I read the Torah, the Pentateuch, the stories that people recommended, one of them I enjoyed a great deal called Moses: A Life...and the Quran as well. Not all in one go.

The big [discovery] for me, other than realizing I had no idea about the character of Moses at all and just how complex of a character he was, was the nature of God. That he equally was very peculiar... [Also] really fascinating to me is that there’s actually no mention of the afterlife. Especially in Egypt where there’s obsession with death, I was very surprised by that as well… There’s also no mention of the devil. God is described as the god of good and evil.

The very first film I rented immediately after a meeting with Ridley was Life of Brian. Anything where you’re approaching it from a very earnest point of view can unintentionally become Life of Brian. It was a guiding light for me… Immediately after that I rented Mel Brooks’ History of the World. You have to get it out of your system, and you have to understand what we can unintentionally make funny, and you have to have humor. As earnest and as heavy as this, you have to have an element of comedy at your everyday life during filming because otherwise it just becomes too exhausting.