Wednesday, February 6, 2008

An anti-evolution film is secretly screened in Florida


Transcript of today's show:

While the state of Florida prepares to adopt evolution as the official new science standard, an anti-evolution film was secretly screened to
conservative Christian ministers at a conference in Orlando. Like Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ, Ben Stein's Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed is being privately previewed by the religious right before its general opening in April.

[source: Orlando Sentinel]


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from a blog post by Roger Moore, film critic of the Orlando Sentinel:
[The filmmakers are] showing the movie to what he and the producers hoped would be a friendly, receptive audience of conservative Christian ministers at a conference at the Northland mega-church next to the dog track up in Longwood. They're marking this movie, which they had said, earlier, they'd open in Feb. (now April) the same way they pitched The Passion of the Christ and The Chronicles of Narnia, said Paul Lauer of Motive Entertainment, who introduced Stein.

In other words, a stealth campaign, out of the public eye, preaching to the choir to get the word out about the movie without anyone who isn't a true believer passing a discouraging judgment on it.

They postered the Orlando Sentinel with email invitations, then tried to withdraw the one they sent to me. No dice. They also passed out non-disclosure "statement of confidentiality" agreements for people to sign. [read full blog post]