Radio reminder

Pope gets ticked off at reporter in 2002 before he was Pope: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UK9b2O_Wdnc

I'm sure he's much nicer now that he's the Pope though!

And this afternoon, be sure to watch The Atheist Experience.

386sx @#1:

I'm sure he's much nicer now that he's the Pope though!

Was it The Daily Show that said that popes started being nice when they stopped having real armies?

Oh Hell! I just woke up and missed it. I am going to see the guest (Lee Salisbury) at the Roseville Library today in a couple hours, though.

I wish somebody in the media would say this today:

Yankee Stadium isn't for MASS.

Yankee Stadium is for ANGULAR MOMENTUM!

Was it The Daily Show that said that popes started being nice when they stopped having real armies?

Posted by: arensb | April 20, 2008 11:43 AM

Yeah, I believe it was on Thursday, and it took me a few minutes to stop laughing at that one. Just like when (on Real Time) Bill Maher showed a picture of the Pope walking with the President where you could see straight through his robe, and then commented "I thought this man ran an organization famous for covering things up?"

Speaking of religion... :) Here are the box office results for Expelled

Expelled(receipts are estimated)
Opening weekend, 1052 theaters, weekend gross $3.15M, avg per theater $2.99K

Here are some comparisons with other documentaries' opening weekends:

Fahrenheit 9/11
Opening weekend, 868 theaters, weekend gross $23.92M, avg per theater $27.5K

Sicko
Opening weekend, 441 theaters, weekend gross $3.5M, avg per theater $3.58K

An Inconvenient Truth (results show week after it debuted in 4 theaters)
Second week, 77 theaters, 2nd week gross $1.97 M, avg per theater $17.6K

http://www.boxofficemojo.com/weekend/chart/?yr=2008&wknd=16&p=.htm

Gosh, and they were sure it was gonna be a box office smash!

Yeah, there was an article in the LA Times a few days ago with happy talk from Walt Ruloff, the film's producer, predicting an opening weekend box office gross that would exceed the $24M opening weekend of Fahrenheit 9/11.

Ruloff said the film could top the $23.9-million opening for Michael Moore's polemic against President Bush, "Fahrenheit 9/11," the best launch ever for a documentary.

Fat chance! With only $3M in receipts, yet playing on more than 1050 screens, I think the opening weekend was a dismal failure, considering the amount of money and energy that went into the marketing. (The marketing budget probably exceed the production budget.)

The downside for the film's producers is that, based on this weekend's pathetic gross, they won't be able to hang on to all those screens.

$3K per showing is does not give you a long run. Their "box office legs" have been cut off at the knees.

By contrast, Sicko opened in half as many theaters, yet generated more receipts and more avg $$ per showing. And it disappeared pretty quickly.

And unlike many other films, Expelled probably won't have much of an audience in other territories or markets, as many other countries have a reality bias.:) The theme won't resonate overseas.

Expelled is destined to make its revenue being sold on DVD to church groups.

One more data point:

The average cost of film release prints is around $2K per print. So figure that Expelled blew at least $2M on release prints alone, and now they will lose a bunch of screens because of their poor receipts, and you will understand the magnitude of this disaster.

I was expecting it to be much worse (meaning Expelled would do much better) after listening to the Skepticality with Dawkins and Michael Shermer.

It was surprising to hear from Shermer that he thought Expelled would accomplish its mission with great effect. After all most of the people who are actually interested in seeing it would carry an ID bias to begin with.

Worse than anything I lament any respect I once had for Ben. I used to love Win Ben Stein's money. A pity.

@9 After the lawsuits for copyright infringement from maybe Harvard, PBS, Yoko Ohno, the profit margin will be still further reduced (or extinguished) and there will be no DVD sales without substantial reworking- even more expense! +_+

I have brought up the subject of this movie to people outside of the sciences and who are not religious zealots. The comments have ALL taken the form that this is a poorly done comedy and not worth watching, i.e. the Expelled people also flunked Advertising and Media methodology 101. They targeted the wrong demographic.