'Reel Science' Provides The Real Science Behind The Fiction

This month the national history Museum in San Diego partners with Dimmitt -- Digital Cinema for a program called REEL science. Every Saturday in January they will pair up a scientist with the cool classic in order to compare will be science with the real thing. We speak with the curator of entomology about the program. You're working on a new program of's films to be screaming in January all about REEL science versus real science. Tell me about what this program is going to be. We are partnering to put together this program called REEL science and we are showing screens of films and at the beginning of the screening a scientist is going to provide kind of context or a lens through which to view the film in which case the scientists will talk about the research and how you can use the research as a lens for the film to be of the screening of the film and I will be talking about the science as much as the practice of science Somebody they can about this may think that they are going to a group of scientists to get some very serious films about science but these are a group of pop-culture films that are great fun and tell me what the films are that are going to scream? First step we will do altered states and then after that we will do weird science and then later in January is Donnie taco and then we will finish it off with Flash Gordon. Pathetic earthlings. Who can save you now. [music] We wanted to pick me tried to pick sort of cult sci-fi films and do a scientific take on them. They will be on Saturdays most of them at 7 PM when on January 21 will be at 4 PM and they are alternating between the digital Jim and a museum. This is like an entry to science because even if -- even though Star Wars is not a highly scientific film a lot of people talk about that being the thing that got them interested in a career of computers or science so are these kind of gateway films to learn about real science? There is kind of this interesting handwringing within the scientific community about the way that scientists are portrayed in films not necessarily about the way that scientists are portrayed are like Star Wars -- people are saying there's no stand in outer space you cannot hear the death Star explode. It is funny you get scientist a ring in their hands about the betrayal of science but is very straight -- same scientists were often inspired by these same films because of maybe their love of science fiction and saw Jurassic Park or got into genetics or something like that. I do think they are interesting gateways but Flash Gordon is the phone that I am going to be doing and my parents gave me this coloring book when I was little and one of the things was if you could create a movie what would you create and I wrote Flash Gordon. Because I love that film so much when it first came out we talked about doing this series I thought I would do a body part test I would give a body part to do Flash Gordon. This is not going to be the old Flash Gordon that Buster grabbed this will be the more recent film that has the famous Queen soundtrack on it. [music] I think an Academy award winner -- tell me about the film I kind of the context you are going to put it in. If you have not seen the film I highly highly recommend you go see the film and you'll be able to see it on the big screen here and it is just -- it is campy and they revel in the camp and one of the things is that sometimes these sort of campy sci-fi meetings -- movies that have low production values so they are not necessarily that interesting to look at but the production value on this Flash Gordon is really crazy. The costumes and soundtrack -- the acting other than being a little bit not the best on the face of the planet with I was talking to my wife about this but the person that the cast is Flash Gordon even though his acting is not incredibly great he was perfectly cast to be the dumb jock. I said it was probably not a stretch for them. I just love to the film so much so from a scientific perspective I was actually thinking oh gosh how can I do this film and talk about science so I was re-watching it and I was just looking at all kind of the natural history of all the different scenes and people and thinking of it more in the context of if it was a found footage film what as a natural historian could I learn about the planet Mongo and that's what the lens that we will be looking at it through as if it was found footage and we were looking at this as a real alien planet how would we interpret the evolution of life on Mongo. Why is it that the net wanted to do the program on that. Why is it important to take some of these ridiculous pop-culture films that barely touch on science but why did they feel that it was an important way to pay a real scientist with films and that's kind of their goal in doing this? It goes back to what you originally suggested about gateways -- these being gateways to science is that we want people who don't normally think of themselves as scientists to feel like they understand science and appreciate science. If there is a lot of -- there's a lot of talk these days about the anti-intellectualism of culture and things like that and if such a thing exists the greatest thing we can do is to help people understand the science better because it's provided us with countless opportunities as humans and has the potential to do so much more to improve our lives. We hope to help people become a middle -- a little bit more educated and have fun with science. I want to thank you for talking about real science Thank you very much it has been a pleasure.