi "So, we just prove there is no God, ...who cares!" seems to be his attitude, but generally the film is pretty amusing with an interesting premise. Impossible Insurance: Inverted. Steve sues God (through the clergy) because his insurance company exploited the standard loophole of " acts of God " to prevent paying him.

They began to develop the script together and over the years worked with several writers in an attempt to fully realise the initial brilliant idea. Writer Don Watson joined the team around four years before production began. It's a formula, to be sure, but it's worked out brilliantly. (One comparison that comes to mind is Adam's Rib, which uses the law and some very witty dialog to explore marital relationships.) And the ending is absolutely perfect, resolving all the questions with just the right mixture of theology and enlightened common sense. Instead of a heavy-handed Hollywood resolution, we get something more delicate and subtle, but also far more satisfying.She always was ready for the things I would do in a scene and that is terribly impressive. I like her very much as a person - I like talking to her about life. I don’t speak to actors, directors or producers about drama. I want to know where they come from, who their parents are, how they met their husbands … I like to work at that human level, not on a technical level.” Unfortunately it is slightly too long and there are a few bits that could have been quite easily cut without harming the story. The screenplay was always going to be difficult as I was determined to make a satire, and to combine it with an adult romantic comedy. I wanted to make an adult, intelligent film. So often films that aspire to intelligence get dumbed down in the development process, but I was uncompromising and my producer Ben Gannon was uncompromising. We wanted to make a film that we would want to see and not make excuses for,” says Joffe. About 76 minutes in, with Billy Connolly’s character in church looking up at a star-studded ceiling, Joffe says that he couldn’t afford to do a night sequence where Connolly’s character would walk around thinking about life. Instead, he made up a sequence on the run, when he saw the stars on the ceiling in the synagogue, and thought this was just as profound, beautiful and poetic, and could be even more effective in the character’s decision-making. The location was the Great Synagogue in Sydney, and he wanted to avoid being heavy-handed about it, and wanted to make it poetic.