The Expelled Strategy: How Maher Got His Interviews
If Bill Maher’s strategy for landing interviews for his mockumentary Religulous sounds familiar, it’s because it’s the same method that Ben Stein & co. used for Expelled. From an LA Times blog:
So how did Maher manage to get all these people to actually talk to him? Since “Religulous” was directed by Larry Charles, who also did “Borat,” I suspected that subterfuge and trickery were involved. I was not far wrong. Here’s how Maher pulled it off:
On how he got people to talk to him: “It was simple: We never, ever, used my name. We never told anybody it was me who was going to do the interviews. We even had a fake title for the film. We called it ‘A Spiritual Journey.’ It didn’t work everywhere. We went to Salk Lake City, but no one would let us film there at all.”
On the element of surprise: “Larry Charles’ theory is–just keep going till they throw you out. I guess he learned that on ‘Borat.’ The crew would set up and at the last second, when the cameras were already rolling, I would show up. So either they’d be seen on camera leaving the interview and lose face or they’d have to talk to me. It was like–‘And now here’s … Bill!’ You could usually see the troubled looks on their faces. At the Holy Land theme park, the PR woman freaked out and finally told us to leave. She was definitely not a happy camper.”