HJ: Talking to people after the movie, I think you did a good job in terms of people not feeling like it's a sermon or all about God. They think it's a funny movie and it does deal with God and it deals with a lot of other things too.

JH: It deals with the questions that we have about God&ellips; You know, I have really close friends who I love who are devout Evangelical Christians and I also have close friends who I love who don't believe in anything, and I would like for all of them to just enjoy going to the movie.

HJ: I think they will. Like you said, the movie deals with questions. It's called The Answer Man. And in the movie, there are specific questions that characters ask and answers that characters give. Where did those questions and answers come from?

JH: Well, they all came from me. I guess I'm the author of those questions and answers. There's a point in the movie in which Lou Taylor Pucci's character has made a deal with Jeff Daniel's character, Arlen Faber, and asks him a series of questions. I wrote 17 questions and answers, and then I picked the ones that I thought were the most entertaining. Also, there's 12 different ones that I wrote that are actually in the opening credits, that are questions from the book that Arlen Faber wrote. They're just sort of in the field, in the background. I didn't have to put quite as much thought into those as I did the ones you're paying attention to in the movie, but certainly, you'll get the tone of Arlen's questions. Like, "I don't believe in you; now what?" "War? What's up there?" Just the real simple questions that people have been asking for millennia.

HJ: In the movie, one of the central questions is where any answers come from, specifically where this book that Arlen wrote and the answers in it came from. Maybe they came from God. Maybe they came from somewhere else. As one of the characters says—

JH: "Maybe God used my pain and anger to make me part of some divine plan, but He sure as hell didn't let me in on it." Well, that's how I feel. And I think that all of us are attempting to reconcile ourselves with a creator who is silent. It's a tough spot to be in, even though you occasionally get glimmers or a direction presented to you or intuited or divined. For the most part, you know, it's us here, constantly scratching at the surface of what we know to try to get to&ellips; the truth? Whatever's supporting this? Obviously something is. You know you look around and you see there's an order and an intelligence at work, and something magical and special, not to be purely scientific. I mean everyone's been trying to get at it. Eugene O'Neill in Long Day's Journey into the Night, there's a quote in there that I love. He says: "It's as if the veil of things as they seem is drawn back by an unseen hand, and for a second you see and seeing the secret are the secret." So, I'm hopefully following in the footsteps of people both great and small trying to address these issues in an entertaining way.

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