The biologist in Randy Olson cringed at news reports of evangelical Christians challenging the teaching of evolution to schoolchildren in places such as Kansas on the grounds it was just a theory.
But the filmmaker in him feels just as strongly that scientists have done a lousy job explaining their side of the debate.
The result is "Flock of Dodos: The Evolution-Intelligent Design Circus," a humorous and entertaining documentary that premiered at New York's Tribeca Film Festival this week.
The film shines a spotlight on "intelligent design," a school of thought that says many of the seemingly miraculous and complex elements of nature must be the work of an intelligent designer — namely God.
The controversy is raging in America as intelligent design proponents face off in court with scientists who say evolution is supported by fossils and other evidence. So far, courts have struck down teaching intelligent design in science classrooms as a violation of the wall between church and state.
But Olson said scientists had squandered a winning hand through their inability or refusal to engage in the debate. He wants to show filmgoers there's little scientific challenge to evolution, yet he also wants to entertain them.
"First and foremost, film is an entertainment medium," said Olson, who left academia 15 years ago and has produced films for the past four years.
Olson, who has evolved from Harvard man to Hollywood director, was determined to make sure his film would not be a dry-as-dust documentary.
"Flock" injects interviews with Olson's 82-year-old mother, Muffy "Moose" Olson, for comic relief and the neutral voice of the layperson, between serious interviews with evolutionist scientists, advocates of intelligent design and school board members in the battleground states of Pennsylvania and Kansas — which also just happens to be Olson's home state.
Perhaps the brightest moments of the film come as Olson invites his academic pals to a poker game, recording an unscripted and at times tense round-table discussion among Ph.D-wielding scientists expressing frustration at the growing popularity of intelligent design.
Olson also shared his press briefing platform in New York with three actors in bright orange dodo costumes, modeled after cartoons that bridge different scenes of the movie.
Olson gives the intelligent design advocates plenty of airtime but the film exposes what Olson sees as the fallacies of best-selling authors who provide the intellectual firepower of the intelligent design movement.
He balances his critique of academics — too rigid and arrogant — with a calm, orderly attack on the arguments backing intelligent design.
Ultimately "Flock", which does not yet have a distributor, hopes to appeal well beyond college campuses. The biggest challenge was making his points without overloading audiences to the point of boredom, he said.
"The more information, the narrower the audience," Olson said.