Moore!
I'm wary about getting into a debate over the rights and wrongs of Michael Moore. But there's a new documentary out, Manufacturing Dissent, by Canadian filmmakers Rick Caine and Debbie Melnyk that has been picked off of the herd because, hey, it's not been made by Republicans! In fact, they claim to be "fans". However, the fact that they can't get an interview with Moore while making their film (anyone spotting the giftwrapped irony?) and are denied accreditation while tailing him on various promotional tours, Caine and Melnyk turn, and wind up making a film that attacks, or at least undermines, Moore, just like all those right-wing books and films called things like Michael Moore: He's Actually A Thin Fascist And He Doesen't Really Wear Baseball Caps. I watched the film (which is out tomorrow, although seemingly only in one cinema in London - it follows on DVD on October 22) today, albeit with little enthusiasm. I'm a fan of Moore, and not just because I went out for a Chinese meal with him in Soho the night before interviewing him onstage at the NFT in 2002 [full transcript here], because I actually think he has done some good. No, he didn't alter the course of the Presidential Election in 2004 - indeed, you might argue that his support for Ralph Nader helped lose it for the Democrats in 2000 - but he encouraged plenty of students to register to vote on his college tour that year, and whatever you may think of them, his documentaries (or polemics, which is what they really are), have opened the floodgates for non-fiction filmmakers, not all of them good, and many of them just mini-Moores, but to have docs opening in theatres as a regular occurence can't be a bad thing. Manufacturing Dissent isn't really joining them. It's not a brilliant film.
Some of the facts it states may be news to anyone who doesn't follow in detail the Moore Witch Hunt. That he actually had interviewed Roger Smith, CEO of GM, despite this failure to do so being the core of his film Roger & Me. In fact, he'd interviewed him before making the film, when he worked for Nader, but it was on film, so he could have used it - instead, he chose a more effective narrative and worked to that. Again and again he is accused of manipulating the truth to serve the purpose of a point. He's addressed this. There's even a clip of him addressing it in this film (which reflects well on the openmindedness of the filmmakers, by the way, but also becomes problematic, which I'll come to) - he admits to manipulation. Someone else with an axe to grind accuses him of using "the tools of the the editor." We're into BBC territory here again. When Charlton Heston walks away from him in Fahrenheit 9/11 it cuts to a shot of Moore looking disappointed. Well this wasn't shot at the same time, or else we'd be able to see another camera as Heston walks past it. We can't. It was shot afterwards. This is editing. It is indeed a tool. "The Canadians", as they call themselves, each time they pop up to try and get a Moore face-to-face, also "reveal" that Moore didn't grow up in working-class Flint, but in the more middle-class suburb of Davison, ten miles outside. This is like accusing me of not coming from Northampton because I was raised for a few years in Duston, on the outskirts of town. It's nitpicking, and it's a soft target. It's beneath Caine and Melnyk, as it's a common route taken by the right to "discredit" the left.
There's a really interesting clip of Moore being cross-examined by TV host Phil Donohue, early on in his career, and he virtually denies knowing certain people with whom he'd worked on the Nader team, which is unbecoming for Moore. Certainly, he has an ego. And yes, he can come across as paranoid, another barb, and controlling. He obviously is. And I don't think it was very nice to rubbish Nader voters when he switched to the Democrats in 2004, realising that they were the only viable lever with which to oust Bush. He's filmed wherever he appears, and this stuff will always get out. Perhaps that's why he had the Canadians thrown out of a rally because they had falsified accreditation to get in. They cite this, boldly, as using Moore's own tactics against him (he did it to gain access to the plant in Roger - true). But they were found out, and thrown out. If you play dirty, with whatever higher moral purpose, you may get ejected from premises. Which leads me to my final complaint. It's a whiny film. Moore even gives them a 20-minute interview at the end. In many ways, I'd rather their film was fuelled by righteous anger than a bruised ego.
Michael Moore's new film is out in a few weeks. I, for one, am looking forward to seeing it. He's got problems, for sure, but his real crime, it seems to me, is to be successful. I thought that was a good thing in America, but apparently not. He's indulged in a lot of creative editing. I found his racist montage to illustrate the Coalition Of The Willing in Fahrenheit to be its one bum note, and such oversights do taint the work, but at the end of the day, he does more good than harm. And he was good company at that Chinese.
posted by Andrew Collins @ 4:12 PM
17 Comments
Contact
Andrew at
17 Comments:
Isn't it Bowling for Columbine, not Fahrenheit 9/11 that Charlton Heston is in?
It is "Bowling For Columbine", and Heston's appearance does Moore no credit; nor the unpleasant "coalition of the willing" nonsense you refer to, nor the "happy kids playing kites in Iraq prior to the war" rubbish in Fahrenheit 9/11.
But like you Andrew I remain a fan of Moore's despite his faults. So he didn't actually grow up in Flint! So what? I often tell people I am from Manchester, not because I want to lie about where I am from but because from experience if I am truthfully accurate it goes something like this...
"Where are you from?"
"Cheadle."
"Where the fuck is that?"
"It's near Stockport."
"Where the fuck is that?"
"It's near Manchester."
"Ah, right."
what new Moore film - sicko? I thought that had already been released?
MACHINE LEVINE
Sicko is released on October 26 in the UK.
I like Moore but I feel his ego got out of control during Farenheit 9/11. I was on his mailing list where he was genuinely staing he was going to change the world.
Sicko seems a better course for him to higlight. One specific issue like he did in Bowling for Columbine. Health care is a true crime in America. I read a story the other week about a young black lad who died from a tooth absess because insurance would not pay for the drugs to fight it. Congress tried to do something about it but Bush vetoed it because it would hurt his rich fat cat mates.
I used to have a lot of time for MM. I read "Stupid White Men", watched "Bowling for Columbine" and then "Fahrenheit 9/11" and that's where he started to annoy me. The Iraqi children playing with kites scene was distasteful. It looked like it had either been provided by Baath HQ or Respect/Galloway.
Then I read a chapter from "Downsize this" on Germany, and the fact that it hasn't "paid its dues" for WWII. It was a poorly thought out rant basically saying that Germany should still be being punished now, and the fact that it is has a strong economy is shameful. It makes the assumption that all Germans who are 70+ and not Jewish were/are Nazis. It doesn't seem to consider the fact that punishment of Germany after WWI partly led to Nazism and that 60 years after the end of WWII war with Germany is pretty much unthinkable now.
And then there are the inaccuracies in a lot of what he does. Some is minor editing, some is outright lying, and I think it does matter a lot. In an environment as hostile to the left as the US was a few years you have to accept that people will be out to get you. That means you have to be whiter than white and be able to back up anything you say. To be caught out like he is I think ultimately undermines the left.
That's why I don't have any time for Moore anymore.
Of course someone's going to do a hatchet job on him as to some people he's merely a troublemaker they'll never agree with and to others he's a crusader in search of the truth who dares to speak his mind.
A bit like you really, Andrew, albeit about 30 stone heavier. Are you the Michael Moore of the blogosphere?
Downsize this is a hit and miss book. I am eternally grateful for the chapter on OJ Simpson though. I have used it in several arguments with people who just assume he did it.
I liked the fact that, although he pointed out why OJ probably did not do it, he pulled no punches in describing OJ as 'one of the biggest shits walking the planet' for the domestic abuse he dished out.
It seems to be such a grey area - can we believe what we are seeing? Are all documentary makers objective and even-handed, or are they merely cultivating a case for their argument?
Giles Whittell of the times wrote a column back in July in response to Moore's endorsement of the NHS.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/article2039584.ece
I think Moore would have been fine with Fahrenheit 9/11 if he'd have continued on the money trail rather than veer off into a propaganda piece on the War. I even think he was probably at his most effective during his Awful Truth (I'll never forget getting throat cancer sufferers singing carols outside a tobacco firm with their voice-boxes).
Should the criticism just be reserved for Moore? Morgan Suprlock's 30 Days and Super-Size Me seemed to be more even handed as he was a living experiment. The problem is, how much of that was manipulated and edited. Did Spurlock and his partner spend 30 days on minimum wage, and did it mean he didn't have the insurance to cover his health costs?
Then you start to question the objectivity of political comedians like Mark Thomas (whose comedy product I loved in the late nineties).
Where does the entertainment end and the truth begin?
MACHINE LEVINE
Anyone who sticks it to right-wing America is okay by me but in 'Stupid White Men' (in true pseudo 'Irish' American stylee)he came out with some inanities about catholics in N.Ireland not being entitled to vote...sort of moronic notions that funded the IRA for decades...that kinda put me off him a tad..
This post has been removed by the author.
No documentary makers are objective. That's kind of the point surely, to sell ideas.
And, God, Supersize Me annoyed me. In one of the most pointless 'experiments' ever given air time it was discovered that if you eat more McDonalds burgers than anyone else on the planet ever ever does for 30 days, then shit - sometimes quite literally - happens.
About as useful as a TV show from 'Dr' Gillian McKeith.
I liked him until his "Coalition Of The Willing" bit in 9/11. He convenienltly ignored Britain's contribution to make his point. That's misleading, and it matters.
What did he order at the Chinese restaurant?
I'll put 2 quid on crispy duck pancakes. Anyone else care to have a guess?
Guess away, but I can't remember. That's why I had to stop being a journalist.
fat, self-aggrandising bore points out the obvious in self-satisfied rants and gets rich off it all, whats not to hate?
ive read and seen everything moore has done, its all the same, all blindingly obvious and the only difference hes really made is to the figure that pops up when he goes to an ATM
hell keep churning out his shite (american health system fucked - you dont say!) to priggish twerps who think watching the daily show constitutes some sort of political defiance. moore should look around his mansion and smile, if not for 9/11, bush et al, what would he have?
meanwhile, the earth and every on it gets slowly worse. que sera
The "obvious" you say Moore points out is clearly not "obvious" to a large amount of people, or more might be done about it. The American health system - that's the health system of the richest nation on the planet - is indeed fucked. How many other "fat, self-aggrandising bores" have bothered to make mainstream documentaries about the subject? To me, his populism is his greatest weapon. I never set out to defend everything Moore has done, but to rubbish him for making "obvious" points is pretty flimsy. If the earth gets worse, as you say, it's hardly his fault, is it? If not for 9/11, Bush etc. he wouldn't need to make his films. You're right there. But I hardly think he smiles about 9/11 when he's in his "mansion". You don't like him, Anonymous, fair enough, but let's have a better quality of debate.
Post a Comment
<< Home