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By Peter T. Chattaway
Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, a documentary on the battle between Darwinian evolutionists and
the Intelligent Design movement, has been making waves for months, since
long before it opened in American theatres April 18.
Scientists and outspoken atheists like Richard Dawkins
and P.Z. Myers have accused the filmmakers of interviewing them under false
pretenses. The scientific animation studio XVIVO has accused them of
copying elements from one of their videos. And Yoko Ono recently took the
filmmakers to court because they included a clip of her late husband John
Lennon’s song ‘Imagine’ in a sequence critiquing the
song’s atheistic worldview.
According to the Associated Press, a lawyer for the
filmmakers even argued in court that the film – which was shot in
multiple countries and was tentatively scheduled to come out on DVD in
October – needed to remain as it is because it may have an impact on
the American presidential election in November.
And where did all this controversy come from? From
right here in British Columbia. Or, to be more precise, from Bowen Island,
which producer and former software developer Walt Ruloff has called home
for the past 13 years.
The idea for the film, which finally opened in its
native Canada June 27, came when Ruloff was considering investing in
biotechnology.
He says he learned about “new mechanisms that are
being discovered within the cell that contradict the Darwinian
model.” However, he also met a lot of scientists who
“weren’t allowed” to speak about them, or publish their
findings – which is necessary for scientific research. See ‘Film,’ page 11
Ruloff decided to put a team together and make a movie,
drawing attention to the plight of ID advocates in a hostile academic
environment. And since he was auditing courses at Regent College around
that time, both of the movie’s other producers – Logan Craft, a
minister and TV producer who sits on the American board of the Centre for
Cultural Renewal, and John Sullivan, who helped organize one of Regent
College’s conferences on faith and film – were people Ruloff
had met there.
“The three executive producers all really got
together through Regent College,” says Ruloff, on the phone from his
home on Bowen Island. “Regent is the hub.”
Craft and Sullivan are Americans who happened to be
studying in Vancouver at the time. But the film does have some other local
connections. The script was co-written by Kevin Miller, an Abbotsford-based
freelance writer who has contributed to BC
Christian News and other Christian
publications. And all the editing was done, over the course of six
intensive months, on Bowen Island itself.
The film is hosted by Ben Stein, a former speechwriter
for Presidents Nixon and Ford, who has since become famous as an actor and
a game-show host. In one scene, Expelled even makes a nod to Stein’s famous bit part as a
droning teacher in Ferris Bueller’s Day
Off.
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Some have written the film off as Christian propaganda,
but Ruloff is quick to note that Stein is not Christian but, rather, a
“secular Jew.”
Is Expelled, then, a religious movie?
“Well, the movie has religious
implications,” says Ruloff. “The implications are that if these
people are right, as Ben Stein says at the end, God can be discovered
through science or evidence of a divine designer can be discovered –
and what can be more intriguing than that? It’s not saying that
science is making that ultimate move; but I mean, that’s quite
intriguing.”
Some have criticized the film for leaving out any hint
of scientists – including some ID advocates – who believe in
both God and at least some aspects of Darwinian science. Associate producer
Mark Mathis told Scientific American that including their points of view “would have
confused the film unnecessarily.”
For his part, Ruloff says Christians who claim to
believe in both God and Darwinian evolution “are being intellectually
dishonest or they’re being naïve. If they believe in evolution
and they believe in God, then they’re fine. But if they believe in
Darwinism, then I think they need to look at Darwinism again, because
that’s purely naïve.”
Ruloff declines to say exactly how much it cost to
produce Expelled –
let alone to promote it and defend it in court – but he says
it’s “probably one of the most expensive documentaries ever
made.”
The film has grossed $7.6 million in theatres so far,
roughly half of which will stay with the theatres. But Ruloff says the
signs are looking very good that the film, which he plans to release in
multiple formats, will turn a profit on DVD. It could even turn into a
five-year franchise, with newer, more science-oriented documentaries based
on the hours and hours of material that was left over, he says.
“You never make your money in the box office, but
the box office is what creates the buzz,” he says. “So
we’re doing extremely well if we sell a million DVDs, and we’re
expecting to sell well, well more than that.
“I mean, we’re getting orders in the
hundreds and hundreds of thousands just from one Christian group, so our
expectation is that the DVD will be off the charts.”
July 2008
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