We recently had the opportunity to sit down with Tom Shadyac, director of Evan Almighty, for a roundtable discussion at a press event. As we quickly learned, he’s a long-haired, whirling dervish of manic energy, constantly defying people’s expectations.

RT: As compared to Bruce Almighty, it seems as if there was a conscious effort to stay away from anything possibly offensive, other than, say, poop jokes, in this movie.

Tom: It was a conscious effort to invite everyone to this movie. This is an ark story, with animals, a flood, and a big boat, and I thought it would be insane to not invite a two year old and a grandparent and everyone in between. The ark story speaks to everyone and I thought this movie ought to. It dictated to us what to do. So, no, you don’t find those things that I’m still absolutely fine with. Although, maybe you ought to not read your Bibles then, because it has a lot of violence, sexual impropriety and people with multiple wives and deception - but the darkness is used to light.

RT: You worked a lot with people’s image and conception of God, how God is depicted and how we imagine God. That seems to come from your own spirituality because it’s consistent with Bruce Almighty.

Tom: It does, it does. That voice you see in the movie, that God voice, is very personal to me. I’m very exacting with it. How he delivers it, the way he says it. Yes, it’s very specific and personal to me the way God is presented in these movies.

RT: What do you want people walking away thinking about this dialogue with God?

Tom: Everything I do is a reflection of where I’m standing or something that I believe in. So as a story-teller, we want to spread that. I took a journey in my life. I’ve had a great deal of success. I’ll say blessing/curse because they go hand in hand. I think it can be very deceiving. Because I was an idolater of magnitude, the bigger the better: the house the money, the thing. And I had to learn about personal change. For me, this is an expression of that. So do I want them to take that specific message? If it speaks to them, yes. Hopefully there’s enough here so that we can meet people right where they are. Art is best when this great Thing works through us. We don’t even know what we’re doing. That’s my personal journey, but how many other journeys are involved in this web?

RT: It’s not clear in the film whether the biblical account really happened. As part of the film’s back-story, God gives an interpretation of the story but he doesn’t quite come out and say that it did happen...

Tom: This is a new telling, a new approach to the Noah story. I couldn’t tell you whether it happened or not. It wouldn’t shake my faith either way. I’m sure there are those who will say “It happened, it happened.” Maybe it did, go with God. I don’t approach with “I know,” I approach it with an openness.

That story could absolutely fully exist as it was. We are not contrary to that story at all, I believe. Let’s say it happened, He’s saying, “I once destroyed the world, because there was so much corruption. We’re here today. I no longer have to destroy the world, look at what you’re doing. To each other.

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