In the beginning God said let there be light and there was light. And then there was camera and then action and somehow the whole thing got out of hand.

At least that's the way it happened for Clive Walton and Marvin Handelman, two fledgling filmmakers who decided to use their first major Hollywood break to create a big-budget Bible epic for the 90s. Never mind that Clive and Marvin's previous credits included "Dial S For Sex," "Nude Ninjas" and "Alpha Deatha De Kappa," they were ready to do something relevant, something huge, something that would have a built-in audience among the 4 billion people who have read the bestseller.

Their story is the story of Hollywood dreams created and destroyed, of how a motion picture is written, produced and marketed with the blood and sweat of its makers. It is a story of how a production survives when Brando drops out, when the actress who plays Eve turns out to have a body-length tattoo, when the ark turns out to be too big for the soundstage. It is a story so tragically absurd it couldn't possibly be true ... except in Hollywood.

The shoot begins auspiciously as the screenwriter proclaims "I didn't write the script, God wrote it through me." But by the time they are through, the filmmakers will have managed to "cut out the depressing parts" of the Bible, reduce Jesus to a bit part, beg money from bizarre relatives, misquote the Hollywood Reporter review and cast Lou Ferrigno as Abel, Eve Plum (of "Brady Bunch" fame) as Mrs. Noah and Soupy Sales as Moses.

It gets worse. Budgets go down in flames while burning bushes merely sputter. Apostles are misnumbered and God trips on acid. An unholy alliance with Coca-Cola even precipitates a modern revision of the Ten Commandments.

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