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TOM SHADYAC:
“The original thought about this with Jim [Carrey] was to do ‘Bruce 2: The Ark.’ We even wrote a draft, but Jim couldn’t decide either way. I think ultimately he felt that his character had arced out – or ‘arked’ out. Steve came into it right after Jim said, ‘Mmmm, can’t decide.’ Steve was brilliant in Bruce Almighty. He stole the scenes he was in. I got an early screening of The 40 Year Old Virgin, and thought this guy can carry a movie.”
STEVE CARELL:
“Tom came and I thought that he was going to pitch the idea of a sequel starring Jim, and maybe featuring me. But when he said, ‘We’d like you to play the title role,’ I was like, ‘You had me at ‘Hello!’”
LAUREN GRAHAM (Joan Baxter):
“Steve’s a very funny guy, and I really appreciated how he approached things. He’s a real actor. I liked his work in 40 Year Old Virgin because I thought, ‘This is so small and subtle, and he’s coming from the character. He’s not coming from, I’m doing something wacky and big.’ And I just liked that.”
CARELL:
“I think the most difficult scene to shoot might have been with the birds on me. They were on me for a few days straight. And they were real, that wasn’t a computer-generated flock of birds on me. They would literally not get off me. The snake in the car was CGI, because the snake they used kept crawling down the back of my jacket, and these were like pythons.”
SHADYAC:
“Steve sprained his ankle [during the scene] where he jumps out of the car trying to get away from the animals that were on him – the spiders and the snakes. He did have to go to the hospital because he injured his ankle pretty badly, but he wanted to keep shooting.”
GRAHAM:
“It was amazing watching the trainers with the animals, getting them kindly and very simply to do what they wanted them to do. I thought, ‘These giraffes have not been training to do Evan Almighty their whole lives. How do they know to bring him the hammer?’ So much of the stuff is real that you see in the movie.”
CARELL:
“I don’t see this as a biblical comedy. I see it as a comedy that is based upon a story of the Old Testament. I think it’s a fable, a tale about a guy who has to make a huge leap of faith. This movie is for everybody, it is for any faith or non-faith. The message behind it is for people to be a little kinder and take care of each other and the world we live in. And I think that’s a universal theme as opposed to a religious ideology.”
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THE CONCEPT:
