Filmmaker unapologetic at being an evolutionist

He may have gone to Harvard for graduate school, and he may live in California these days, but when filmmaker Randy Olson returns home to Kansas, it is clear that he has missed the people of the Midwest. He thinks they're nice.

Olson's mother is one of his main interviewees in his documentary "Flock of Dodos: The Evolution-Intelligent Design Circus." His mother, in fact, inspired him to make the film. As mothers are wont to do, she'd been clipping articles from the local paper and mailing them to her son.

The clippings were about members of the local school board who were trying to force the teaching of intelligent design in Kansas science classes. Olson, who was a biologist before he became a filmmaker, decided a documentary was in order.

The Salt Lake Film Center and the Utah Museum of Natural History collaborated to bring Olson and his documentary to Utah next Tuesday. Director of the Salt Lake Film Center, Kathryn Toll, hopes to draw a crowd large enough to fill the 500-seat theater in the Rose Wagner Center. (Toll said the center will continue to show movies in the Salt Lake Main Library and at Westminster College and the University of Utah, occasionally using this larger theater due to increasing interest in the programs.)

"Flock of Dodos" was selected for several film festivals in 2006, including the Tribeca Film Festival, and won the best documentary-feature award at the New Hampshire Film Expo. "Dodos" is a Prairie Starfish Production.

In the opening seconds of the movie, writer-director Olson states his bias. He makes no apologies about being an evolutionist, even as he sets out to try to be fair to the intelligent-design supporters in his native state.

Throughout the documentary, Olson is the most gentle of interviewers. No Michael Moore here.

But Olson does allow his subjects to reveal themselves. One of the evolutionists is overbearing and rude at an all-scientist poker party. One of the school-board members doesn't understand fossils. One of the intelligent-design experts hasn't read the modern biology textbooks he keeps in his office.

Olson mentions several times that the intelligent-designers are well-dressed and nice. The scientists are "intelligent" — but the intelligent-designers are repeatedly described as "nice." The viewer may conclude that Olson's surprise at how "nice" they are comes off as a bit patronizing.