The current issue of The New Yorker (July 20) features an article by Paul Rudnick, “Fun with Nuns,” explaining how he initially developed the movie, “Sister Act.” It also showcases his vile hatred of nuns.
Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on the article:
Why would a supposedly high-brow publication like The New Yorker lower the bar by publishing such trash? That it has done so is indisputable. And why would Rudnick, a self-confessed “suburban New Jersey Jew,” loathe nuns so much? We get a glimpse of what’s really bothering Rudnick when he explains how “Sister Act” took form. “I was lying on my couch one afternoon in the late nineteen-eighties, trying to come up with an idea for a screenplay, and I began to think about drag.” So fitting.
Ten years later, Rudnick’s mind was still in the gutter. That is when he gave us “The Most Fabulous Story Ever Told.” At the time, I wrote that I had not seen the play, nor had any intentions of doing so. “But I have read the reviews,” I said, “and it sounds like a routine homosexual play: full-frontal male nudity, filthy language, discussions of body parts, butch lesbians, effeminate gay men, ranting against nature, damning God for AIDS, etc.”
Now another ten years have passed, and nothing much has changed. Rudnick says in his article, and in the podcast available on the magazine’s website, that his goal in creating “Sister Act” was to “subvert the Catholic Church.” As only he can explain, “The script called for actresses of all shapes and ages, although the Disney executives still squabbled over which nuns should be ‘f—able.’”
None of this happened, of course, and that is because Rudnick walked out.
