A short but interesting article from this Sunday’s New York Times (registration required) about the depiction of God in both American and British cinema:

But that was 1965. By 1972, Peter O’Toole was portraying the Absolute Unknowable Righteous Eternal Lord of Hosts, King of Kings and 14th Earl of Gurney in “The Ruling Class.” The Monty Python crew — Michael Palin, John Cleese and the others — inserted God into all their films. At first, Terry Gilliam, who did the animations, sketched Him as a hipster, wearing dark glasses. But then he settled on the more resonant image of Dr. William Gilbert (Leviathan) Grace, the obese turn-of-the-century Gloucestershire cricketer, whose photograph is dominated by a beard you could lose wickets in. The Pythons’ cartoon God, Mr. Palin said, “saved us a little money. Very expensive, real God.”

Frankly, however, I’m much less concerned with the upcoming Bruce Almighty‘s depiction of the almighty than with whether or not it’s funny. The fact that Steve Oedekerk is one of the credited screenwriters fills me with no small amount of dread. As Keith Phipps says in his review of Oedekerk’s desperately awful Kung Pow!: Enter The Fist, “…remember that name, and remember to avoid it.”

It’s also interesting (well, to me anyway) to note that the other Terry Gilliam God mentioned in the article, Time Bandits‘ Ralph Richardson, was also from Gloucestershire. You’d think they’d have seen a sharp rise in spiritual pilgrimages over there because of it, but you would of course be wrong.