Commentator and character actor Ben Stein, whose film career took flight when he played the boring, strait-laced economics teacher in the 1986 teen comedy "Ferris Bueller's Day Off," has come around to the other side.
As host and co-writer of "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed," this time the 63-year-old Stein is the one striking a preppy rebel pose. In Premise Media Corp.'s new documentary, Stein purports to expose a conspiracy against the intelligent design movement, arguing that "Big Science" is stifling academic freedom by keeping any discussion of God out of the classroom.
"Expelled," with production and marketing budgets in the single-digit millions, is expected to make no dent at the box-office despite the widest documentary release ever, at more than 1,000 theaters. But it could dwarf forecasts with even a fraction of the faith-based crowd that turned Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ" into a cultural phenomenon in 2004.
This weekend's battle for No. 1 is between the Jet Li-Jackie Chan martial arts adventure, "The Forbidden Kingdom," from Lionsgate Films and Weinstein Co., and the raunchy romantic comedy "Forgetting Sarah Marshall," from Universal Pictures. The race looks as tight as Tom and Katie at an US Weekly photo shoot, with consumer tracking polls showing both films opening in the mid-teen millions, or slightly higher.
"Expelled" faces an uphill fight in an industry that spends an estimated $117 million to produce and market the average big studio film, although as "The Passion" showed, the faith market can be a surprising force when mobilized.
"This is David versus Goliath," Stein said in a phone interview, pausing to board a plane and, in his trademark monotone drawl, order a Tazo Refresh with honey. The Biblical tale "turned out OK for David," he said, "but often in the movie business it doesn't."
"Expelled," released via Rocky Mountain Pictures, is being called deceptive by several of the scientists who were interviewed in the film.
P.Z. Myers, a biologist at the University of Minnesota, Morris, said the producers pulled a "Borat"-style switcheroo after arranging his participation in a project called "Crossroads: The Intersection of Science and Religion."
"They played it up as a serious discussion with different points of view -- like a slightly boring documentary on 'Nova,' " he said. "Instead, we get a propaganda film portraying scientists as Nazis."
