Michael Moore - yay or nay?

[Rissask]

He used to be the golden boy of the left (I used to be a big fan, still am- but now I take it all with a grain of salt), but it seems even many on the left are starting to see the bloom is off the rose.



HERE is a good article, some excerpts:

Dressed in shorts and a ball cap, he toyed with a celery stick from a takeout salad, part of a weight-loss regime. "Nature made these to taste bad," he said, "because if you ate these you'd live longer, and Nature doesn't want you to stick around that long." Then, with a devilish grin, he pulled out a Coffee Crisp. "So Nature makes this taste good." And there you have the moral dilemma of Moore's work in a nutshell. He has to weigh the nutrition of hard fact, but he wants his movies to have the mass appeal of a naughty junk-food confection. His filmmaking straddles two extremes of journalism -- documentary and satire, which both happen to be Canadian national sports. One demands accuracy, the other hyperbole.

And Moore fuses them with a sense of mythic American purpose, creating morality plays that careen between pathos and farce. Even when his facts are indisputable, he frames them with fictional devices. And those little white lies of omission and innuendo, the body blows of satire, are the key to his success. They are the reason he has, single-handedly, brought the documentary out of the art house and into the multiplex.

Moore is not a vérité, fly-on-the-wall documentary maker. He stages scenarios. Manufacturing Dissent alleges that it took months for him to set up the Columbine scene in which a bank gives him a free rifle for opening an account. The charge infuriates Moore. "Every scene in every one of my movies requires some setting up," he says. "You have to call in advance, unless I just want to barge in. But if I state a fact that the bank gives away free guns and there's a gun in that bank and I walked out with it, it's absolutely true. I have it in my closet to this day." Has he seen Manufacting Dissent? "Of course not. I have not seen any of the nine or 10 anti-Michael Moore films. I haven't seen Michael Moore Hates America. I haven't seen Michael & Me. I haven't seen Shooting Michael Moore."

The interview keeps circling back to our confrontation over Sicko in Cannes. Again I ask Moore why he painted such a utopian view of Canadian health care. "People who see this movie aren't going to think I have a utopian view," he replies. "They're going to think I have an American view. I wasn't in Canada to talk about the specifics of your program. I was here to talk about your core values and your beliefs. You've debased your own system. You've started to de-fund it, to snip away at the social safety net. But you're damn lucky you've got a system that says it's a human right that if you're sick you can go to a doctor and never have to worry about paying for it. That is f--king brilliant. Hats off to whoever this Tommy Douglas guy is, because the man obviously was a genius."

There's a sadness to Michael Moore. With the values of a Canadian socialist and the manners of an American buffoon, he's a combatant without a country. As we end our interview, his celery stick remains uneaten. I ask about his grandfather, the country doctor who made house calls and got paid in chickens, eggs and milk. "I'm one-quarter Canadian," he says. "Can you tell which part?" After a bit of repartee about doughnuts and anatomy, he adds, "Let's just go on the record as saying the gut is definitely American."

There is a new documentary out about MM, called 'Manufacturing Dissent'. Apparently the Toronto filmmakers wanted to make a true documentary about his work, and started off as fans- but ended up being very disillusioned about his methods.

[PlayadelSoul]

He is an a-hole. However, he has some talent. Voted in between.

[ami]

Originally Posted by PlayadelSoul

He is an a-hole. However, he has some talent. Voted in between.

I see I'm going to need to bring you back to the dark side.

Though the Commie pinko characterization is a little rough......an insult to commie pinkos everywhere. Especially my good friend Stew E..

[TAPPY]

I dont "hate" him or think he is a commie pinko.....but - I dont like or admire his "work" in any way shape or form. So some where in between is not really a good answer for me either.

[Rissask]

Originally Posted by TAPPY

I dont "hate" him or think he is a commie pinko.....but - I dont like or admire his "work" in any way shape or form. So some where in between is not really a good answer for me either.

picky picky, birthday girl! I guess I should have put 'not a big fan of his films' or something, instead of hate him. pretend I did and vote in between, I didn't mean for it to be personal, more just about his body of work, not his body.

[Banzoomba]

I used to really enjoy his show "TV Nation" ......it was like a blue collar 60 min.
My favorite episode

The Connecticut Supreme Court has ruled that the "public" beaches of Greenwich must be open to ANYONE, no matter what town they are from. Greenwich law prohibited anyone who wasn't a wealthy resident of Greenwich (i.e., white) from using the public beaches on Long Island Sound.
As you may recall, our correspondent, Janeane Garafolo, tried to take a bunch of Harlem residents to Greenwich beach one day for a swim -- and was turned away. So she and our staff and our friends from Harlem got a big boat and a chopper and invaded the Greenwich beach by air and sea.
When stopped by the Coast Guard, Janeane and the others jumped overboard and swam the half-mile to the segregated beach -- where they were immediately threatened with arrest. A young law school student had been fighting the town over the issue and took this case himself all the way to the state supreme court.

[melliedee]

I take him with a grain of salt, but usually find his movies pretty entertaining. When he's not grandstanding, he actually has a good, deadpan interview style. A perfect contrast when he's being offered a free gun with opening a bank account...not so good when he's harassing senior citizens like Heston.

To dismiss him underestimates his talent and the reach of his voice; to embrace the facts of his films as gospel is as short sighted as doing this with any media outlet...imo.

I vote yay.

[MWC]

I went medium. It's nice to have someone around who can make a successful living as a rabble-rouser.

[LeedsTyke]

I've enjoyed watching some of his stuff - not too sure how 'factually' correct a lot of it is. I'm sure he wouldn't be well known if Bush wasn't in power.

[sctx]

Mikee was a blast on The Colbert Report last week....well, actually, Colbert was a blast, Mikee was laughing so hard he couldn't even respond to the questions.......my favorite was "I can't believe I'm actually sitting so close to you....can we put this guy on satellite view???"

[PlayaGroom]

I'm not much for political threads, just too moderate (maybe a better description is weakly opinionated) to really add value to the discussions.

Although I don't always agree with some of his leftist spins, I do really like that his work gets the public talking. The majority of people out there don't really bring things such as health care or gun control to the dinner table for debate, and we've just come to accept them for what they are. But once a film with very strong opinions is presented in blockbuster form, you now have water cooler discussions about these very same issues every day, only now with MM as an ice breaker.

Kudos to you MM, and good luck with the weight loss program.

[Rissask]

Kudos to you MM, and good luck with the weight loss program.

Didn't you read the article? He passed on the celery stick and ate the Coffee Crisp...what weight loss program?

(not that I blame him, Coffee Crisps rock. )

[PlayaGroom]

Originally Posted by Rissask

Didn't you read the article? He passed on the celery stick and ate the Coffee Crisp...what weight loss program?

(not that I blame him, Coffee Crisps rock. )

But he was eating a salad...I still give him the points

[PlayadelSoul]

Rumor has it that he tried to eat the entire Cuban health system.

[Rissask]

I think his extreme left approach always made me cringe somewhat, even though I quite enjoyed Bowling for Columbine and Fahrenheit 911, he just went too far.

And certain things are downright silly, trying to paint this rosy picture of jolly Canucks going to bed blithely with their front doors wide open, and not caring if they are robbed, and walking into hospital waiting rooms and getting immediately helped...um, that is just not generally accurate, it's anecdotes. And if he lies about that, what other areas has he stretched the truth and omitted crucial facts?

It's just not what a documentary should be...documentaries should not be full of biased storytelling, they should be factual and allow the viewer to arrive at their own conclusions.