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No More Moore, continued
By Matt Singer
on 10/07/2008
Targets Besides Michael Moore: CAA, security guards, singing auto mechanics and Barnes & Noble, whose corporate policy does not allow unauthorized filming on the premises.
Strangest Moment: When Morgan decides he needs to actually announce that "it was getting as difficult for me to reach Michael as it was for him to reach Roger Smith!" in order to make that point clear to us.
A Filmmaking Lesson: If your entire movie is about your futile attempt to make contact with someone, and you manage to get footage of that guy shaking hands with you, laughing with you, taking your film and your business card while patting you on the back, don't place it, context-free, as a cookie in your end credits.
Directed by Alan Peterson
Made in Response to: "Fahrenheit 9/11" (2004)
The Beef: That Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11" is full of inaccuracies, falsehoods and lies about the nature and scope of the threat posed to this country by terrorists, and that it smears the good name of President George W. Bush while ignoring the real problem, his predecessor Bill Clinton.
Does the filmmaker appear on camera? Director Alan Peterson doesn't, but Ron Silver, the film's narrator, makes an appearance onscreen as a talking head, and Dick Morris, a credited co-writer on the film, shows up as on camera as both an interviewee and an interviewer, a clever trick even Michael Moore hasn't attempted yet.
Does Michael Moore? Barely. A single, grainy shot of Moore intoning "there is no terrorist threat" is repeated a dozen times, either for dramatic effect or to mask the fact that the filmmakers don't have the rights to much other footage of him.
Targets Besides Michael Moore: Former President Bill Clinton. Morris, a former Clinton advisor, has carved out a nice career as a political commentator in recent years as a particularly vocal critic of Clinton, who he holds responsible for the failures in aircraft safety that led to 9/11, for refusing to recognize the bin Laden threat on numerous occasions, for ignoring evidence that an attack was imminent, for being involved in the same Carlyle Group that Moore believes ties Bush with terrorists, for being in bed with the Saudis and so on.
Strangest Moment: When Zell Miller, former Democratic senator from Georgia, compares invading Iraq to look for weapons of mass destruction to chopping the heads off of copperhead snakes he found in his garden.
A Filmmaking Lesson: If you're going to take a filmmaker to task for using embarrassing footage of people to discredit them (i.e. John Ashcroft singing "Let the Eagle Soar"), don't try to get a cheap laugh by showing the same footage yourself.
Of course, not all of the films that take aim at Moore come at him from the right. 2007's "Manufacturing Dissent," which is directed by and features liberal Canadian filmmakers Debbie Melnyk and Rick Caine, started out as a work of Moore admiration that became a critique of his filmmaking tactics and of "Fahrenheit 9/11." Like most of the films above, it's built around a series of failed attempts to secure an interview with Moore, as well as on claims that Moore actually did get to talk with Roger Smith while making "Roger & Me," and chose to suppress the fact. There's a review of "Manufacturing Dissent" from the 2007 SXSW Film Festival at our own Indie Eye blog, here.
[Photos: "Michael Moore Hates America," Allumination Filmworks, 2004; "Michael & Me," Wellspring Media, 2005; "Me & Michael," Cinema Epoch, 2006; "FahrenHYPE 9/11," Trinity Home Entertainment, 2004]
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One movie you missed was "Manufacturing Dissent" - A really good one that tries not to force it's view on you but lays out the facts of Moore's way of bending the rules to get his points across.
I guess everyone is entitled to their opinion, but a lot of those films were just crap. Politics aside, Moore is a talented filmmaker. "Bowling for Columbine" is one of the most moving films I have ever seen.
Open letter to Michael Moore
Mr. Moore,
My name is Chris Lowel and I'm pretty much a nobody in every sense of the word, but the few folks who bother reading anything at Moorewatch might know me by the endless rants I've posted there under the handle "biafra".
Moorewatch is where I'd been forever - what's the word - spewing the vilest, bitter, woefully hate-filled monologues against all and any (primarily non-American) visitor who's ever offered any (world)views deviating even mildly from the white, hetero, Xtian, right-wing, hardline American Way, that is, until even the most die-hard Bush drones in charge there had had enough and decided to ban me from their site, Rightfully and even cosmically so, I've come to realize.
Relegated to silently sulking around online, I actually read your open letters to the people posted there, along with the usual snide responses and derision they invariably drew. Lastly, I took a look into the recently released "Slacker Uprising", which documents your past efforts to swing the vote.
During this time of "inaction", as it were, I've come around to thinking that you do perhaps indeed have God's ear - good karma, whatever the magic is called. Its on record that you saved the life(style) of a major detractor of yours, and then I, too, was recently stricken with a serious illness whilst eagerly adhering to his anti-welfare stance. I'm alive, but $50,000+ in debt.
Thing is, after their taking the helm, constantly encouraging me to take it easy and rest, praise the Lord, read the Bible and "just get some credit cards already" several people I'd long considered my closest friends and allies eventually abandoned me for greener pastures - literally. Four months of second-hand hardship in the form of my fretting over mounting debt exacerbated by unnecessary "conveniences" that amounted to nothing more than late fees and daily runs to Starbucks, was too much for some to bear. They "fixed" my books for me, and then booked.
Case in point: The neurosurgeon who saved my life gets all of $50/month for his efforts while that monthly Amex finance charge swallows $56/month. Oh, and that unused LA Fitness membership? A measly $42/month. I fixed that and other boondoggles, but its not enough to stave off bankruptcy. I've heard that once I'm in the "system", it won't get any better. The operation was successful, but this patient is dead.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/5/18/223744/567
Either way, Moore has done it again. And there's a larger point. A society that's not constantly fretting about how to pay for medical bills is a BETTER SOCIETY, and the "magic benefactor" can easily be a single-payer system that would cost less than we pay for health care now, and provide better quality service. Moore is a genius at finding real-world ways to illustrate his point of view. This is an excellent example.
Praise the Lord, indeed: I've come up with a simple idea to clearly illustrate what universal health care - truly caring for your neighbor - is all about.
"Slacker Uprising" has successfully created pre-election buzz, and to keep the ball rolling I suggest you add another dimension of punch to, repeat: demonstrate how free health care, and by extension, caring for your neighbor, works.
Race, creed, color, political leanings, religious beliefs - whoever the person in need, true humanists will always put all and any differences aside, step up and deliver. The haves must always come to the aid of the have-nots; until their vote makes it law, the good people will do so voluntarily and without reserve.
In these, the last few weeks leading to the most important election in modern times, I say post an online donation drive for me at www.michaelmoore.com, set up a counter to show the amount of donations made, the number of donators, and perhaps even a (voluntary) tally of which side of the fence they stand on.
Let's show those voters still on the fence how a new and improved nation will deliver on its promises, and how many are willing to lead by example, not just spout empty platitudes.
I have little use for opulence, living large, and, least of all, waste of any kind, so what I don't need to cover my bills I could, in turn, eventually pass on to the next person in need - hey, starting with the folks at Moorewatch.
What say you? Yeah, or HELL, YEAH!!
biafra
Proposal Two: Sign into law congressman John Conyer’s universal health-care legislation (HR676). "The Obama health plan is no good. The McCain health plan is really, really no good," Moore said, explaining that on this issue, his support for Obama comes down to the "lesser of two evils."
Proposal Five: Remove the $102,000 income cap on the social security tax. "If you make over 102,000 a year, do you realize the people in that category do not pay one dime on wages they earn over $102,000 ... Why shouldn’t they have to pay the same six-and-half to seven percent rate that you have to pay on 100 percent or your income?" Moore cited former presidential candidate Chris Dodd, who said that if the cap was lifted, the resulting income would be able to fund social security for 75 years. He also told the audience to remind their neighbors that President Bush wanted to "put social security in the hands of Wall Street five years ago ... We’d all be Lehman Brothers."
Michael Moore has more than $102,000; he can (again) demonstrate how universal health care works - he, the government - chips in to pay my bills, and you, the taxpayers, chip in, too, without reserve, or simply reimburse Michael's costs to him.
Universal health care will discriminate against noone: rich, poor, white, black, young, old male, female, straight, gay -
