Least funny showcase of stereotypes that makes me want to rap someone's knuckles with my ruler: Jon Stewart and Philip Seymour Hoffman on same, discussing Catholicism and Hoffman's new movie Doubt, adapted from the great John Patrick Shanley play about a (potential) pedophile priest, which I saw twice (and liked Eileen Atkins even better in it than Cherry Jones, of The Heiress and 24).
Stewart: The idea of holy folks, the priests and the nuns, having an argument, it's just something that never occurred to me that they would have, like, an office argument.
Hoffman: I know, you kind of don't think they're real when you're a kid. You think they go behind closed doors and something strange happens but it's magical and you shouldn't know anything about it. It is kind of strange, because I didn't have a big connection to the Catholic Church—I mean I was, but when I was playing those scenes, I remember actually in the scene walking into the room and action, cameras rolling, and still having this odd feeling of "What do we do here?''
Stewart: There's a priestly or religious figure sort of countenance that you imagine that never turns out and you forget that oh, you're just like, you're just some schmuck that decided never to have sex again.
Hoffman: And also, "I'm a man, so therefore I have all the power." Which is something that I don't—I don't live in that world ...
Stewart: Right ... I wonder, it's probably almost harder to hold on to your bearings in that, because it's, the rules of engagement are so different I would imagine in the clergy in any religion, and you do have this, not only do you have the power over those that work for you but you also have this pipeline to God. People have to come to you and be like, "Do you think he's going to be mad at me about the whole ...''
Hoffman: I was told, which I didn't know, that before all the changes happened in the '60s with the Catholic Church, the whole service was done with the priest's back to the audience. ... Because they had to talk to God through the, everyone basically like poltergeist through the priest.
Stewart: He's like Dixie cups with the string; it's fascinating stuff.