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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 on 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 the filmmakers 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 Vancouver, 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 opens in its native Canada tomorrow, 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," but 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.
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 talent involved. 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. 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 naive. 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 naive."
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."
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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."
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Creating controversy
The movie spends most of its 90 minutes spotlighting examples of what its star calls the "persecution" of scientists who dare to question Darwinian explanations. There are researchers who claim to have been denied tenure, had their funding cancelled or lost jobs for raising questions about evolution. Mr. Stein calls on some of the world's most prominent evolutionists/ atheists, such as Richard Dawkins, to debate them, doing his best to mock them as arrogant and intolerant.
National Post, April 26
Ben Stein
Interview with George Stroumboulopoulos
The Hour, CBC, May 16
Protesters rail against Darwin exhibition
Charles McVety stood in front of a giant poster of Charles Darwin, and called the father of natural selection a giant racist. "Today, we look up at this picture of Charles Darwin and ask that the truth be known," said the president of Canada Christian College to a multicoloured crowd of 50 prayerful protesters in front of the Royal Ontario Museum.
National Post, June 13
No intelligence allowed in Stein's film
The makers of Expelled, including Ben Stein, have not let facts stand in the way of their anti-Darwin screed
Peter McKnight, Vancouver Sun, June 21
Science is not philosophy
ID is often referred to as Creationism light. In fact it's more Creationism in drag. Though its proponents claim scientific neutrality, they are usually overtly religious people affiliated with overtly religious institutions. They have written essays and books about why ID is science. And yet when all the sophistry is boiled down, the theory amounts to "living things are complicated. Some-one must have made them." It may be a sublime idea worthy of religious and philosophical contemplation, but it fails to meet the definition of science. It can't be proven and it can't be tested. Complaining that science won't take ID seriously is like grieving the fact that mathematicians won't consider a flower pot to be a number.
John Moore, National Post, June 23
Ben Stein's new designs
How the lawyer, actor and game-show host became skeptical about the theory of evolution
National Post, June 24
Ben Stein's Expelled takes aim at Darwinism
Actor argues that intelligent design theory has merit
CanWest News Service, June 24
Vivendi acquires Expelled for DVD release
Intelligent design documentary to be released Oct. 21
Video Business, June 25
Storm gathers around Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed
Ben Stein's documentary, which connects Darwinism and Hitler and claims that scientists who believe in "intelligent design" have been blacklisted, is provoking plenty of sound and fury in protesters.
Georgia Straight, June 26
Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed
Truth begins and ends with the title of Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, a semislick advertorial for “intelligent design”, the sanitized public mask of creationism, itself invented by Christians who think their God is too stupid to have come up with evolution on his own.
Ken Eisner, Georgia Straight, June 26
June 26/2008
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fact...Theory of evolution is exactly that a theory...