This issue features a microinterview with Paul Verhoeven, conducted by Jules Moore. Verhoeven is a Dutch filmmaker and author who is best known for directing a heap of Hollywood’s most sleazy and sensational blockbusters: RoboCop, Total Recall, Basic Instinct, Starship Troopers, and Showgirls. In his anxiety-ridden twenties, Verhoeven found himself drawn to the world of the occult, eventually joining the Jesus Seminar, where he remains an active member. In 2008 he released his first book, Jesus of Nazareth, which questions the myth and reality of Jesus Christ. Verhoeven assumes a no-bullshit position on the historical Jesus as man and political radical, flawed and irrepressibly flatulent.

–Jules Moore

PART I

THE BELIEVER: You say: “Don’t forget that Jesus and his disciples led an itinerant existence, subsisting on whatever food came their way, so they probably had gastrointestinal problems. Jesus’ companions must have heard him snore, snuffle, and fart.” Do you think allowing him to be human and communicating him this way—you know, that he farted and these things—is too wild for most people, or can it be read naturally?

PAUL VERHOEVEN: In medieval times, people may have thought that he had such special intestines that he didn’t really have to eat, and that he didn’t have to go to the restroom.

BLVR: Do you think realizing Jesus is a farting man would improve his position in the minds of his modern disciples?

PV: In one way, it would bring him closer to us. We would be more aware that this was a person that could have stood next to us, walked alongside us, which he did with his disciples. But there has been this thing that has been established by the Church: although they pretended that he was fully human, they still made him much more divine than human. Even in the Catholic Church you don’t hear a lot about things of a normal human being; it’s all projected into the divine. But we are alone to solve our problems and we have to do it without divine intervention, without the hands of God to help us.

PART II

THE BELIEVER: There are all these words attached to you: controversial, shocking, provocative, and sleazy. It seems a bit ridiculous. Like we’re so precious that we can’t deal with naked breasts or poo.

PAUL VERHOEVEN: I would say it’s more like the United States. There are other countries that are a bit better and other countries that are ten times worse than here, of course. But [the United States is] a little difficult, of course, with sexuality. Sexuality is not a highly developed topic in the...