Ben Stein is coming to town next week for a few arguments, with the intention of selling movie tickets, in order to watch him argue even more.

The celebrity Stein achieved as the economics teacher in Ferris Beuller’s Day Off in 1986 led to countless cameo appearances, cartoon voices and the Win Ben Stein’s Money game show. But only this year does Stein have his face on a movie poster, and his name above the title of Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed.
 

Preceded by an unexpected wave of awareness south of the border in April, when it opened in over 1,000 theatres, Expelled hits about 50 screens across Canada on June 27. The joyless flick unabashedly promotes intelligent design as a viable scientific position, highlighting the stories of American academics shut out of lecture halls for taking the stance that Charles Darwin’s word on evolution shouldn’t be the last — a cause Stein is personally prone to speaking out about.

Canadian promotion for Expelled kicked off last Wednesday in Ottawa with a private screening hosted by Saskatchewan Conservative MP Maurice Vellacott, which drew 30 Parliament Hill types to meet co-writer and executive producer Walt Ruloff — a Toronto software company founder whose entrepreneurial streak took him to Vancouver, where he started Premise Media Corporation in 2005.

And now 43-year-old Ruloff can boast of making one of the most commercially successful documentary features of all-time, earning twice its $3.5 million budget in a month — thanks in no small part to the evangelical demographic.

The successful formula will be duplicated in this country over the next couple weeks, including direct mail, voice mail and email to around a million Canadians affiliated with faith-based groups. Motive Marketing, a company specializing in “Faith and Family” entertainment has employed strategies comparable to their campaign for Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ.

Expelled got its biggest mainstream publicity boost, however, when Yoko Ono filed a legal complaint about 15 dismissive seconds of John Lennon’s “Imagine” — specifically the line “nothing to kill or die for/ and no religion too” — to illustrate how a rejection of creationism historically correlated with the rise of Stalinism and the Holocaust. An injunction was requested to stop distribution of the film entirely.

“The situation was very difficult for us,” says Ruloff. “We knew we were in a fair position because of the fair-use law, so we were never really worried. But it was still a major distraction.”

A judge in New York State quashed the case, stating that the “Imagine” snippet was within boundaries of “comment and criticism.”

Comment and criticism were Ruloff’s main objectives in making Expelled, although he can also claim to have one of the worst reviewed movies of 2008. And while the rare thumbs-up came from Christianity Today, reviewer Mark Moring pointed out those seeking anti-Darwinist argument will be disappointed.

“The central argument of the movie isn’t against people taking down religion,” says Ruloff. “But if science is at a point where metaphysical implications become unavoidable, how can repression or suppression of those views be helpful? And what’s the logic behind the academy creating that environment when the American Constitution presumes the existence of God? We’re not asking scientists to be mystics or philosophers — just let scientists be scientists.”

The advancement of Academic Freedom bills, such as one recently passed in Louisiana — allowing a broader range of critical opinions in science classes — were part of the effort to leverage Expelled’s success into some political impact.

Ruloff also prides himself in making a film that motivates the audience to talk.

“We were really surprised and heartened to hear how many people were inspired to go out for a discussion afterward,” says Ruloff. “And even cases where they’d stand in the aisles and talk about the issues to the point where the ushers had to kick them out to make way for the next screening.”

Their need to blow off steam is understandable after feeling held captive through 90 barraging minutes of Expelled, despite soundtrack songs and vintage film footage meant to provide levity. While the hangdog persona of Ben Stein supposedly evokes humour, and watching him get recognized in public while asking for directions is an amusing diversion, the tempo isn’t exactly whimsical.

But the 63-year-old Stein — a Yale Law valedictorian who got his first taste of celebrity as a speechwriter for Richard Nixon — apparently has a different concept of fun. “Debate brings him the greatest joy,” says Ruloff. “He’s well past the point of thinking of himself as a sensitive target.

“We knew we needed a celebrity face to make this more than a PBS-style documentary, something that a grade-10 student would want to watch, and had some funny elements. Ben Stein was at the top of the list, and he was completely engaged by the idea within 10 minutes of the first meeting because he’s genuinely worried about our state of existence and how the existence of God has been mitigated as a position within the scientific landscape.”

The opposition has included the Expelled Exposed website (created and maintained by the National Center for Science Education), and claims that interviewees — along with the members of The Killers, whose “All the Things I’ve Done” is on the soundtrack — were misled by producers about the name of the film, or its focus. Ruloff’s basic response is that those complaining were “paid handsomely” for participating, there were 60 potential working titles before Expelled was settled on and Stein’s own doubts about Darwin are not a secret.

Expelled culminates in a face-off with Richard Dawkins, author of The God Delusion, which Ruloff boasts is “an intellectual meltdown from his positioning.”

Yet, the need for a contemporary denouement featuring a best-selling rhetorician — instead of ending the film on the note that Adolf Hitler was a fan of Charles Darwin, too — does feel like a contrived effort to treat cranky atheism as a threat.

Promoting creationism isn’t the agenda, Ruloff asserts, claiming his inspiration came from noticing that biotech engineers were being forced to take a Darwinist position on their findings, rather than having thoughts evolve beyond evolution. And he claims to know of at least one doctoral candidate at a Canadian university who has an intelligent-design inference in his findings but is keeping quiet, for now, fearing that his credentials will be sabotaged.

Nonetheless, while this isn’t the first time a film has been marketed to faith-based audiences in Canada, it might be the first time the mass media will help stoke their enthusiasm — Stein is solidly booked for interviews in Toronto on Thursday.  

Maybe the types of entertainment described by Daniel Radosh in the recent book Rapture Ready! Adventures in the Parallel Universe of Christian Pop Culture aren’t that far from permeating the mainstream, after all. Radosh was put off by how allegations of misrepresentation by Expelled’s producers were brushed aside by the evangelical community, whose trust he gained as a Jewish outsider.

“Seeing the people I made connections with cheer on this movie was a bit disheartening,” says Radosh. “I’m all for cross-cultural dialogue, and an authoritative exchange of perspective, but honesty has to be the starting point.

“Ben Stein works for them because then they can say the argument isn’t about religion, it’s about science — even though it’s about religion.

“With the success of the movie, I’m sure he could get a lucrative book deal with a Christian publisher, and he can be like the Senator Joe Lieberman of popular culture — or, maybe he’s more like the intellectual version of William Shatner.”

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