MICHAEL MOORE IS MY COUNTRY

"AMERICAN DISSIDENT : THE POLITICAL ART OF MICHAEL MOORE"

2007-05-11T12:02:00.000-07:00

I just received a nice comment on my blog from Francois Primeau, the author of a book entitled "AMERICAN DISSIDENT: THE POLITICAL ART OF MICHAEL MOORE" (Lulu Press, 2007). I had never heard of it, so I clicked on the link and read that magical summary :

FINALLY, A LEFT-WING LOOK AT THE WORK OF AMERICA'S MOST CONTROVERSIAL FILMMAKER! - With his new film "Sicko", Michael Moore proves once again that he is the leading creative voice for the new Left in America. Few have criticized the social and foreign policies of the American government the way Moore did in his films, books, and TV shows. Titles such as "Roger & Me," "Bowling for Columbine" and "Fahrenheit 9/11" are now associated with an artist who has dedicated his professional life to expose the foibles of an America that believes itself virtuous and free, but which can only breathe on feelings of anger, mistrust and paranoia. "American Dissident: The Political Art of Michael Moore" is an engaging and thought-provoking look at the work of America’s favorite civil libertarian. Through a personal reading and impassioned defense of Moore’s project, it offers for the first time a detailed analysis of his feature films and two television series to date, "TV Nation" and "The Awful Truth."

http://stores.lulu.com/americandissident

"POLITICAL ART"... "FINALLY, A LEFT-WING LOOK AT THE WORK OF AMERICA'S MOST CONTROVERSIAL FILMMAKER!"... "a personal reading and impassioned defense of Moore’s project"... Yeah, it sure looks good ! And I like that cover too :

Mr Primeau seems to be aware of two essential facts : first, that Michael Moore is CENSORED and in need of vocal defense, and second, that Michael Moore is an ARTIST, and deserves to be treated as such, definitely and decisively.

I've been waiting for a long time for someone to dare defend Mike with his head held up high and in an outspoken, unapologetic fashion, crediting him for the artist that he really is and shedding a personal light on his work, free from all that right-wing suspicious, petty, media-inspired BS. I feel inclined to make that bet that Mr Primeau is this long awaited person, and I promised him I would write an extensive review for his book as soon as I've read it. 308 pages ! Mmmm... yummy.

Mr Primeau informs me that "It's central thesis cannot be refuted, even by the biggest Moore-detractor out there. It is an answer to Christopher Hitchens and all those other losers out there." I'm skeptical about the former (all theses can be refuted), but immensely grateful for the latter (my nightmare was to have to deal with said losers and their miserable, venomous nitpicking on my site).

Mr Primeau also claims that "It is the only articulate and extensive defense of his work to date". Well, what can I say ? It's true, and it's nothing to be proud of.

Do as I do. Make amends : Buy his book, and Pass the message along.

HE MAKES MOVIES - Concluding the set of essays about Mike as a filmmaker

2007-04-02T11:57:00.000-07:00

CONCLUSION : HE MAKES MOVIES (The Documentary Ends Where The Quest Begins)

(above : Filip in action in Kieslowski's "Amator")

In “Amator”, a movie written and shot under Jaruzelski’s dictatorship, Polish director Kieslowski portrays a man who naively and almost inadvertently buys an 8mm movie camera when his first child is born for family fun purposes. But, because it's the first camera in town, he's named official photographer by the local Party boss. His horizons widen when he is sent to regional film festivals with his first works, but they also lead to domestic strife and philosophical dilemmas when his focus on movie making becomes a passion and he perceives that the eye of his camera witnesses Things That Shouldn’t Be Seen and silently, inevitably accuses Those Who Shouldn’t Be Accused.

More than Chaplin, more than Capra, more than Lenny Bruce, more than Zola, more than Nick Broomfield, more than Saul Alinsky, more than Socrates, more than Andersen, more, even, than the modern embodiment of Nemesis, the Impartial Goddess of Righteous Vengeance – Michael Moore is this man.

After all is said and done, Michael Moore is just Filip, a little guy who just felt like filming his people and his town as the “dawn” of the American Empire was rising and shadows got longer and things grew bleaker – always bleaker. A little guy who was vaguely looking for some fun to have, vaguely searching for something to do – and got awoken by accident.

It could have been me. It could have been you.

But it was him.

Because He Made Movies.

SCROOGE AND HIS NEMESIS

2007-04-01T08:39:00.000-07:00

This entry is the third part of the section entitled "The Storyteller" in my essay "Yes, He Makes Movies", devoted to Mike's contribution to film.

Most of the time, and par for the course, the Frail Moving Bastard doesn’t want to lose. So he just leaves the ring, and so the Big Bad Angel leaves the ring as well… to follow him, and to make sure that there is NO REST FOR THE WICKED.

Hence the Chase – the half-Christian, half-Marxist version of the Pursuit of Happiness. Especially half-Christian, but also half-Marxist.

I don't see it so much as confrontation. I see it more as a continuation of my Jesuit training. The pope has never liked the Jesuits much because they ask too many questions.
http://www.detnews.com/2002/entertainment/0210/21/d01-616260.htm

Moore is clever enough to know when someone is making a fool of himself, and he gives them enough rope—time on camera—to hang themselves. If that doesn’t work he is not above getting his preferred results by creative editing that outrages his critics.
http://bostonreview.net/BR28.3/stone.html

As Roger Ebert notices in his F9/11 review, “It's vintage Moore, for example, when he brings along a Marine who refused to return to Iraq; together, they confront congressmen, urging them to have their children enlist in the service.”

It’s vintage Moore because it’s the Mike at his Socratic best. William Karel once pointed out that Moorean questions were questions that a 4 year old could ask. This is very true and the key to the filmmaker’s brand of radicalism : a 4 year old asks naïve but essential questions, like “Why is it dark at night ?”. And very, very few people can actually answer that. And even less can answer that in a way a 4 year old will find satisfactory. For 4 year olds still have the metaphysical and moral urges that fake adults/real spiteful children have “reasonably” given up on. Mike knows that enlisting in the service is really up to the youth, not to the Congressmen. There’s a law about that. But the interesting thing is that the Congressmen DON’T know that law – at least not enough to answer the urge in a clean, straightforward way. No They RUN instead.

Run, bastards, run. The childlike documentarian will chase you for your childish irresponsibility.

Look, bastards, look. Hey, hey, hey, look what you doing to me. Hey, hey, hey, look what you dun.

PLAYBOY: Sometimes your confrontations with companies seem tasteless. The Voice Box Choir stands out.

MOORE: Well, I'm proud of it. Voice Box Choir was a group of half a dozen or so antitobacco campaigners, all of whom had had their voice boxes removed to stop the spread of cancer. They had been heavy smokers who could speak only by holding a small amplifier to their throat. We had the choir sing Christmas carols at the New York headquarters of Philip Morris and RJ Reynolds. We also went to the chairmen's houses. It gets a huge laugh, but it's the kind of laugh you can't believe you're laughing.

http://www.playboy.com/arts-entertainment/features/michaelmoore2/04.html

(above : a scene from "Voice Box Choir", The Awful Truth, I, 3)

Mike also writes to his victims. He never shuts the dialogue. HE NEVER SHUTS UP.

He writes “Shame on you” messages to the bastards. He writes “Look what you dun” messages to the bastards. On and on, on and on.

October 30, 2002
To: Charlton Heston, President, NRA
From: Michael Moore, Winner, NRA Marksman Award
Subject: Your Visit to Tucson Today in the Wake of Another School
Shooting

Dear Mr. Heston:

When you showed up in Denver to hold your pro-gun rally just days after the massacre at nearby Columbine High School, the nation was shocked at your incredible insensitivity to those who had just lost loved ones.

When you came to Flint to hold another rally in the months after a 6-year old boy shot a 6-year old girl at a nearby elementary school, the community was stunned by your desire to rub its face in its grief.

But your announcement that you are on your way to Tucson today, just 48 hours after a student at the University of Arizona shot and killed three professors and then himself, to hold ANOTHER big pro-gun celebration -- this time to get out the vote for the NRA-backed Republican running for Congress -- well, sir, I have to ask you: Have you no shame?

I am asking that you not go to Tucson today. (…)

Yours,
Michael Moore
www.michaelmoore.com mike@michaelmoore.com

His letters to Bush are famous and countless. Lesser known is the fact that they all convey the same underlying Fantasy of the Meeting.

A Supreme Meeting Where The Bastard Will See What He Dun :

Do you expect Fahrenheit 9/11 to be screened at the White House?

I would LOVE to have a White House screening of this film. I would attend it. I would behave myself. After all, it's a little known fact that, the first time we met, George W Bush's cousin was working as my cameraman on Roger And Me. His father, George The First, who was in the White House, did have a screening, down at Camp David. Young George and various others were there, but I was not invited to that one. I hope they'd consider doing it again.

http://www.channel4.com/film/reviews/feature.jsp?id=133235

SOCRATES AS A WRESTLER

2007-03-31T05:29:00.000-07:00

This entry is the second part of the section entitled "The Storyteller" in my essay "Yes, He Makes Movies", devoted to Mike's contribution to film.

Mike is one these big bad wrestlers who, in best wrestling style and tradition, attacks and crushes the SEEMINGLY weak and flustered… and wins, much to the joy of the watchers.

Oh, the immoral bastard ! Oh, the bloodthirsty watchers ! How can such an approach be ethical ? Boo ! Boooooooo !!! goes the self-righteous mob – louder than a poor guy’s bombs.

PLAYBOY: You were criticized for embarrassing former NRA president Charlton Heston in Bowling for Columbine. Some viewers felt you took advantage of an aging, ailing man.

MOORE: I take exception to that. I was very respectful.

PLAYBOY: Heston looked ridiculous. He was frail and flustered.

MOORE: He was opposing gun controls in the aftermath of high school shootings. That made him fair game. All I did was ask some questions. He said the problem with America is our mixed ethnicity. He said he was proud of the white guys who founded the country. I was stunned. I was respectful when I asked the questions, but at the same time, how am I supposed to treat someone who, after leaving my interview, went back out campaigning for laws that would allow people to have Uzis and cop-killer bullets? Once again, most Americans are with me on this. They understand that duck hunters don't need Uzis and cop-killer bullets.
http://www.playboy.com/arts-entertainment/features/michaelmoore2/04.html

But, Mike, aren’t you catching your subjects off guard ? How can this be fair game then ?

And - Boo ! Boooooooo !!! goes the self-righteous mob – louder than a poor guy’s bombs.

Apparently Bush and other members of his administration don't know what every TV reporter knows, that a satellite image can be live before they get the cue to start talking. That accounts for the quease-inducing footage of Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz wetting his pocket comb in his mouth before slicking back his hair. When that doesn't do it, he spits in his hand and wipes it down. If his mother is alive, I hope for his sake she doesn't see this film.Such scenes are typical of vintage Moore, catching his subjects off guard.
http://www.fahrenheit911.com/about/press/view.php?id=6

Oh yeah – and in Comencini’s masterpiece “Lo Scopone Scientifico” too, capitalism was embodied by a frail, sick, ever so moving old lady who was just trying to steal, not only the poor’s money, but most of all the poor’s HOPES of ever becoming as rich as her.

I will say this, though: at the point where Charlton Heston wanders abstractedly away when the questioning gets too hot, with Moore in angry pursuit, the ageing actor suddenly wears an expression of weary, wounded blankness very similar to Ronald Reagan's when he was being questioned about the Iran-Contra scandal.
http://arts.guardian.co.uk/fridayreview/story/0,12102,839711,00.html

The truth, as always, lies in MIKE’S MIKE. This seemingly incredibly violent, incredibly unfair struggle is in fact the sweetest, the fairest, the most terrifyingly peaceful there is to be found : no blows, no jabs, no punches from the Big Bad Angel. The violence is in the Frail Moving Weakling. The injustice pours out of the mouth of The Frail Moving Weakling and into the Mike of the Big Bad Angel, like toads from the villains in the ancient tales. And all the Big Bad Angel does is LISTEN. LISTEN in Golden Silence.

And IT HURTS !!!!!!!!

MICHAEL MOORE: I'm not going to give you the popcorn pleasure of watching me throughout the two hours shoving a stick up every member of the Bush administration.
EW: I'd say you did that throughout the movie.
MICHAEL MOORE: I let them do that themselves. They have the funniest lines.

http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/mikeinthenews/index.php?id=89

Heston took his NRA show to Denver and did and said exactly what we recounted. From the end of my narration setting up Heston's speech in Denver, with my words, "a big pro-gun rally," every word out of Charlton Heston's mouth was uttered right there in Denver, just 10 days after the Columbine tragedy. But don't take my word – read the transcript of his whole speech.

http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/wackoattacko/

But, Mike, aren’t you still big and bad and fighting the frail and the weak ? How can this be right, whatever the intelligence and the elegance that you put in it ?

And - Boo ! Boooooooo !!! goes the self-righteous mob - louder than a poor guy’s bombs.

Well, self-righteous clowns – remember that The Frail Moving Weakling only LOOKS like a frail, moving weakling. Remember that the Wrestling is ALL A SHOW.

The Frail Moving Bastard is in fact rich, powerful, merciless, dead as ice and cold as stone. But he’s able to achieve a rather good and convincing schtick of Pity Me I’m Just A Man by CUTTING HIMSELF FROM ALL THE EVIDENCE OF WHAT HE REALLY IS.

(In this case) this is the Dick Clark restaurant, it is his name and he is a shareholder in it, and he profits from it. He didn't put the gun under the bed that the boy found. He didn't shoot the little girl. He didn't make that woman poor. But he was trying to benefit from her poverty. He was trying to get a tax break. He wasn't motivated by altruistic reasons, like, "Let's try to employ as many poor black women as we can to raise their standard of living." No! Try, "Let's get workers for our restaurant at the bare, base minimum wage and then let's get a tax break so we don't have to pay our fair share of the taxes that could help elevate some of the poverty." All right? That's his little role in it, and he can't just divorce himself from it.

http://www.splicedwire.com/02features/mimoore.html

And so, the receptive Big Bad Angel who listens is also an ACTIVE WRESTLER, whose art and strategy consist in forcing the Frail Moving Bastard to MARRY AGAIN HIS DIVORCEES.

One technique is THE CROSSCUTS, which display analogies and metaphors meant to RESTORE THE TRUTH :

Why are these gun nuts upset that their brave NRA leader's words are in my film? You'd think they would be proud of the things he said. Except, when intercut with the words of a grieving father (whose son died at Columbine and happened to be speaking in a protest that same weekend Heston was at the convention center), suddenly Charlton Heston doesn't look so good does he? Especially to the people of Denver (and, the following year, to the people of Flint) who were still in shock over the tragedies when Heston showed up.

http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/wackoattacko/

Another technique is THE QUESTIONS, which display impossible answers and missing pieces to RESTORE THE TRUTH :

It's vintage Moore, for example, when he brings along a Marine who refused to return to Iraq; together, they confront congressmen, urging them to have their children enlist in the service. And he makes good use of candid footage, including an eerie video showing Bush practicing facial expressions before going live with his address to the nation about 9/11.

http://www.fahrenheit911.com/about/press/view.php?id=6

And this is how the rare Frail Moving Bastards who are mad enough to actually think of themselves as frail and moving – LOSE.

Where does your relationship now stand with Nike CEO Phil Knight?
Deep tongue kissing.
Seriously.
Nike is very upset at this film. They got ahold of a bootleg copy and called and said, "We'd like to meet with you." I thought they were going to tell me they're going to build the factory in Flint, where I challenged them to build one. Instead, their director of public relations flies to New York and takes me out to breakfast. I sit down at the table and he says to me, "What would it take to have two scenes removed from the movie?" And I kind of freaked out. I didn't even want to hear what the offer was. I just said, "Well, I'm not taking anything out of the movie. I'll add a scene. I'll add a scene of you building that factory in Flint."
What scenes does Nike want out?
He said Phil was upset at two things in the movie where he felt he misspoke himself and he wanted to clear up. The thing about the fourteen-year-olds he didn't care were working [in Nike factories in Indonesia]. He said the age is actually sixteen, something Phil had already told me in the second interview. The second thing was, "In five years, one of those poor little Indonesians is going to be your landlord." They sort of figured out there's some subtle racism in that statement, and they wanted it out.
What made Nike invite you over in the first place?
I have no idea. Maybe Phil just thought he was a hip, groovy guy. Maybe his wife told him to.

http://industrycentral.net/director_interviews/MICHAEL MOORE02.HTM

But, Mike…Shut the fuck up now, self-righteous MOB.

SHUT THE FUCK UP !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

SAME OLD STORY

2007-03-30T07:26:00.000-07:00

This entry is the first part of the section entitled "The Storyteller" in my essay "Yes, He Makes Movies", devoted to Mike's contribution to film.

localroger has an interesting theory about Michael Moore, the filmmaker : to him, “he keeps making the exact same movie over and over. And surprisingly, it gets better every time.”

http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2004/7/4/84621/13655

In other words, Mike keeps on telling the same STORY in rumbling spires, and with each new movie he’s getting closer to its own perfection.

In his remarkable essay, localroger still somehow fails to describe the exact plot of the Moorean Lost Story. He limits himself instead to a familiar but reductive analogy with the “Emperor’s New Clothes” tale instead : “Moore is simply the little boy at the Imperial parade who is willing to wonder very loudly why that guy with the crown isn't wearing any clothes.”

He then notices rightly that the pro-Moore and anti-Moore factions don’t define themselves by their political belongings (pro-Bush / anti-Bush, or even pro-capitalism / anti-capitalism), but rather through THEIR IDEA OF OBSCENITY : “The people who like Moore are the ones who have also noticed that the Emperor is naked and who welcome a voice brave enough to say it openly. The ones who dislike him are the ones who have some kind of investment in the fineness of the Emperor's raiment.”

(above : scene of “A Cheaper Way to Conduct a Witch Hunt”, the opening ketch to “The Awful Truth” series, I, 1)

And finally, according to him, the progress lies in “growing into more universally relevant topics.”

All of this is true. But not enough to explain Mike’s success in GETTING ACROSS WHAT EVERYBODY KNOWS.

For Andersen Just Said It.

But MIKE JUST DID IT.

“What comes across to the common person who is not parsing the discourse like a debate squadder is a damning sufficiency of things that undeniably speak for themselves”, in localroger’s words, indeed. But Andersen didn’t show this sufficiency of THINGS. Andersen didn’t go to the HEART OF THE MATTER. Andersen merely showed the OBSCENITY of it all.

Whereas MIKE SET THE CONTROLS TO THE HEART OF THE SUN.

Whereas the Moorean Story is a QUEST.

The Quest of Socrates setting out as a Lone Wrestler to become Scrooge’s Nemesis.

LOUD AND CLEAR AND SUBTLE

2007-03-29T04:19:00.000-07:00

This entry is the fourth part of the section entitled "The Innovator" in my essay "Yes, He Makes Movies", devoted to Mike's contribution to film.

“Roger and Me” had a FORMULA. The film was lauded for its unique combination of acerbic editorializing and exploration of the deterioration of the Flint community in a most casual, accessible and personal manner. The former is the Moorean touch. The latter is the Quality Mainstream touch.

Mike has always been a master provocateur, adept at raising temperatures and arousing passions. Under his shambling, wilfully unglamorous persona lies a shrewd intelligence, someone with the keenest of eyes for the preposterous and the absurd, a filmmaker who knows both what he can make fun of and what makes fun of itself.

Mike is Today’s Master of Agit-Prop. And he handles it through the dialectics of emotion and restraint on the one hand, and the dialectics of comments and silences on the other.

(above : an Agit Prop poster based on the crosscut technique used by Mike in Roger and Me to point out the true nature of Roger's Christmas wishes)

Agit-prop is a contraction of "agitation and propaganda". The term originated in Bolshevist Russia, where it didn't bear any negative connotation at the time. It simply meant "dissemination of ideas". In the case of Agit-prop, the ideas to be disseminated were those of communism, including explanations of the policy of the Communist Party and the Soviet State. In other contexts, propaganda could mean dissemination of any kind of beneficial knowledge. "Agitation" meant urging people to do what Soviet leaders expected them to do at various levels. In other words, propaganda was supposed to act on the mind, while agitation acted on emotions, although both usually went together.

Now the Moorean Touch lies in the truly exceptional dignity the filmmaker shows in practicing this lost, difficult and now pejoratively connoted art. Its secret is simple – obscenely simple, to some : he treats the victims like victims, and the villains like villains.

Mike, who’s been accused of coming close to emotional pornography in occurrences such as his extended depiction of Lila Lipscomb’s pain in F9/11, or his leaving a photograph of murdered little Kayla at Heston’s home, finds in fact in such scenes the perfect dialectics between emotion and restraint, which generates in turn the most powerful emotional punch and the most effective appeal to a vast and receptive audience in the American heartland we ever witnessed since Chaplin and Capra. But, rather than featuring grisly images of the World Trade Center collapsing, he lets the screen go dark, like he was closing the eyes of 3 000, relying on sound to convey the horror of the event. And this scene restores the sense of infinity attached to the loss of these innocent victims, and brings back the sense of obscenity where it belongs – to the mainstream media.

As acknowledged by CNN Reviewer Paul Clinton :

“The heart-wrenching grief of Lila Lipscomb is a taste of exactly what the USA needs now: a head-on, popular confrontation with the Bush war machine. It's great if much of Fahrenheit 9/11 makes people uncomfortable. Better still that it makes the warmongers burn with shame at the senseless loss of life they have caused. And it'll be the very best if it helps fire the US people to throw out the warmongers and build movements for lasting social change.”

http://www.greenleft.org.au/back/2004/591/591p13.htm

Yes, this coming from a CNN reviewer. Now so much for the voyeurism.

On the other hand, the villains receive the perfect parallel treatment, through the dialectics of comments and silences. In F9/11, Mike doesn’t rub political salt into the continuous incompetence of the Bush administration, or its behavior. He doesn’t need to say anything when the AG starts singing Let the Eagle Soar. He doesn’t need to comment on Bush‘s “I call you my base” fund raising dinner. He lets the “talkies” do the work – and the effect is infuriating.

As for the traitors – the PR people dispatched when Mike charges, cameras rolling, into their polished corporate lobbies – their (self-)treatment is even harsher. Unable to laugh at his engaging brattiness, these hapless flacks must politely push him toward the door while defending corporate downsizing in an era of record profits. The look on their faces—a fascinating blend of fear, frustration and "I hear what you're saying, bro"—expresses the potency of the big-picture questions Mike asks in Roger and Me and The Big One.

Did you ever feel sorry for the PR people you pestered during the
filming of The Big One?
Look—they're workers too. The CEO won't come down and talk to me, so they've got to deal with me. So, I do feel bad for them on one level. On another level, they're the good Germans. And I gotta tell you something: Most of them are former journalists who saw they could make three times the money in PR. And every day, they sit in those cozy little offices and get softball questions from the mainstream press. For one lousy day out of their lives, some overweight guy in a ball cap comes into the lobby and asks a simple question: How do you defend the position that the company just made a record profit and laid off ten thousand people? They know it's indefensible; they're not stupid.

http://industrycentral.net/director_interviews/MM02.HTM

And above all that, but not, NEVER beyond good and evil, Mike never forgets decisive subtlety for his undertones in overall style. Discreet Monna Lisa smiles at the Winks of Fortune. Hints at the Cosmic Joke behind it all. This he calls his “10 percenters” :

I put these little films in the movies, I call them the 10- percenters. I know that only 10-percent of the audience will get it, but they're going to love me for it, because they're going to be part of the 10-percent who will get the joke. I know that less then 10-percent will read the French title of the film poster (Heston sits in front of the French poster for A Touch of Evil during his interview with Moore.) Thee French call [the movie] "A Thirst for Evil." A thirst for evil… and he asked to sit in front of it! We're just going, 'WOW!' Not everyone gets it when the women in the bank (where you can get a free gun if you open an account) says while I'm trying to remember how to spell, 'Caucasian,' and she says, 'I don't think that's the part they're going to be worried about.' That line just speaks volumes! Two white people sitting down, 'Ah. Don't worry about that part, you're a white guy!' (laughs)

http://www.themovieinsider.com/celebrities/cid/116/

Now if the 10-percent were ever to turn into 90-percent, none of my pro-Moore pieces would be necessary, Dumb-ya’s would never get elected ever again, and the world would go rounder.

But it isn’t done….

ATYPICAL DOCUMENTARIAN

2007-03-28T04:55:00.000-07:00

This entry is the third part of the section entitled "The Innovator" in my essay "Yes, He Makes Movies", devoted to Mike's contribution to film.

At this point, there’s a need to go deeper into the seemingly shocking contradiction between the words “documentarian” and “Genius”.

First of all – he Makes Movies – but does that make him still a documentarian ?

Is "Fahrenheit 9/11" a Documentary Film, or What is a Documentary Film?
by Eugene Hernandez

Discussions about Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11" have raised questions about what exactly a documentary film is. (…) During a panel discussion about telling political stories, at the Nantucket Film Festival just days before the release of "Fahrenheit 9/11," panelists debated some of these very issues. (…)

How do you define the term "documentary film"?

Liz Manne, partner in the NYC-based production and consulting company Duopoly : "Clearly the definition evolves as our culture evolves, and morphs over the course of time -- whether you call it 'documentary,' 'non-fiction,' 'reality,' or simply 'unscripted,' all these terms are partly accurate and partly inaccurate."

Matt Dentler, from the reactionary SXSW Film Festival in Austin, Texas which is currently promoting “Manufacturing Dissent” (*) : "A documentary was once best described as 'academia on film' but now is best defined as 'journalism on film.' It may be world news, it may be arts & leisure. It may be serious and disturbing, it may be hilarious and irreverent. It may be Walter Cronkite, it may be Hunter S. Thompson. Whatever the case, it's journalism." (…) "It's also borderline propaganda, just like a newspaper's endorsement for a politician during an election. No matter how important I feel the message is, and no matter how much I agree with it, it's hard to look at the film as objective." Dentler added that he liked the film and agreed that it is a documentary. "Historical documentaries or 'talking head' pieces should tell both sides of the story, both sides of the history. And, in a sense, 'Fahrenheit' tries to portray itself as a historical doc, but it's really closer to propaganda. I think a very key point of this is how the film credits Michael Moore as the writer, a credit (that) documentaries rarely feature."

Josh Braun of Submarine, who has repped a number of docs for sale : "While we assume the term documentary film presently conjurs up thoughts of box office success stories such as 'Super Size Me' and 'Spellbound,' these films are really non-fiction narratives that start from a reference point of documentary film but have structural roots in fictional narrative and reality television. Therefore the term as it applies (or doesn't) to the new crop of non-fiction narrative films is outmoded and requires an overhaul."

(*) This is a personal note from fear_and_hate_9_11

http://www.indiewire.com/onthescene/onthescene_040702docs.html

Beyond moderate and objective Liz Manne, and against anti-Moore borderline fascist Matt Dentler, let Josh Braun’s be my conclusion. Say no Moore…

Now, what makes Mike so ATYPICAL a documentarian ?

First off, his global outlook and the universality of his aims necessarily cause bold, broad and clear-cut artistic licenses in the treatment of his MOVIES : and that means CLEVER EDITING, DISTORSION OF CHRONOLOGY AND STAGING THE FACTS FOR THE SAKE OF A HIGHER BUT TOO LENGTHY TRUTH.

For example, in Roger and Me, Reagan's visit and the pizza shop was in 1980, before he was president and Robert Schuller came to Flint in 1987, after the Great Gatsby party. This criticism was later reaffirmed by film critic Pauline Kael in a review in the New Yorker, when she declared the flick "a piece of gonzo demagoguery."

In defense, Moore stated in the interview, "The movie is essentially what has happened to this town during the 1980's. I wasn't filming in 1982...so everything that happened happened. As far as I'm concerned, a period of seven or eight years...is pretty immediate and pretty devastating....I think it's a document about a town that died in the 1980's, and this is what happened....What would you rather have me do? Should I have maybe begun the movie with a Roger Smith or GM announcement of 1979 or 1980 for the first round of layoffs that devastated the town, which then led to starting these projects, after which maybe things pick up a little bit in the mid '80's, and then _boom_ in '86, there's another announcement, and then tell that whole story?....Then it's a three hour movie. It's a _movie_, you know; you can't do everything. I was true to what happened. Everything that happened in the movie happened. It happened in the same order that it happened throughout the '80's. If you want to nit-pick on some of those specific things, fine."
http://www.cs.uu.nl/wais/html/na-dir/celebrities/michael-moore-faq/part1.html

For example, plenty of well-meaning Good Germans complained that, in F9/11, the story of Lila Lipscomb’s political conversion was fake because, the first time Mike met her, her son had already died in that helicopter crash, but he still constructed the sequence in such a way that you don't know he's dead until later in the film.

Only trouble is that this ANECDOTE doesn’t prevent the STORY from being TRUE… Lila did convert to anti-war after her son died.

And TRUE IN A SUPERIOR WAY… for a MOORE STORY beats an ANTI-MOORE ANECDOTE any time.

The truth is that chronology is distorted because Mike’s movies can reach up to TIMELESSNESS, in the superior significance of the overall substance as well as in the superior accuracy of the overall form :

As for the clip preceding the Denver speech, when Heston proclaims "from my cold dead hands," this appears as Heston is being introduced in narration. It is Heston's most well-recognized NRA image – hoisting the rifle overhead as he makes his proclamation, as he has done at virtually every political appearance on behalf of the NRA (before and since Columbine). I have merely re-broadcast an image supplied to us by a Denver TV station, an image which the NRA has itself crafted for the media, or, as one article put it, "the mantra of dedicated gun owners" which they wear on T-shirts, stamp it on the outside of envelopes, e-mail it on the Internet and sometimes shout it over the phone”.

Are they now embarrassed by this sick, repulsive image and the words that accompany it?

http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/wackoattacko/

Moore cleverly structures Fahrenheit 9/11, achieving a sort of lyricism with his “rhyming couplets” effect. The rounding up of suspected resistance fighters in Iraq by US soldiers parallels images of the way US military recruiters target blacks in the poor parts of Flint. The wailing grief of an Iraqi woman whose uncle's house has been bombed is reflected by the heart-wrenching grief of Lila Lipscombe in Flint, whose son was killed in Iraq.
http://www.greenleft.org.au/back/2004/591/591p13.htm

And still, the last word to all of this Superior Art, Superior Truth and Superior Knowledge remains a frustrating, and secretly excruciating, “What do I know ?”. For, contrary to what one might think from Godard’s really stupid statement that “Moore is more intelligent than his movies”, the tiny reed of a man in Mike does bow, at the end of the day, to the impossibility to possess his own art : his stories, and the makings of of his documentaries, are clearly journeys of discoveries for the man with the mike himself, who makes no bones about not having the answers EVEN THOUGH HE HAS SO MANY OF THEM.

And THIS is Genius.

(above : "Voyage to Lilliput", from Gulliver's Travels)

BEYOND NICK BROOMFIELD

2007-03-27T06:24:00.000-07:00

This entry is the second part of the section entitled "The Innovator" in my essay "Yes, He Makes Movies", devoted to Mike's contribution to film.

One might (and has) argue(d) that these tremendously effective and intelligently honest methods are nothing new. Nick Broomfield invented them, not Michael Moore. Nick Broomfield was the innovator, not Michael Moore.

(above : Mike with fellow documentarians Kopple, Spheeris and Broomfield, barefoot on the left)

And so, at about the same time as Rob Blackwelder was falling a victim to Mike’s Superior Truths (10.27.02), in his essay entitled “One of Us”, Tim Grierson was asking a very good question :

“Why is it that people generally treat Michael Moore like a conquering hero” (yes, they roughly still did in 2002), “Why is it that people generally treat Michael Moore like a conquering hero but Nick Broomfield as a slimy weasel? In reality, aren't they the same person? Both are documentarians. They both use their films as journalistic investigations into societal issues. Not content to stay behind the camera, each guy plays a visible, central role in his movies."

Alas, this new applicant for the Championship of Truth finds it smart to subsequently spend the rest of his ink re-establishing Broomfield as the real conquering hero, and Moore as the real slimy weasel – completely unaware that Michael Moore’s Crucifixion had begun, and that he was part of the Crucifiers.

From this wasted essay, one can still learn about Broomfield’s greatness. But, from here, we can only infer Mike’s Superior Greatness, and that’s what I’ll do afterwards.

Grierson :

“Nick Broomfield's films aren't as noble, but that's fine; they don't operate under any false pretense. A serial killer, a Hollywood madam, a rock-star suicide, and now the bloody murders of two hip-hop superstars -- this is normally the stuff of National Enquirer fodder, but Broomfield is fascinated by such unconventional subjects. What he's done with the terrific Biggie and Tupac (as he's done so many times before) is sift through a seemingly unsavory story to find some unusual characters and milieus, bravely and entertainingly exposing them along the way.

Biggie and Tupac investigates the unsolved murders of legendary rappers Notorious B.I.G. and Tupac Shakur. Unfortunately for Broomfield, the film's release coincided with a lengthy piece in the Los Angeles Times, which offered a much different theory behind the individual killings. But much like Oliver Stone's impassioned muckraking in JFK, the question of "Who did it?" in Biggie and Tupac is less important than illuminating the buried and little-known information involved in these cases. Neither JFK nor Biggie and Tupac purport to be unquestionably true, but they both achieve a greater purpose -- they make you see the case in a new light, they shake up your preconceptions, and they provoke
you to keep asking questions.”

(Grierson quotes from http://www.knotmag.com/?article=467)

The same can be said of Michael Moore… but Mike plays TWO OR THREE OCTAVES HIGHER (and here lies Grierson’s real main beef against him : “Nick Broomfield's films aren't as noble….” Moore is not dwarfish enough for his taste).

The Columbine slaughter, too, was tabloid fodder.

Mike, too, sifted through a seemingly unsavory story to find some unusual characters and milieus, bravely and entertainingly exposing them along the way.

Mike, too, investigated… but he investigated APPARENTLY SOLVED MURDERS – to find that the real murderers were NOT “monsters” Klebold and Harris… but AMERICA AS A WHOLE.

Ouch.

In BFC, too, the question of "Who did it?" is less important than illuminating the buried and little-known information involved in these cases…. But EVEN MORE IMPORTANT IS THE WIDELY KNOWN INFORMATION ABOUT BANKS, WALMARTS AND LOCKHEEDS – so that America doesn’t stand accused so much as the “everybody knows” type truth of CAPITALISM AS A CULTURE OF DEATH. Ouchhhhhhhhh….

Like JFK and Biggie and Tupac, BFC doesn’t purport to be unquestionably true, but it both achieves a greater purpose -- they make you see the case in a new light, they shake up your preconceptions, and they provoke you to keep asking questions.

However, beyond these ambitions, BFC’s GREATEST purpose of all is to ALSO PROVIDE THE ANSWERS THAT EVERYBODY KNOWS, PLUS THE ANGER THAT NOBODY FEELS….

….Ouch, ouch, ouch !….

And so, the awful truth isn’t that Moore is the slimy weasel. It’s not even that both documentarians are to be put on a par. It’s that MOORE IS BEYOND BROOMFIELD : a Broomfield with Genius. He’s to Broomfield what the Beatles were to Little Richard or Buddy Holly.

OUCH.

KARMA MAN

2007-03-26T05:38:00.000-07:00

This entry is the first part of the section entitled "The Innovator" in my essay "Yes, He Makes Movies", devoted to Mike's contribution to film.

In a confrontational interview following the release of BFC and in the wake of the anti-Moore mania that was soon to win over each and every conformist heart, one by one, the Lying Man of Truth has defended his methods.

He was inspired on this day. In a tremendously powerful and convincing, yet casual, demonstration, the Man of Truth converts doubting but unwary Rob Blackwelder, who should have run from the light to keep his illusions, by sheer means of rationality and common sense. This masterly display of the power of dialectics is called “Gunning for Michael Moore” – a title that was surely found after the meeting actually took place - and it sure is something to read, actively read and witness.

Rob first confesses to having “a problem with some of Moore's conclusions and many of his methods, including some of his blindsiding interview tactics, his tendency in this film to leave out information that could provide a bigger picture when talking about specific cases of gun violence, and his scattershot way of assigning blame.”

He consequently takes Mike to task, asking him from scratch why he didn’t place any blame at the feet of the uncle who left the gun where the kid could find it, but went to L.A. to hassle Dick Clark instead, even though he really had no connection to the event except that he was a major shareholder in the restaurant that got a tax break for hiring the welfare mom.

Mike answers precisely : “Blaming the uncle for having the gun there in his house was done sufficiently by the mainstream media. Because I live there, I saw all that. The uncle not only was blamed, but he's now in prison.” And those familiar with the F9/11 controversies will have recognized here the “No blame on Saddam” pattern.

He then elaborates on the mother’s doomed two jobs karma, which forced her to involve the uncle.

RB: OK, I'll give you that. I'll give you that, but...

MICHAEL MOORE: That's a big give, though!

RB: I understand the problems with the welfare-to-work...

MICHAEL MOORE: It's not just problems with the welfare-to-work. It's inherently evil. It's an act of terrorism.

And those familiar with the Roger and Me controversies will have remembered the factory/Mc Veigh exploding buildings crosscut pattern.

Now for Dick Clark, and also in karmic terms : “his is the Dick Clark restaurant, it is his name and he is a shareholder in it, and he profits from it. He didn't put the gun under the bed that the boy found. He didn't shoot the little girl. But he was trying to benefit from her poverty. He was trying to get a tax break. (…) That's his little role in it, and he can't just divorce himself from it.”

And the Socratic lecture ends in the same spiralling ricochet logic, involving capitalist selfishness which just CAN’T DIVORCE ITSELF FROM THE POLITICS OF FEAR : "I wanted to say something much larger about how society is manipulated by politicians and corporations into being in a constant state of panic and fear," Moore asserted, "and how once you get the population whipped up like that, conservative regimes can get just about anything they want out of the people without firing a shot."

“Since I'm not pretending to be an objective journalist in this article, I'll just conclude by saying, Amen to that, Brother”, Rob has to conclude with suitable but all too rare humility.

(All excerpts from http://www.splicedonline.com/02features/mimoore.html )

Call Michael Moore The Karma Man. The one who understands the intermingling and intertwining of personal responsibilities to an extent which makes him able to grasp the Superior Truth inherent to his seemingly tiny topics, by means of spiralling ricochets. That’s how he’s far, far beyond his original inspiration – Nick Broomfield. (see next post)

THE ABSOLUTE DUEL

2007-03-25T06:16:00.000-07:00

This entry is the third part of the section entitled "The Eternal Artist" in my essay "Yes, He Makes Movies", devoted to Mike's contribution to film. It deals with Mike as the heir of Frank Capra : a direct democrat.

(above : Mr Smith goes to Washington, only to non-meet the Multi-headed non-listening Hydra in Congress)

Like Capra, Mike chose direct democracy as his main strategy.

His work, in his movies as well as in his TV series, revolves around a very simple pattern :

He questions some person of great power or wealth whom he feels, knowingly or not, betrayed the public trust.

The chase, the fight, the showdown : these are the three steps and the Trinity to the Battle of Evermore between the Man of Art and the Man of Power.

And this Absolute Duel becomes even more absolute when the Artist infringes on the Politician’s prerogatives, to make himself heard, and WIN. And THIS is what The Moderate and Objective Enemy calls lying.

Ever since the Greek tragedies, artists have, from time to time, asked themselves how they might influence ongoing political events. It's a tricky question because two very different types of power are involved. Many theories of aesthetics and ethics revolve round this question. For those living under political tyrannies, art has frequently been a form of hidden resistance, and tyrants habitually look for ways to control art. All this, however, is in general terms and over a large terrain. Fahrenheit 9/11 is something different. It has succeeded in intervening in a political programme on the programme's own ground. For this to happen a convergence of factors were needed. The Cannes award and the misjudged attempt to prevent the film being distributed played a significant part in creating the event.
To point this out in no way implies that the film as such doesn't deserve the attention it is receiving. It's simply to remind ourselves that within the realm of the mass media, a breakthrough (a smashing down of the daily wall of lies and half-truths) is bound to be rare. And it is this rarity which has made the film exemplary. It is setting an example to millions - as if they'd been waiting for it.
John Berger

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uselections2004/comment/story/0,14259,1289515,00.html

And THIS is how all the sugary lying of humor and satire leaves you burning with the Truth of a ferocious, lasting, and hopefully untameable ANGER…

Chaplin, again – NOT too serious, too honest Capra this time :

T: FAHRENHEIT 9/11 reminds me of the Charlie Chaplin movie "The Great Dictator". That movie was very much criticized at the time of its release. People said, "it's not a comedy; it's more like propaganda and it is very preachy." What do you think about Charlie Chaplin?
MICHAEL MOORE: Chaplin in America is remembered as the great comedian. But the other truth is, he was a great political force. He was a socialist and he used his comedy and his filmmaking always on the side of the little guy and against the rich man. It was always the Little Tramp against the boss, the Little Tramp against the policeman, the Little Tramp against the factory, right? That was his character, that's what he did. And he combined comedy with the tragedy. And people flocked to the cinema to see him. And he had a profound effect on the movies, on people, on politics and he became a danger to the point where he was threatened and couldn't get in the country because he was blacklisted. I don't have a favorite. I'm both of those people. In the famous insignia of comedy and tragedy, you know, the two masks, those Greek masks of comedy and tragedy? Well, that's what you see in my films. They're two sides of the same coin. Our best comedians have been the angriest people. Charlie Chaplin was an angry man. Richard Pryor was an angry man. George Carlin, I don't know if you know him, a comedian in the United States, is an angry man. Lenny Bruce, angry man. And they turned their anger into comedy, and then into a message to people. I hope people don't see me as just an angry guy, because I'm not just that. I'm all these other things too.

http://www.japattack.com/japattack/film/moore01.html

And when the anger is here, THEN the tragedy can happen.

Zola, this time – NOT too peaceful, too hopeful Capra :

He didn't call it "J'Accuse!" but he might as well have.

Like Emile Zola, whose celebrated 19th century open letter assailed the French government for being a party to intolerable injustice, Michael Moore in Fahrenheit 9/11 has launched an unapologetic attack, both savage and savvy, on an administration he feels has betrayed the best of America and done extensive
damage in the world.

http://www.fahrenheit911.com/about/press/view.php?id=5

SINGING IN THE RAIN

2007-03-24T09:02:00.000-07:00

This entry is the second part of the section entitled "The Eternal Artist" in my essay "Yes, He Makes Movies", devoted to Mike's contribution to film. It deals with Mike as the heir of Charlie Chaplin : a satirist.

(above : Machine raging against Charlie Chaplin in "Modern Times")

Like Chaplin, Mike chose humor as his main weapon :

"Political humor is a good way of providing a message -- as opposed to giving a sermon." - Michael Moore

http://www.cs.uu.nl/wais/html/na-dir/celebrities/michael-moore-faq/part1.html

In spite of being a preacher, Mike is a satirist first. He’s a satirist first BECAUSE he’s a preacher.

For satire alone provides the necessary distance to get intellectually angry. That is, angry for good.

Brecht, for one, had noticed that the phenomenon of catharsis generated by tragedy according to Aristotle was in fact a nuisance : people get stirred, people get moved, people cry… and then people forget. Whereas the hidden coldness of satire, behind its cool, deadpan LOOKS, drops the anger like a stone to the bottom in the well of your heart…

…and you don’t forget….

World: Canadian Bacon was the funniest film at the festival, at the same time one of the most serious. How does humor fit into political action?
Moore: First of all, I think humor is a very effective means of communicating a message to people. I think we've all seen that too many people are turned off by the sort of soapbox kind of preaching. That stuff's good when you're preaching to the converted, but when you're trying to convert, for whatever reason, wherever we're at now in 1995 in America, it doesn't work very well. So I decided to use my sense of humor as a means to affect change, to get people thinking about the issues.
Underlying the humor though is a very serious point, and underneath that is a lot of anger. I think some of the best comedy comes from people who are very angry about the situations they see in the world and the humor sort of acts as a means to deal with the frustration of living in the society in which we live.
http://www.pww.org/archives95/95-09-23-3.html

THE HEIR OF SOCIAL COMEDIES

2007-03-23T07:00:00.000-07:00

This entry is the first part of the section entitled "The Eternal Artist" in my essay "Yes, He Makes Movies", devoted to Mike's contribution to film.

Mike has realized and known since long that Something is rotten in the state of Hollywood, Denmark :'

'Most films in America are dumb and stupid and make a lot of money,'' he says. ''Then you have a few art-house films that don't make much money. I think there's a big middle ground. People who live in the Pittsburghs and the Milwaukees and the Flint, Michigans, have a brain and would like to see a film that has all the normal movie conventions but is also about something. Why do these things have to be incompatible? Couldn't you have a Jim Carrey movie that makes social commentary?'' The great divide between comedy and commentary didn't always exist, in Moore's view. ''Look at Charlie Chaplin, our great film comedian,'' he says. ''All his early films were social comedies or political comedies. He was commenting on the times in which he lived. Where are those films today? They don't exist. The closest we get is 'The Player' and a few others."

http://www.michaelmoore.com/dogeatdogfilms/cbcst.html

Yes, Romeo Social and Juliet Comedy divorced a long time ago. And Mike says : “Come together… Right now, over me.”

Capra, Chaplin, Sturges : Michael Moore is the heir of social comedies.

Think back to Roosevelt. He had the Capras, Sturges, Steinbecks and they moved millions, the nation, with their art. That brought popular support to a radical agenda. Don't need to make polemical documentaries.

http://www.thenation.com/edcut/index.mhtml?bid=7&pid=2104

For example, Roger and Me was described as “a comedy about 30,000 people losing their jobs.”

http://www.cs.uu.nl/wais/html/na-dir/celebrities/michael-moore-faq/part1.html

Capra, in particular, showed how one single ordinary guy can be crucial to his environment : his family, his city (“It’s a Wonderful life”), his country (“Mr Smith Goes to Washington”).

And Charlie Chaplin “made comedies about the politics of his time. Where are these films today? These are the films I want to make," he said. "It's difficult to pull off -- making people laugh and think at the same time. Hollywood seems to think those two things are incongruous."

http://www.michaelmoore.com/dogeatdogfilms/cbhrep.html

Mike is their heir.

"I MAKE MOVIES"

2007-03-22T07:21:00.000-07:00

"I make movies," Moore told me plainly, when I asked him how he answers the critics who say his films are not documentaries. "I don't write non-fiction books," he continued, referring to his successful career as an author. "I don't call it non-fiction, I call it a book."

http://www.indiewire.com/people/people_040624moore.html

I have set out to write my thoughts about Michael Moore’s contribution to film.

But all of my efforts will be lost on the reader if I overlook the basic paradox at the core of his work, and if he/she fails to admit that essential truth that, although Mike makes documentaries, he is NOT a documentarian ; and that, although Michael Moore “lies”, he is NOT a liar.

Mike writes books. He doesn’t call them non-fiction, he calls them books.

Well, just the same, Mike MAKES MOVIES. He doesn’t call them documentaries, HE CALLS THEM MOVIES.

In other words, Mikes endorses a superior, global vision of what The Truth is : his base is non-fiction, but his home is vaster and includes personal themes, artistic references and lineage, and an original know how when it comes to the lost and ancient art of storytelling.

In Godard’s words, “A great artist who starts from fiction is bound to meet non-fiction in the end. A great artist who starts from non-fiction is bound to meet fiction in the end.”

And the fact that this very filmmaker, initially enthusiastic over Roger and Me when it looked weak and doomed, failed to acknowledge Mike’s genius and finally rejected F9/11 in 2004 at Cannes without having seen it, only goes to show how much The Truth of Lies is difficult to really figure out and to really accept, even to those who can see it.

INTRODUCING A SET OF ESSAYS ABOUT MIKE AS A FILMMAKER

2007-03-21T19:57:00.000-07:00

I have written a lengthy, detailed, and hopefully enlightening piece about Michael Moore as a filmmaker.

Erm.

Actually, very lengthy.

Being all of a sudden savagely fed the solid content of 24 typed pages, my blog savagely fought back as blogs will do : various technical bugs and problems which finally forced me to back down... I fought the computer and the computer won.

Tell you what : I'm going to do that little by little. One part at a time. Maybe even one sub-section at the time. And, in order for it all to still make overall sense (something I'm keen on), I'll limit myself for tonight to the general outline of what I have, to be honest, to call a mini-book.

Here goes then :

TABLE OF CONTENTS

TITLE : YES, HE MAKES MOVIES

INTRODUCTION : I MAKE MOVIES (Putting An End To The Obsession with “The Real Documentary”)

I - THE ETERNAL ARTIST

A – THE HEIR OF SOCIAL COMEDIES
B – SINGING IN THE RAIN
C- THE ABSOLUTE DUEL

II - THE INNOVATOR

A – KARMA MAN
B– BEYOND NICK BROOMFIELD
C- ATYPICAL DOCUMENTARIAN
D – LOUD AND CLEAR AND SUBTLE

III – THE STORYTELLER

A – SAME OLD STORY
B – SOCRATES AS A WRESTLER
C – SCROOGE AND HIS NEMESIS

CONCLUSION : HE MAKES MOVIES (The Documentary Ends Where The Quest Begins)

SYNOPSIS

Mike "makes movies", as opposed to "documentaries" (for the pro-Moore) and to "crockumentaries" (for the anti-Moore). Meaning that he's BASICALLY A FUCKING ARTIST.

Heh.

Like all true innovators, Mike has roots and lineage. He's the Heir of Capra and Chaplin and that means he tries to get Romeo Social and Juliet Comedy to marry again on the one hand, Man of Art and Man of Power to divorce again on the other ("The Eternal Artist").

But Mike is of course better known for his revolutionary methods and techniques. He didn't create them, but he brought them to perfection : his subjective non-fictional stories, both loud and subtle, can reach up by spiralling ricochets to mythical status, allowing us to get a grip on the world and on our own freedom ("The Innovator").

For Mike is a Storyteller, and the power of the universal Story he bears inside him ridicules the imbecile particular Anecdotes in which the Dwarves try to lock him, because of their tiny, miserable idea of The Truth. He also IS his Story. Beyond Andersen, he tears apart the Emperor's New Clothes. Beyond Socrates, he turns his questions into weapons and tools. Beyond Nemesis, he turns his vengeance into listening, seeing and testifying. ("The Storyteller")

There never was any "documentary". There always was a Quest.

MANU-FACT-URING FACT BASTARDS

2007-03-14T09:48:00.000-07:00

This is Dedicated, with all due respect, to the Canuck tribe of the IMDb F9/11 board....

...and to their fwends as well....

Just check my use of COLORS...

Toronto filmmakers focus on Michael Moore

Friday,
March 9, 2007 CBC Arts

A documentary about filmmaker Michael Moore by Toronto's Rick Caine and Debbie Melnyk is drawing buzz ahead of its premiere at the South by Southwest festival in Austin, Texas.

Manufacturing Dissent follows filmmaker Michael Moore during the release of Fahrenheit 9/11 and questions many of his tactics.

One of the documentary's revelations is that General Motors chairman Roger Smith, the apparently elusive subject of Moore's 1989 debut Roger & Me, had been interviewed for the film, but Moore simply chose to leave the footage out of the finished cut.

http://www.cbc.ca/arts/film/story/2007/03/09/southwest-festival.html

"I don’t really understand the point of this documentary?"

Manufacturing Dissent Movie Trailer featuring Michael Moore

Posted By Peter Sciretta On 20th February 2007 @ 06:40 In Movie Trailers, Documentary, Independent, Movie Marketing, Film Festivals, SXSW

(…) Synopsis: Manufacturing Dissent seeks to separate fact, fiction and legend, tracks Michael Moore on tour during the release of the explosive Fahrenheit 911(and the subsequent Slacker Uprising Tour and 2004 US election), all the while chronicling the politically supercharged climate in America that has fueled Moore’s transition from mere filmmaker to icon of the political left.

(…)And before you ask, dissent is a sentiment or philosophy of non-agreement or opposition to an idea (eg. a government’s policies) or an entity (eg. an individual or political party which supports such policies).

I don’t really understand the point of this documentary? Is it to discredit Moore? To make him look like a fool? Can someone explain to me the point? Is it negative? Positive? Non-partisan?

http://www.slashfilm.com/2007/02/20/manufacturing-dissent-movie-trailer-featuring-michael-moore/

Now here is the picture that this person who "doesn't really understand the point of this documentary" chose to adorn his commentary :

...and here is the picture that the DOCUMENTARIANS chose for a poster to their documentary...

AND NOW TO * THE POINT *.....

The Point - Manufacturing Fat Bastards, Made (Up) In Canada

PART 1 - THE (TRAIN) SPOTTING

Doc by Toronto filmmakers questions Michael Moore's tactics

Christy Lemire - AP - Sunday, March 11, 2007

As documentary filmmakers, Debbie Melnyk and Rick Caine looked up to Michael Moore.

Then they tried to do a documentary of their own about him - and ran into the same sort of resistance Moore himself famously faces in his own films.

The result is Manufacturing Dissent, which turns the camera on the confrontational documentarian and examines some of his methods. Among their revelations in the movie, which had its world premiere Saturday night at the South by Southwest film festival: That Moore actually did speak with then-General Motors chairman Roger Smith, the evasive subject of his 1989 debut Roger & Me, but chose to withhold that footage from the final cut.

The husband-and-wife directors spent over two years making the movie, which follows Moore on his college tour promoting 2004's Fahrenheit 9/11. The film shows Melnyk repeatedly approaching Moore for an interview and being rejected; members of Moore's team also kick the couple out of the audience at one of his speeches, saying they weren't allowed to be shooting there.

At their own premiere Saturday night, the Toronto-based filmmakers expected pro-Moore plants in the audience heckling or trying to otherwise sabotage the screening, but it turned out to be a tame affair."It went really well," Melnyk said. "People really liked the film and laughed at the right spots and got the movie and we're really happy about it."

Moore hasn't commented publicly on Manufacturing Dissent and Melnyk thinks he never will. He also hasn't responded to several calls and e-mails from The Associated Press.

"There's no point for Michael to respond to the film because then it gives it publicity," she said."

(President) Bush didn't respond to Fahrenheit 9/11, and there's a reason for that," Caine added.The two were and still are fans of all his movies - including the polarizing Fahrenheit 9/11, which grossed over $119 million (U.S.) and won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival - and initially wanted to do a biography on him. They travelled to his childhood home of Davison, Mich., visited his high school and traced his early days in politics and journalism.

"The fact that he made documentaries entertaining was extremely influential and got all kinds of people out to see them," said Melnyk, whose previous films with Caine include 1998's Junket Whore. "Let's face it, he made documentaries popular and that is great for all documentary filmmakers.""All of these films - Super Size Me, An Inconvenient Truth - we've all been riding in his wake," said Caine. "There's a nonfiction film revolution going on and we're all beneficiaries of that. For that point alone, he's worth celebrating."

But after four months of unsuccessfully trying to sit down with Moore for an on-camera interview, they realized they needed to approach the subject from a different angle. They began looking at the process Moore employs in his films, and the deeper they dug, the more they began to question him.

The fact that Moore spoke with Smith, including a lengthy question-and-answer exchange during a May 1987 GM shareholders meeting, first was reported in a Premiere magazine article three years later. Transcripts of the discussion had been leaked to the magazine, and a clip of the meeting appeared in Manufacturing Dissent. Moore also reportedly interviewed Smith on camera in January 1988 at the Waldorf Astoria hotel in New York.

Since then, in the years since Roger & Me put Moore on the map, those details seem to have been suppressed and forgotten."

It was shocking, because to me that was the whole premise of Roger & Me," Melnyk said.

She and Caine also had trouble finding people to talk on camera about Moore, partly because potential interview subjects assumed they were creating a right-wing attack piece; as self-proclaimed left-wingers, they weren't.

Despite what they've learned, the directors still appreciate Moore.

"We're a bit disappointed and disillusioned with Michael," Melnyk said, "but we are still very grateful to him for putting documentaries out there in a major way that people can go to a DVD store and they're right up there alongside dramatic features."

http://www.canada.com/topics/entertainment/story.html?id=9a9567d6-106b-4cbd-9019-f74fcb14ec19&k=55604

Manufatturing Fact Bastards, THE LIES

THE (HOUSE WASTE) SORTING

PART 2 - THE LIES

confrontational documentarian : MM NEVER was confrontational. He always was pesky. He always used his Mike to Let Them Talk. “And he never gives an answer…”

their revelations : There are NO revelations to this miserable REMAKE OF “MICHAEL AND ME” (which wasn’t successful enough for the two fatasses’ tastes). As REPORTED, “the fact that Moore spoke with Smith, including a lengthy question-and-answer exchange during a May 1987 GM shareholders meeting, first was REPORTED in a Premiere magazine article three years later”, and “Moore also REPORTEDLY interviewed Smith on camera in January 1988 at the Waldorf Astoria hotel in New York.” I, for one, already knew it.

The Point - Manufattturing Fact Bastards, THE DECEITS

THE (HOUSE WASTE) SORTING

PART 3 - THE DECEITS

the Toronto-based filmmakers expected pro-Moore plants in the audience heckling or trying to otherwise sabotage the screening : McCaine and his Whore of Babble-On felt (RIGHTLY) guilty for acting like The Seventh RIGHT-WING ATTACK on Mike (“This Divided State” being the only pro-Moore documentary done in the direct WAKE of his HARD WORK) and expected the same kind of punishment that Republican slandering sites got in 2004 from a NOW LATE, LAMENTED pro-Moore dedicated Army

Michael : These true, dedicated pro-Moore left-wing McCaine and his Whore of Babble-On NEVER call him by his Real Name : MIKE. They call him MICHAEL instead. Like Ralph Nader.

"There's no point for Michael to respond to the film because then it gives it publicity," she said.

"(President) Bush didn't respond to Fahrenheit 9/11, and there's a reason for that," Caine added.

This one’s pretty plain to see but remains and absolute must to ALL of the “left-wing” Iscariots and ALL of the “left-wing” traitors : “Michael” = “(President) Bush”

The two were and still are fans of all his movies : McCaine and his Whore of Babble-On WERE fans, but they AREN’T. Not anymore.

But after four months of unsuccessfully trying to sit down with Moore for an on-camera interview, they realized they needed to approach the subject from a different angle : McCaine and his Whore of Babble-On can’t have REALIZED that, cuz Mike Wilsod, Brian Baloney and Larry ELDER had “REALIZED” that FACT before them. Even RABID ATHEISTS like McCaine and his Whore of Babble-On must have REALIZED that this RIGHT-WING ANTI-MOORE TRINITY came first, long before them.

those details seem to have been suppressed and forgotten : They SEEM… but they HAVEN’T BEEN.

Despite what they've learned, the directors still appreciate Moore : McCaine and his Whore of Babble-On LEARNED * NOTHING *. The Repug Trinity said it all in 2004. Unless, perhaps, their righteous attacks “seem to have been suppressed and forgotten” ? BIGGRIN.

The Point - Manufacturing Fat Bastards, THE HYPOCRISY

THE (HOUSE WASTE) SORTING

PART 4 - THE HYPOCRISY

it turned out to be a tame affair : Tame affair for tame filmmakers, tame audience and tame “left”. What a SURPRISE.

the Toronto-based filmmakers expected pro-Moore plants in the audience heckling or trying to otherwise sabotage the screening : McCaine and his Whore of Babble-On expected the audience to be pro-Moore ? What a JOKE.

"All of these films - Super Size Me, An Inconvenient Truth - we've all been riding in his wake," said Caine : McCaine explains that his documentary is SIMILAR to Super Size Me and An Inconvenient Truth, both genuine pro-Moore movies. What a SURPRISE and what a JOKE.

She and Caine also had trouble finding people to talk on camera about Moore, partly because potential interview subjects assumed they were creating a right-wing attack piece; as self-proclaimed left-wingers, they weren't : McCaine and his Whore of Babble-On describe themselves as “self-proclaimed left-wingers”. SAY NO MOORE.

The Point - Manufacturing Fat Bastards, THE SLANDER

THE (HOUSE WASTE) SORTING

PART 5 - THE SLANDER

People really liked the film : People liked to see Mike humiliated.

and laughed at the right spots : They needed no pre-recorded laughter, it was inside them.

and got the movie : They got that THE POINT was to BELITTLE MIKE.

and we're really happy about it : McCaine and his Whore of Babble-On are happy that the 300 are dead and that they’re left with an all-Persian “”””””””””pro-Moore””””””””””” audience."

Let's face it, he made documentaries popular and that is great for all documentary filmmakers : McCaine and his Whore of Babble-On acknowledge how much Mike really is A GREAT MAN. They also acknowledge that he did * THEM * ONLY GOOD.

There's a nonfiction film revolution going on and we're all beneficiaries of that. For that point alone, he's worth celebrating = “Poor, poor, pitiful, nonfictitious Fat Bastard !!”

"We're a bit disappointed and disillusioned with Michael," Melnyk said, "but we are still very grateful to him for putting documentaries out there in a major way : the Whore of Babble-On is “a bit disappointed and disillusioned” (but NOT TOO MUCH, let’s remain MODERATE AND OBJECTIVE) with “Michael” (like Nader), but she’s still very sorry for Poor, Poor, Pitiful Nonfictitious Fat Bastard, whose GREATNESS SHE’S WELL AWARE OF.

THE POINT : MANU-FACT-URING FACT BASTARDS, * THE TRUTH *

THE (HOUSE WASTE) SORTING

PART 6 - THE TRUTH

As documentary filmmakers, Debbie Melnyk and Rick Caine looked UP to Michael Moore, as stated in the TITLE. That is, they were dwarves and he was a giant. And they realized that AWFUL TRUTH when confronting their IDOL. So they set out on a QUEST TO BELITTLE MICHAEL MOORE by “questioning his tactics”, that is, “soiling his immaculate purity”.

It was shocking, because to me that was the whole premise of Roger & Me," Melnyk said : the Whore of Babble-On is shocked that THE GIANT DIDN’T ALIGN WITH HER DWARFISH MINDSET.

The lies and deceits are equally shared between the author of the article and the authors of the movie. So tightly that THEY BECOME THE TRUTH.

There are NO revelations to this documentary, other than PRICELESS ONES ABOUT THE “LEFT”.

McCaine and his Whore of Babble-On’s real AGENDA is to KILL THE STORY-TELLER and to KILL THE ARTIST, so that MIKE gets CUT DOWN to CROOKED LYING COWARDLY POLITICIAN like KERRY.“Manufacturing Dissent” is really about MANUFACTURING THE CONSENT OF MILLIONS OF SWARMING MCCAINES AND WHORES OF BABBLE-ON.

* MY POINT *

Fuck the traitors.

Death to Judas Iscariot.

Death to McCaine and his War of Babylon.

DAY OF THE WHORE

2007-03-11T09:43:00.000-07:00

Written March 8, 2007. Slightly edited for more discretion. Will edit some more if asked to.

Once upon our time, it started this way...

What is Feminism?

by Doodle1 (Wed Mar 7 2007 12:20:22)

Feminists want equal rigths. But what is the fundy definitio

3 Women

Pr Gloria Orenstein (Greek Chorus of the Hicks : “Is she Jewish ????? Is she Jewish ?????”) will often openly marvel at the fact that she was born on International Women's Day (March 8th) and grew up to be a professor of Women's Studies. For her experiences have taught her that "the most ordinary occurrences in our everyday lives, in what we mistakenly think of as non-sacred reality, are in fact signposts on a path whose underlying pattern has been set in motion with our birth, or more likely perhaps, even before our physical birth into this dimension." And looking back at the synchronistic signs, symbols, and omens of her life has convinced her of the genuine sacredness of worldly reality.

http://www.usc.edu/dept/comp-lit/biographies/fc_bio_orenstein.html

So….

HAPPY HYDES OF MARCH TO DIAMOND_D, MY FRIEND THE MOORE DISLIKER and HELEN_WHEELS, ALL WOUNDED WARRIORS OF THE GOD OF WHORE !!!!

(and for those wondering about the presence of Helen here, I’ll specify that she was born on International Women's Day – simply).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/March_8

http://www.un.org/ecosocdev/geninfo/women/womday97.htm

When I was a lead singer and lyricist for punk band The Phallocrats (christened by your servant, but soon to be unbaptized under the pressure of progressive hippies and feminist ass licking zealots X, drummer, and Y, keyboard player), I met Z, who was to become my best friend and still is to this day. Z decidedly fell in love with me and I couldn’t fall in love with her. Not really. This caused many a tangle which forced me to look deeper into my beliefs (in a nutshell, Death To Patriarchy) and question my own intimate postulates in regards to the nature of femininity.

I perceived that the figure of the Mermaid – that Suave Obstacle to Brave Ulysses’s Quest For Home - was the one who best summed up the way I felt about women. My ma had rocked me as a child, but she had also rolled me all night long. The frigid, distant, sulking and chic approach of the Neo-Romantics of the ‘80s (a tribe I hated) was the one that suited me best.

I'm taking nothing
It's not my way
It's almost summer now
This bed's been made
Some time ago a figure strolled
Along the esplanade
Changing in the mist and light
Underneath the green arcades
A blurred girl
A blurred girl

Are we running still?
Or are we standing still?
Are we running still?
Or are we standing still?
Standing so close
Never quite touching
Standing so close
Never quite touching
A blurred girl
A blurred girl

Wounded in sleep again
The sequences move by me
A million miles across the room
A tearing sound of smiling
We're fixing distances on maps
And echo paths in crowds
The light from other windows
Falls across me now
A blurred girl
A blurred girl
A blurred girl
A blurred girl

Standing so close
Never quite touching
Standing so close
Never quite touching
Never quite touching
Never quite touching
Never quite touching
Never quite touching

This song by John Foxx (!!!) from his first solo LP “Metamatic” inspired the one I wrote for Z, with a little help from my friends Y and A (composers) :

It’s looking good
He’s looking good
She sat and he stood now she’s in the mood
He’s better than nice
He’s as cold as ice
He’s not here.

It’s looking at you
He’s looking at you
You smiled and he flew now you start anew
He’s better than sweet
He’s a piece of meat
You’re not here.

It’s looking like
They’re looking alike
They yelled and they died now who’s got the mike
They’re better than you
They’re bitter and blue
They’re not here.

It’s looking grim
It’s looking dim
It came and passed now it’s here to last
It’s better than new
It’s always been you
It’s just here.

She liked it.

Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles

Z was and is a radical feminist, who first introduced me to Valerie Solanas (whom I only knew by name) and her “SCUM Manifesto”. I didn’t fall in love with Z, but I fell in love with her Black Jesus Christ. So, if you feel so inclined, you can check the tribute I wrote for her, as well as for (originally) Upsize This, an absolutely terrible “left-wing”, “”””””pro-Moore”””””” site which, before the populace of the IMDb Fahrenheit 9/11 board, was to be the first to get a taste of my Dr Robert medicine, and to ban me for that (but that’s another story) :

http://michaelamour.blogspot.com/search?q=valerie

Now of course Valerie eats John Foxx for breakfast.

As for Mike, he did write a piece called “The End of Men” – a piece clearly inspired by this she-V -, for Stupid White Men.

Sadly and surprisingly, this text is (easily) one of his worst. Some critics mercilessly called it a rant and I didn’t try to dissuade them.

I guess that, to Mike too, women remain a Dark Continent. And of course patriarchy has made sure that they remain a Dark Continent to themselves, to complete the picture.

Britney Spears

So I’ll close this lecture on my favorite Feminist Anthem – a still of the situation and the broken record which both sums up and tears apart the Feminist Rut : X Ray Spex’s “Oh Bondage Up Yours !” in 1977 :

Some people think little girls
Should be seen and not heard
But I think, Oh Bondage, Up Yours!

One, Two, Three, Four

Bind me tie me
Chain me to the wall
I wanna be a slave
To you all
Oh bondage up yours
Oh bondage no more
Oh bondage up yours
Oh bondage no more

Chain-store chain-smoke
I consume you all
Chain-gang chain-mail
I don't think at all
Oh bondage up yours
Oh bondage no more
Oh bondage up yours
Oh bondage no more

Thrash me crash me
Beat me till I fall
I wanna be a victim
For you all
Oh bondage up yours
Oh bondage no more
Oh bondage up yours
Oh bondage no more

Bind me tie me
Chain me to the wall
I wanna be a slave
To you all
Oh bondage up yours
Oh bondage no more
Oh bondage up yours
Oh bondage no more
Bind me tie me
Chain me to the wall
I wanna be a slave
To you all
Oh bondage up yours
Oh bondage no more
Oh bondage up yours
Oh bondage no more
Oh bondage up yours
Oh bondage no more

It was 30 years ago today, Poly Styrene taught the band to play.

But she’s been going in and out of style, and now she has retired, like Leonard Cohen, in a monastery. For no Rut can be torn apart. It just doesn’t work that way.

Guaranteed to raise a smile ?….

Valerie died in material and moral misery. Poly Styrene wore off too early, too soon. As for Z, she has married an asshole who hates me to piss me off, and now she spends a lot of time complaining about her man being an asshole and wondering why on earth she married such an asshole to begin with.

….Well, the International Day of the Whore is still part of the month of Mars...

The Definitive James Bond Soundrack

Bond is the definitive male archetype today. A selfish, classless twit who serves the upper class so he can keep on shagging the best wines and drinking the best girls, and who's only attracted to already married women, so that he won't do what his Calvinist mom doesn't want him to do.

James BOND. So this is where the bonds of marriage are today... Hell-O-Hell.

Once upon our time, it started to end this way...

THE DEFINITIVE JAMES BOND SOUNDRACK

by Mr_Nike_Guy (Thu Mar 8 2007 13:00:43)

HYMN A L'AMUUUUUUUUUUUUUR TUUUUUUUUUUJUUUUUUUR.....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mD1L3iS9jB0

SIGNATURE : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yUJjERiU4Oc#GU5U2spHI_

What is Feminism?

by Doodle1 (Wed Mar 7 2007 12:20:22)

Feminists want equal rigths. But what is the fundy definition?

Re: Montenegro and all that

by Waldo-6 (Thu Mar 8 2007 09:39:37)

Gypsies are cool.

SIGNATURE : Ma Ze Po?! Republikat Bananot?!!!!

Re: Montenegro and all that

by JackDelahunt (Thu Mar 8 2007 09:46:53)

Gypsies make cartoon movies. SANTUARY!

________________________________________

SIGNATURE : ----DEATH TO HIPPIES!----

Re: Montenegro and all that

by Waldo-6 (Thu Mar 8 2007 10:48:19)

Gypsies are like hippies, only they live in reality.

SIGNATURE : Ma Ze Po?! Republikat Bananot?!!!!

Re: Montenegro and all that

by Moores_watch (Thu Mar 8 2007 16:43:04)

Reality ?... It's immaterial...

....My wallpaper today.

SIGNATURE : Does anybody really know what time it is ? by Chicago Transit Authority.

MARS

2007-03-11T09:33:00.000-07:00

Written March 2, 2007. Slightly edited to fit the blog concept.

Mars is the God of War.

He's the brother and the enemy of the God of Whore.

Tis the Beginning of March. "March" is "Mars" in French. "March" is the sound of charging feet in English.

I've known very early that I was a Warrior. I wasn't 10 yet when I first discovered T. Rex's "Electric Warrior" - and took it for what it was.

But I didn't know WHOSE warrior I was then.

But T. Rex wasn't cool by the PEEPS' standards. They weren't even ever that cool in England, so I'm not even telling you about America in the '80s...

Marc/Mars Bolan was infinitely more sex conscious than the too celestial Zombies. But T. Rex were a GIRLY BAND. An anecdotal, not so important band for LITTLE 13 YEAR OLD GIRLS. Julie Burchill sorted that out very well for the NME, at the time when the NME was The Enemy - now, it's just ours. Even John Peel, who discovered Marc Bolan and was his Godfather, got it all wrong about him... HE DISOWNED HIS SON.

I vaguely knew all that. Still I said innocently to the PEEPS of my school that T. Rex was my favorite band. And as I was also NOT ONE OF THEM, an orphan, and especially GREAT, those worthy sleuths immediately spotted that frail, intellectual, 4-eyed weakling as A FREAK.

And this is how it all BEGAN.

When I got out of the lunatic asylum at 19, I saw "Roger and me" and immediately knew that I was a Warrior, and whose Warrior I would be. But still it took me a long, long time, to really KNOW it. Cuz I was A FREAK. And freaks are not supposed to be warriors - they're supposed to be hippies.

This never fooled me - consciously. But now I realize how SCARED I always was to be EXPOSED. I realized that I NEVER USED MY INFLUENCE IN THE OPEN, NEVER OPENED MY MOUTH PUBLICLY, along with Zinn, Chomsky and a thousand other professors. Cuz me * I * knew, in my guts, what THEY (and perhaps even MM) didn't know : that the USA is NOT a free country. Not any more. Since long.

And I realize how much I always liked SHADOWS, how much I always acted a lot, worked a lot and did a lot, but NEVER IN THE OPEN. I had (and still have) a NEW MODEL ARMY of devoted friends and students whose main function was to HYDE me. Internet was the thing for me. Really.

In spite of all that, I always felt kind of PARALYZED. Paralyzed by SHAME. Cuz I thought of myself as a COWARD, even though my activism was very efficient and threatening to the fascists.

And this is how it all BEGAN.

"Mars" is also a book by Fritz Zorn. A guy who finally let his St Anger be. But NEVER REVEALED HIS WORLDLY NAME. I won't comment on it. Read it.

http://www.amazon.com/Mars-Fritz-Zo...72857328&sr=8-1

Fritz Zorn died of cancer, in spite of having accessed the International Herald Tribune. John Lennon was murdered.

Michael Moore is alive and well and working on "Sicko", a DOCUMENTARY about health care.

Never mind the cigarettes. They are bollocks. They are the consequence of cancer, not the cause. So is GW. Et vice versa.

I don't know if I'm going to die. Cuz I don't know if I want to. I know that solar people usually DO beat the clock. And I do know how much I infinitely loathe and despise humanity, and, with all my might, want it to die - because I'm convinced that's what's really good and just and deserved. And I loathe it a little more with each and every new awkward move from one of the hicks.

Fritz Zorn and John Lennon died of fear and hate. Michael Moore didn't. Is it because he loves humanity so much, in spite of knowing much better than me what it's really worth ? I think so.

So, the Cure, for me, doesn't consist in stopping chain-smoking. THE CURE CONSISTS IN CHANGING MY MIND ABOUT HUMANITY.

And THAT's the reason why I'm doing what I'm doing.

Not for you, hicks.

HOT

2006-09-12T15:23:00.000-07:00

Michael Moore's forthcoming hotties unveiled at Toronto....

On September 8, Mike's appearance in a sold-out "Maverick Night" was the first of several political highlights at the festival. Wearing his sneakers and baseball cap, he gave the lucky audience a preview of Sicko, emphasizing problems getting health insurance in America, the contrast with next-door Canada and differences between what he described as a "me-first" American society and a gentler "let's help others" attitude elsewhere. He also showed a short clip of The Great '04 Slacker Uprising, a documentary recounting his 60-day, 60-city tour in the 2004 presidential election campaign to persuade Americans to vote, preferably not for Bush.

SLACKERS

The Great '04 Slacker Uprising, which may be released straight to DVDin late '07, after "Sicko" but before the 2008 U.S. presidential election, was presented first. Mike introduced it as the chronicle of his 60-day, 60-city attempt to get out the vote on behalf of Democratic challenger John Kerry.

While already working on "Sicko", which will be released by The Weinstein Company, Mike went to Bob and Harvey Weinstein with the idea for this post-election movie. In its opening moments, "The Great 2004 Slacker Uprising" is described on screen as the story of "one filmmaker's attempt to turn things around, " but festival technical problems marred Moore's attempts to show segments from the film, ultimately forcing him to cancel the clips.

"This is painful, " Mike said, after a second clip was scrapped due to persistent sound problems. While praising the festival as one of the best in the world, he was clearly frustrated with the situation.

According to movie critic Peter Howell, here's the surprise: what we'll see, set to a mournful rendition of "When Johnny Comes Marching Home, " will be more critical of Kerry than Bush. The documentary castigates Kerry for bungling his early poll lead on Bush, by failing to respond ina timely manner to a smear campaign on his Vietnam War record and his muddled stance on Iraq.

If it's true, I will be more than extremely pleased about that : I will get my rocks off. The first message that the Dems need to hear is that they suck, suck, suck. And suck. The appalling state of the Democratic party is, to me, a worse cause for concern than what it allows, lets be and sometimes helps happen.

SICKO

Three segments from Sicko were shown at Toronto. IndieWire promises that it will no doubt stir an even greater debate about the U.S. health care system than what we're already witnessing.

The clips presented stories of personal health care nightmares, including that of a woman denied payment for an ambulance ride after a head-on collision because it was not preapproved. "They try to find every way they can to deny it to you or not sell it to you, " Mike told the theater. "Or they try to find anyway they can not to pay the bill."

The "Sicko" excerpts also included an older Canadian couple who buy health insurance even for their short days trips to America, and another Canadian man living in America who had to return to Canada to have a tendon repaired for free, rather than pay $24, 000 for the procedure in the U.S. The comparison between Canada's public health care and the privatized system in the United States, concluded, would you have guessed, that Canadians have more equitable access to medical services.

Two months into editing this new movie, Mike admitted that he made the rare exception of showing something as a work-in-progress out of loyalty to the festival, where he first screened "Roger and Me." Normally, he explained, he avoids talking about or showing a new film until it is completed. "I have to [keep it secret]," he quipped, "Because I am up to no good."

And acknowledging any anonymous pharmaceutical industry reps who might be in the audience, he explained that when no insurance company would back him in the making of the film, he thought the movie might be doomed. "How did you get around that, " Larry Charles asked Mike. "I don't want to say," Mike responded, "'cause they're here..."

Ken Johnson, senior vice president of the trade group Pharmaceutical Researchers and Manufacturers of America, said industry officials were "freaking out and pulling their hair out" when they first got word of Moore's documentary. They have since calmed down, Johnson said.

"We can't control what a major Hollywood entertainer does," said Mohit Ghose, a spokesman for the trade group America's Health Insurance Plans. "Our focus remains on a positive agenda of high-quality health care for more Americans."

Indeed. They can't control what a major Hollywood entertainer does. That's why the health care representatives seem to have chosen to downplay the potential impact of Mike's documentary - a well known card. LOL.

But to those anonymous health care industry reps in the audience, Mike cautioned that his film "will not be necessarily what you think its going to be." In one example, the director compared the no holds barred tactics of American football with the seemingly more fair regulations that guide international soccer, as a way of apparently explaining that his movie will consider the deeper reasons for America undervaluing health care.

Ambitious, interesting and visionary like BFC was it seems. Will Sicko be a history of selfishness, like BFC was a history of violence ?

THE FANTASY OF BUSH'S ASSASSINATION

2006-09-08T08:22:00.000-07:00

A hypothesis or a fantasy ?

The ongoing Toronto film fest is going to feature Gabriel Range's Death Of A President, a "what if" taking the pulse of the nation two years after Bush has been murdered.

So, two years after the mini-scandal raised by Nicholson Baker's Checkpoint (2004), in which two characters spent the novel daydreaming on the subject and discussing the pros and cons of the possibility, the idea of Bush's assassination re-surfaces, this time under the form of a fake doco set in the future :

The hypothetical assassination of U.S. president George W. Bush, winner of the heated 2004 presidential election, has drawn a lot interest to Gabriel Range's "D.O.A.P." (Death Of A President"), a Toronto fest feature that TIFF co-director Noah Cowan calls "the most dangerous and breathtakingly original film" he has seen this year. The movie is structured as an investigative doc made two years after an unknown gunman kills Bush.

The film has drawn considerable media attention, stirring debates on U.S. news channels, and last week, Toronto fest organizers were compelled to issue a statement backing their decision to include it in the festival. Planners noted that the movie is screening in the Visions program, which "spotlights films which challenge our notions of mainstream cinema and explore new cinematic territory." Continuing in the statement, the festival said, "The Toronto International Film Festival is committed to the free expression of ideas and to engaging audiences in thoughtful discussion about issues of the day. 'D.O.A.P.' contributes meaningfully to the public discourse surrounding current social issues, demonstrates highly original storytelling techniques and utilizes innovative digital effects."

Continuing, the festival noted that the perspectives and/or opinions expressed in its films do not necessarily reflect those of the Toronto International Film Festival Group. And it added, "The film is not exploitative in any way and treats what would certainly be a great tragedy respectfully and un-cynically. In the tradition of great cautionary tales, a terrible and horrifying event unveils certain aspects of society's current fears and future trends."

Of course the topic forces the fest organizers and the makers of the movie to display an extreme brand of diplomacy, and of course Bush's assassination would be "a great tragedy" and "a terrible and horrifying event", yadda yadda yadda.

And of course I haven't seen the flick. Nevertheless, I'm more than skeptical about it being about "engaging audiences in thoughtful discussion about issues of the day" and "contributing meaningfully to the public discourse surrounding current social issues".

Beneath the inevitable (and tiresome) varnish of conventional respectability that such attempts are bound to wear, I don't think that the incentive lies in any sort of intellectual approach, but in a thumping and throbbing fantasy, deep-rooted and made fascinating by despair.

It's pretty obvious that such an event would solve nothing, and wouldn't even be half as satisfactory as one might expect. When I remember the inconsolable and hyperbolic tremoloes in so many voices when Reagan died in his bed at 93, I can't help but shrug at the thought of all the eager and feisty years of "Bush's martyrdom" legends in store for us from his devoted cronies and lackeys who hold everything. No, thank you... It wouldn't be a hangover, it would be a cirrhosis. Not worth the drunkenness.

However, just like Checkpoint was really about two people who had given up on any hope of influencing their country's direction, I suspect that DOAP really proceeds from the same deafeatist and all in all sad fantasy. Dreaming that Bush is killed is pleasant, but opiated. It's especially easier than getting him impeached. His virtual murder is the guilty pleasure of a nation of slaves, smacked down by absolutism.

Still, better dreaming of that than nothing. We're still in our prison cells, but at least we quit the Stockholm syndrome. The revolutions we get we deserve.

TORONTO SURPRISE

2006-09-05T18:28:00.000-07:00

Mike will give Toronto film festival audiences sneak peeks from his two new documentaries, one of which is Sicko, his U.S. health care shocker.

The other… is a work-in-progress called The Great '04 Slacker Uprising, a document of his political travels during the 2004 election campaign.

Who would have thought ? Just a few days ago I was still coming across rants from wingnuts yelling at Mike for his forthcoming treasonable treasonous snake in the grass yadda yadda yadda Katrina opus.

Well, even though I'm not convinced that Iran is one, I have to admit that wingnuts DO like windmills. Mike is not at all after Katrina for all it seems. (for now at least... ;) )

Back to the autobiographical tour filming method that did wonders in The Big One, he's working on - sorry, I meant cashing in on - his 2004 Slacker Uprising Tour, and therefore on FREEDOM OF SPEECH and APATHY.

Personally, I'm delighted to see him tackle those subjects. Besides the fact that I never was over-excited at the prospect of some kind of Return of Fahrenheit 9/11, even in the movie's heyday, I'd rather have Mike handle less burning and yet more thoroughgoing subjects than Katrina or Bush's too obvious and too narcissistically painful record. No "I told you so" message can hold water in that country, and Mike does need to get SOME of his popularity back in order be able to reach a decent audience and display some influence again. Of course he's going to be tagged as an egomaniac again, but that would be the lesser of two evils...

And finally I do think that apathy is our deepest - and sickest - disease, and a direct consequence of the war on freedom of speech. Why the fuck would you act when you can't even speak ?

A most excellent and promising news, then.

Thom Powers, who’s the documentary programmer for the Toronto International Film Festival and the Stranger Than Fiction series at Manhattan's IFC Center, writes on the TIFF site :

Moore’s goal during the election was to awaken apathetic young voters, and here we see Moore at his rabble-rousing best. But the real stars of the film are the immense crowds energized by his message. These scenes are an amazing foreshadowing – clearly not of Bush’s electoral defeat, but of the then-growing tide of public opinion against his administration, a tide that would eventually turn against him en masse during his second term. Moore will show segments from the work-in-progress that captures the birth of a new political generation.

Exhilarating.... no ?

The Toronto International Film Festival is now mere days away. It will run from September 7 to September 16.

The Moore night is scheduled for September 8.

I look forward to the reports (can't say "reviews", given that it will be only teasers).

GET A LIFE, BIOGRAPHER !

2006-08-18T14:36:00.000-07:00

From The Truth About Michael Moore to The Truth About Life.

It was originally called Michael Moore – A biography, but I’ve recently seen copies renamed The Making of Michael Moore. Sez about it all. However, it’s Mike’s first biography ever, and so I’ll still pay it with an in-depth review as such. But as such only.

THE TRUTH ABOUT MICHAEL MOORE

“What is it about this former Eagle Scout that gets people from around the world and from all political persuasions so worked up ?”, the cover anxiously asks as an opening question. Oh, but the book was written “without an agenda to prove Moore right or wrong” and author Emily Schultz just wants to “sort the man from the myth with in-depth interviews and research”. Oh, good. For a minute I had pictured Michael Moore as a guy that riles up people from around the world and from all political persuasions. Now I know that I’m going to be graced with an objective and moderate outlook that will enable me to learn The Truth About Michael Moore. I’m fully reassured.

Sure enough, I’ve always had this dream of me and Mike sprawled on deckchairs on some faraway beach, sipping exotic cocktails as he would unfurl for me the story of his life as it came. I would understand everything and nod gently, mentally finishing his sentences as he would begin them. He would stop and take this long, cool, friendly look at me, and say with that charming, tongue-in-cheek smile of his : “You’re the only one who can do the job properly, you know”. And I would simply reply : “I know”. And we would both sip from our glasses with a renowned feeling of peace. However, visceral jealousy is unfortunately optional to perceive the sad mediocrity of this hypocritical, center left but not too much, release.

Actually, and to be fair, it’s not as bad as that. The book is well researched. You learn things. Schultz explores important and little known aspects of Mike’s life : the Flint Voice epic, the Mother Jones episode, the Flint workers’ historical background. Of course you may ask yourself what she would have done had Ben Hamper not written Rivethead – but let’s not start with left-handed compliments.

The controversies are also scrupulously chronicled and their cumulated accounts shed a light on the formation and the manufacturing of the anti-Moore subculture. Only if you do the analytical work yourself though, since these stories are there for no other reason than marveling at Moore’s ability to rile up everyone without an agenda to prove Moore right or wrong, and therefore insipidly juxtaposed with the occasional glimpses of sympathy equally shared between Mike and his adversaries - but let’s NOT start with left-handed compliments, I said.

And finally, there are a few scattered intelligent and personal insights and remarks. Very few. Here’s one (about Roger and Me), showing a shrewd understanding of Mike’s cinematic approach of the collaborator character (p 72) : “With Smith missing from much of the movie – seen only from a distance or in news clips – his double becomes Deputy Fred Ross. The kindhearted evictor, with his just-doing-my-job casualness (…) appears after every failed attempt of Moore’s to contact the CEO. At the film’s devastating climax, Smith and Ross are intercut.”

Good. I’ve paid my dues to moderation and objectivity. Now for the rest. ;)

THE TRUTH ABOUT EMILY SCHULTZ

Even by the logic of Schultz’s agenda – oops, sorry, I meant lack of agenda -, some essential controversies are missing (the school years and his paradoxical relation to teachers and authority, the continuing story of the Nader-Moore feud, the love-hate relationship with the Democrats) or hardly tackled (F9/11 in particular !). But the most unnerving is her refusal to make any space for the artistic dimension and the subsequent absence of any analysis, any concept, any chapter devoted to the evaluation of Michael Moore as an artist. Hello, Emily !… Mike is a filmmaker !…

But Emily has decided that Mike saw himself as basically a journalist, in spite of his repeated claims that he was first of all a filmmaker who felt he had to do the media’s job since the media didn’t. And this is emblematic of the consistent suspicion that is the trademark of her total lack of agenda. Mike doesn’t tell the truth. SHE’s going to tell the truth about Mike.

Her introduction opens on an episode of Mike’s life she seems to regard as highly typical of the character, as she’s going to obsess over it throughout the book : how he cleverly used the media in 1985, at a time when he was unknown, to lay a piece of agit-prop action on Reagan as he prepared to lay a memorial wreath in a German cemetery that contained the graves of Nazi SS soldiers. Her conclusion will tag him as Citizen Moore, in reference to Citizen Kane who went on to confiscate truth through the power of his populist success. In between, a classic and unexcitingly told success story. Moore is but a media whore keen on self-promotion. Such is The Truth About Michael Moore that you get when you just sort the man from the myth without an agenda to prove him right or wrong.

Well, Emily, you know – gonna break it to you as a fellow researcher and writer : when little happens between an introduction and a conclusion, other than an obsessive interpretation of every joke, every statement, every staging as a deliberate will to feed an artificially made up image of “the everyday rebel” (when you could, I don’t know, admire his fidelity and truthfulness to his roots for example) – when you do little more than that, I’m afraid that you’ll only discover what you already “knew” right from the start. And that this “knowledge” barely exceeds David Hardy’s depiction of Mike as a pathological and narcissistic phoney in Michael Moore Is A Big Fat Stupid White Man.

And – still as a fellow mature observer as keen as yourself on justice and objectivity – let me consequently break, in turn, The Truth About Emily Schultz’s Lack Of Agenda : your aim, dear Emily, is to offer the anti-Moore stance the moderate discourse and therefore the credibility that it lacked until now.

THE TRUTH ABOUT LIFE

Was it an aim ? Or just the logical outcome of your lack of focus, vision, depth and ambition ?

For the few good moments that I have liked, I’ll give you the benefit of doubt. Perhaps it’s not Machiavellianism but just impotence. At any rate, you sure wrote down, if not the truth about Michael Moore, at least The Truth About The Times, and I’m sure that your work has been up to all of your publisher’s expectations.

But, Emily – and this will be my last advice – if you don’t believe that Mike is the “common man” he says he is (and I share this view, just not the suspicion attached to it), be logical. Don’t treat him like a common man. Don’t be a common woman when writing about him. A life is more than a linear, tedious, unimaginative resume. Lives have opinions. Mike’s more than anyone else’s. The life of an artist is more than the events that pave its progression. And being a biographer doesn’t boil down to spoil +200 pages to prove that tautology that no artist is literal. Yes, sure, Mike is partly a self-written character since he made his biography a part of his art and his self a part of his casts. To make it a crime, or at least something hidden and therefore shameful, only stems from the dominant and ignorant right-wing puritanical crap. Witnessing the life of an artist doesn’t consist in “sorting the man from the myth”, as if a myth was a lie, as if the myth could be separated from the man. It consists in just the opposite – sorting the myth from the man. It demands from the biographer some basic answers about the reasons why his subject deserves a biography, if you prefer.

You write (p 168) : “It’s this duality of cynicism and ethics that defines the character of Michael Moore”. That’s your thesis, without a doubt. Okay, so where is your definition of cynicism ? Where do you present his ethics ? Where do you confront, discuss them – in themselves and in view of your subject and of the society and the times ? Where is your personal slant about Michael Moore anything else than the ditty you hum while typing ?

And how the fuck can you write a biography of Michael Moore without uttering the words “personal responsibility” ONCE ?

DEMOCRATS - HOPELESS OR NOT ?

2006-08-16T18:12:00.000-07:00

Mike recently advised us to do some housecleaning. And me I always do as I'm told by Mike. :-)

But I'm afraid that this time the task includes him - or, rather, the political choice that he has made and would like to see us share.

Mike believes in improving the Democratic Party. He believes that its long time sorry behavior is but the fault of a handful of righties in disguise, namely the DLC, and that we can take over what's ours and always was and impose our will on the cowards that are supposed to represent us.

I never believed that. I believe that the Democratic Party is rotten to the core and exists only as the other side of an all-Republican coin to give an illusion of a two party system to a country that has long since ceased to be a real democracy, and to keep We The People drugged with a religion of better days, sentimental sex with supposed lovers and shows on TV owing more to sports than to debates. And only the terrible absence of any credible alternative, combined to the terrible evidence of the fascist threat (and also, to be honest, to my love for Mike and respect for his judgment) made me - superficially - change my tune.

But every time I get a chance to be broken the news that the Democrats are not our lovers but American imperialism's whores, it doesn't take a lot for me to convert to the stance. (and then I pour myself a drink, chill and pull out my Feingold 2008 sticker ; that's the usual pattern).

The text below is an excerpt from a grumbling article denying all sense and worth to Lamont's victory in Marxist media Revolution :

The Democrats Are Lashed to the Mast of the Ship of State--But Why Should We Be?

As much as there are Democrats who at times criticize how the war on Iraq was initiated, or even how it is being handled today, now that the U.S. has invaded they are concerned first and foremost with preserving the strength, unchallenged power, and overall interests of the U.S. as an imperialist empire, including in Iraq and the wider Middle East. If you listen, it is from this perspective of preserving America's strength that Lamont criticizes aspects of how the war has been waged: "We are a much stronger country; when it comes to the war on terror when we're true to what we stand for, and we've compromised a lot of that over the last few years. That weakens our country." It's not that the Democrats haven't noticed how many people in "their base" hate this war, it is that the particular role the Democratic Party plays is to pursue imperialist interests while at the same time leading "their base" to believe that it is their will that is being expressed.

In a recent article in Rolling Stone, Al Gore was quoted as saying, "We're all, in some ways, lashed to the mast of our ship of state here. Because the little group at the helm should resign. You know, Rumsfeld and that whole gang have made horrible mistake after horrible mistake..."

This metaphor, of madmen at the helm (steering a boat), and the Democrats lashed to the mast of the ship, is revealing about the role the Democrats play. They may not like the crew at the helm, but they are "on board" for the bigger agenda of imperialist world domination, and from that perspective, getting out of Iraq would endanger the whole ship.

You do not take over the Democratic Party; it takes over you. And the more you try to take it over, the deeper you are inserted into its pocket. The effort you put into it is like thrashing about in quicksand--the harder you thrash, the more immobilized you become until finally you are suffocated to death. Lamont is a perfect example--happy to take your money and your energies into channels that will just piss them away, while the Democrats on top continue to pursue what they perceive to be in the overall interests of the SYSTEM they serve.

Recall what happened several months ago, when the progressive world was abuzz with confidence about impeaching the President. At that time a poll executive admitted that among the population the most requested poll was one about impeachment, but stated that his firm wouldn't conduct it because it was not being discussed by leading Democrats and therefore wasn't legitimate. Then, recall how when Wisconsin Democrat Russ Fiengold made a motion for censuring the President and, despite overwhelming support from the people, was only supported by two of his fellow Democrats.

I know how Mike sees things. I know what he would say.

Mike believes that there is but one ship, and that it's the idea that we can escape it and act outside of it which is an illusion. He would say that the Democratic Party will pursue imperialist interests only as long as "their base" believes their crap and lets itself be led by the leash and by the lies. He would conclude that alienation is not a fatality, and that democracy consists in everyone having a voice, a homeless tramp just the same as Bill Gates, period, and that it's why as soon as we know we will win, PERIOD.

Mike believes that personal awareness and personal responsibility can circumvent, change or topple the laws of sociology. Mike is a Christian before he's a Marxist.

I don't know if I believe that "You do not take over the Democratic Party; it takes over you." I really don't know.

I wonder what I am...

TRAVERSE CITY FILM FESTIVAL : 2 - 0 FOR CULTURE

2006-08-15T07:17:00.000-07:00

We could use a few good news, couldn’t we ?

Well… This time this is it ! It's happened ! The “second coming” of Mike’s TCFF has enjoyed everything it was deserving, aiming at and hoping for : a nice coverage, a good attendance, a friendly atmosphere, one or two controversies (the “Jesus Camp” one in particular), a few more Republican redemptions (Mike boasted “a lot of Republican hugs” ;)), a few less Republican copycats (no counter-festival from the local wingnuts this year) AND - from scratch - a strong and positive message.

MIKE’S NEW MESSAGE : SAVE THE CULTURE

It is very moving and heartwarming to see Mike take on the fight for culture now that a whole country has just finished to lose it : Italy, our main and ever so talented rival in movies, is now mourning the death of Cinecitta, killed by local fascist Berlusconi after half a century of artistic "cold war" with a then brilliant Hollywood.

Now we're on our way to lose everything we've ever had as well, drowning in seas of insipid superheroes for cowards unable to raise a finger against the unbearable and devastated by tsunamis of asinine blockbusters turning our souls into ruins.

The Traverse City Film Festival is Mike's personal initiative to save American culture from Hollywood. He has made it clear when launching the 2nd event of the name. What a great, exhilarating kind of crusade !...

Moore also regards the festival as part of a mission to combat what he considers Hollywood's slide into mediocrity.

"Hollywood has become an assembly line, not unlike GM, where it churns out the same old, same old year after year," Moore told The Associated Press. "Trying to play it safe, not taking any risks, and giving the people what they think the people need as opposed to listening to them and asking them what they would like."

Obviously, it will take more than one festival in a small Midwestern town to stem the tide. But, hey, Moore says, Michigan has been a trendsetter before -- think automobiles.

"I guess in our own small way, we'd like this festival to be the birthplace of this particular movement to reclaim the cinema as one of our few indigenous art forms."

According to Mike, people of all political stripes hunger for quality films :

"We all walk into the theater hoping to see something that ... will take us back to that sense we had when we first started seeing movies, that sense of awe and wonder," he said. "It's rare to have that feeling today.

"For me, a great movie is a movie that takes me someplace I've never been before, that leaves me with a feeling of exhilaration, that sends me out of the theater perhaps more enlightened. And the best ones of all give me a good, hearty laugh."

POPULAR CULTURE vs UNPOPULAR PRICKS : 2 - 0

This year's festival lineup, while revolving around a salute to Stanley Kubrick, Mike’s favorite filmmaker, was an eclectic mix -- timeless classics such as "The Wizard of Oz" and little-known indies; comedy and drama; humor and tragedy.

Two scheduled showings of Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth" quickly sold out, so a third was added. Also requiring additional screenings were Jeff Garlin's romantic comedy "I Want Someone to Eat Cheese With;" "The Prizewinner of Defiance, Ohio," starring Julianne Moore and Woody Harrelson; and "La Moustache," a French tale of a man who shaves off his mustache and goes into a psychological tailspin when no one notices. The closing night feature was Woody Allen's "Scoop."

As of August 2, festival organizers were predicting 75,000 tickets would be sold to the paid screenings at three venues, and at a panel discussion at the City Opera House titled "What's Up Hollywood?" Moore said the festival box office had taken in $250,000 already, and "70 to 75" of the 88 ticketed screenings were sold out.

"I can say with some certainty we will be back next year," Moore said.

First inning : MIKE vs WINGNUTS : 1 - 0

As I said earlier, the local wingnuts’ “Freedom FilmFest”, did not return to Traverse City this year. According to their co-founder (who BTW is called Hubbard, one of those coincidences that are too good to be true) , it is in part because “the event became focused on politics and the 2004 election "and that's not what our organization is about", and in part because “it was so contentious last year and a number of our people received threats to their lives.”

But according to Traverse City Film Festival co-founder and author Doug Stanton, it was rather because the "anti-Traverse City Film Festival" was a "non-issue" last year and that its absence this year has no impact on the existing festival.” LOL. I do believe Freedom Fries FilmFest's president when he promises a come back, though. If his ilk was able to learn anything, anyhow, we'd know by now.

Second inning : MIKE vs COLLABORATORS : 1 - 0

Take Eamonnn Bowles of Magnolia Pictures, who construes the noble American spirit of pragmatism in accordance with the size of his own morals and also the typical American ethics of our times....

Mr. Bowles, feeling like a man with some power, asked Mike to remove Jesus Camp, a documentary about summer camps for children who are born-again Christians, from his Traverse City Film Festival, on this irrefutable ground that Mike’s stench would harm his precious product. You just gotta love the head of movie studios - even small ones. The confidence. The ego. The arrogance.

We and the filmmakers are concerned that showing the film at a festival so closely aligned with Michael Moore will create the misimpression that the film is left-leaning and critical of its subject matter, when, in fact, the Film is a balanced and objective work. That is so in part because of the overwhelming public perception of Mr. Moore's affinity to liberal causes and anti-conservative agendas. We feel it is very important that, for this film to reach its widest possible audience, the neutrality and objectivity displayed in the film be reflected in the outreach to the public, something Mr. Moore's association does not engender.

As an observer put it in his blog, it's dubious at best to brand the guy with the equivalent of a scarlet letter simply based on his political beliefs. Well, Mike’s response was up to the challenge :

…crickets…. crickets…

Hey Eamonn… Pragmatism is a philosophy based on the idea that what is good is what is successful – not on turning heroes into pariahs, asshole. And in the noble American spirit of pragmatism, the beliefs rule the action. Not the opposite.

TCFF LIFTS OFF….

Notwithstanding these few losers, fact is that the TCFF went worldwide as press converged. Thanks to dozens of visiting journalists and news agencies, stories about the festival have been broadcast or printed all over the world.

"It's kind of funny because last year I was pitching a straight story about the film festival all over the place and I couldn't get any takers," said local free-lance writer Jane Boursaw, who writes a syndicated movie review column specializing in films suitable for families and children. "It's picking up steam, I guess." There's even a possibility that National Geographic could collaborate on future festivals.

All’s well that ends well… And should this chronicle make you feel like finding out more about what looks like the beginning of a beautiful adventure (the TCFF is already the next best thing to Sundance in the indie world), go and check the site :

http://www.traversecityfilmfestival.org

EROTIC

2006-08-14T16:21:00.000-07:00

Found that on YouTube.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-FHdOti48vc

AWESOME !!! I always thought that Franz Ferdinand's "Michael" had been written for Michael Moore. Or should I say, I can't imagine it may have been written for anybody else. Mike is the embodiment of desire. He "laid it down for all to see". He's Sexy Sadie...

And so, each time I listen to this song I close my eyes, open my arms, throw back my head, loosen my limbs, slightly open my lips, lean back... and that's it, I'm dancing like mad in communion with the most "beautiful dance whore" the world has ever seen, and it feels like he's there, so close he could touch me, forgetting everything about the world on his shoulders and dancing his life away by my side for a while in the Ballrooms of Mars...

ATTENTION ! The part with Bush is hardcore and somewhat vomit-inducing. Personally, it did make me feel like barfing. But it's also hilarious, and should make you laugh providing you don't let go of your imagination... or are a toughie like myself :-)....

This is what I am, I am a man
so come and dance with me Michael
So strong now, its strong now
so come and dance with me Michael
I'm all that you see, you wanna see
so come and dance with me Michael
So close now, its close now,
so come and dance with me, so come and dance with me, SO COME AND DANCE WITH ME

Michael,
you're the boy with all the leather hips,
sticky hair, sticky hips, stumble on my sticky lips

Michael,
you're the only one I'd ever want
only one I'd ever want
only one I'd ever want
Beautiful boys on a beautiful dancefloor

Michael,
you're dancing like a beautiful dance whore
Michael,
waiting on a silver platter now ... and nothing matters now
nothing matters now, nothing
Matters now but you

YEAH

POST-FAHRENHEITISM

2006-08-13T10:48:00.000-07:00

THE SOUND OF BACKLASH

Two years ago, I wrote a piece entitled Triumph of his will, or the ideology of slander, in which I detailed all the attempts from a furious and then desperate right to smear, hurt, shake and in a word trip up a furious and then almighty movie going by the name of Fahrenheit 9/11, which was pitching tents and flags of left and truth all around an until then gray world with black horizons, threatening the control rooms of threat and terrifying the specialists of fear.

The cold, paranoid, nihilistic Machine already looked pretty daft and frightening at the time, but also, and all in all, ludicrous and pitifully helpless. It was biting the dust. It was going to be defeated. It couldn’t possibly survive the worldwide onslaught from We The People led by the Commander-in-Chief of our choice. Rage, truth and reason seemed enough. It was, in Mike’s words, the sound of a dying dinosaur.

Two years later, the dinosaur is still dying, for dinosaurs will die, but it isn’t dead. At all. It tears us apart with its claws and keeps us crushed under its belly, while polls regularly and solemnly inform it that We The People are not glad at all – but won’t go as far as to actually move our asses to bump it off. For BUSH WON. And MOORE LOST.

Backlash. The infinitely bitter taste of backlash, well known from the ancient Rome. Vae Victis.

History is written by the victors, and We The People generally agree that this is the way it should be. Few of us have taken the lies, and those of us who abhor Bush and his policies are even more numerous than they ever were. But most of us have adjusted to reality and drunk the Kool-Aid. And so yesterday’s slander and propaganda have become today’s normality and obviousness. In spite of the low profile he has kept, Mike has not been forgotten by the Machine, and he’s getting duly mocked and ridiculed by its slaves old and new.

Everywhere we hear the sound of marching charging feet… Er, no. Try again.

Everywhere we hear the sound of magical chants of obsessive and childish hatred against Bush, with tiresome litanies of sensational revelations about Bush’s real agenda, far-fetched and impossible to impose conspiracy theories about Bush’s real crimes, tedious rehashing of Bush’s real level of stupidity and real records in incompetence. As if what’s plain to see and what’s at our disposal in a democracy weren’t enough to make us damn him and drive him out. As if the left valued its narcissism more than its action. As if the only real secret worth telling wasn’t that Bush and his ilk have become the closet fascination of their opponents, and their only true heroes now that We The People have bowed to the masters of the world and made ourselves willing orphans, by tacitly accepting to disown yesterday’s positive counterpart to what we pretend to hate and to spout the enemy’s propaganda in the enemy’s words.

With Bush’s victory, it is the temptation of Personal Irresponsibility that has won over the weak hearts. In the wake of triumphant immorality, open cynicism, unpunished inhumanity, minds that were simply mediocre, conventional or aimless in life until then got literally aroused by the sirens of Bush’s “Why not ?”, as if their call was the only kind of challenge they could take up. Ah, to be a winner by proxy. To identify with a no good jackass as useless as yourself, but so much mightier. To feel powerful even though you’re a nobody through simple behavioral changes such as gang mentality, invasion of privacy, playground bullying, warlike attitudes, cult of strength and random violence or cruelty. To forget you are really screwed up to the bone and but one of the casualties of that dead hope that once lent you its wings. Moore had showed you that silver lining that faded, and you will never forgive him THAT… until, or unless, the bastard wins again for your entertainment.

All it takes is forgetting about your varnish of morals. All it takes is a long, good, deep dive into confusion and unbridled principle of pleasure. Talk like them, behave like them, think like them – but don’t forget to be against them. A lot a lot a lot. Show that you are free thinkers who won’t let themselves be told what to think nor what to do by ANYONE. Be both a rebel and one of Bush’s kind. In “counter-revolution”, there is still “revolution”. It’s all that matters.

THE KILLING OF FAHRENHEIT 9/11

The history of this alchemy of communicating vessels can be tracked down very easily. A single article is enough to get the general idea of what happened : Richard Goldstein’s excellent and unfortunately all too prophetic Mauling Michael Moore : The Attack on Fahrenheit 9/11 - Fox lays back while ABC and NBC pile on, published in The Village Voice only a few days after the movie’s release.

http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/mikeinthenews/index.php?id=43

With the benefit of hindsight, the actual subtlety of the media’s well orchestrated campaign of slander will become apparent to the most honest among us pretentious conceited lot, always so busy laughing at the stupidity of the right while the man is quietly sticking it to us.

When it became clear that a two hour movie would seriously threaten the masters of the world, the White House didn’t follow the gross advocates of open censorship like David Bossie and his Citizens United. No. Dodging ridicule, they entrusted their media whores with that mission.

I remember how dumbstruck I was when I read Fox’s angelic, praising review of Fahrenheit 9/11 – even though it was Bush’s most servile channel and Mike’s most molested target. Where was the con ?

Nowhere. It was just beautiful team work. While the limelight was on the root of all evil, the crooks kept a brave face going – and it was two “moderate”, “objective” channels which enacted the essential of the dirty work. ABC ran “Fact or Fiction ?” across their screens during Good Morning America and World News Tonight, and never used Mike’s responses to George Stephanopoulos’s vicious questions and harsh criticisms on This Week. NBC ran highly negative assessments of the film on both its Nightly News and its cable channel MSNBC, called its coverage a “truth-squad report” and made no mention of the readily available rebuttals to its accusations. CNN and CBS, whose audiences lean slightly leftward, took a decent but quite forgettable pro-and-con approach to Fahrenheit 9/11, as timid and pale as the Democratic challenger who could (you never know) win the election. In both cases, it was not to be what the populace remembered.

As Richard Goldstein correctly sums it up, “What ABC and NBC called into question is Moore's extrapolation and interpretation of information; in other words, his slant. But by using loaded phrases like "truth squad" and "fact or fiction," and by omitting Moore's answers to key questions, these networks did the very thing they accuse him of doing. I would argue that this sort of distortion is far more dangerous in the context of a news broadcast than in a clearly opinionated film.”

And, as Richard Goldstein correctly emphasizes, one of these “moderate” and “objective” channels (NBC) is owned by General Electric, a prime defense contractor, and the second of these “moderate” and “objective” channels (ABC) is owned by Disney, Jeb Bush’s lackey and all time Conservative champ.

Two years later, this is how a self-proclaimed “interested observer who stands for reason, compassion and tolerance between human beings” percipiently (and typically) analyses Fahrenheit 9/11, all by himself and in all moderation and objectivity :

A LAMENTABLE PIECE OF INTELLECTUAL DISHONESTY

Dear all,

I watched this film with a sense of rising dismay. Lest fiery fellow posters start pinning insulting labels on me and drawing the lines of battle right away, I hasten to add that I am not a conservative, or indeed a "liberal" in the sense that this word has been mangled today. I am just an interested observer who stands for reason, compassion and tolerance between human beings.

Michael Moore has clearly made it his mission in life to expose the bigotry, hypocrisy and self-interested greed of some conservatives, as well as their deceitful dealings in coming to power. But unfortunately, in his dangerous single-mindedness Moore cannot resist the easy temptations of intellectual dishonesty. Fahrenheit 9/11 is a veritable dictionary of all the traditional dirty tricks of propaganda: soundbites and speeches taken out of context, moralistic oversimplifications, emotional manipulation, fakely spontaneous testimonials, mood-altering soundtracks, cynically staged melodrama, misleading footage, and clearly biased and selective interviewing styles (meek, leading and conciliatory towards those Moore agrees with, aggressive, dismissive and obstructionist towards those with whom he does not) are all recurring features of his extremely subjective analysis. It is true that aside from the important matter of Moore's methods, I have no way of verifying or disproving most of the factual basis for his claims, even if much of the film is grounded upon unsubstantiated conjecture and circumstantial evidence anyway - but in any case I would not trust the motives of anyone trying to convince me of anything in such sneaky and underhand ways.

Moore’s highly partial style of reporting is all the more cause for dismay because he does have truth on his side. The deep flaws of those he condemns in Fahrenheit 9/11 are genuine, as many alternative sources from all over the political spectrum have long suggested; so is their corruption, self-righteousness, arrogance and the dangerous dogmatism of their views, and these are indeed cause for the greatest concern. But truth speaks loudly enough for itself and should be left to make its own impression, otherwise it is made into a farce, as George Orwell rightly pointed out when he said that “all propaganda is a lie, even when it tells the truth”. Moore’s documentaries incidentally include direct quotations from Orwell’s works, which suggests that Moore has at least some peripheral knowledge of his ideas. It is very telling, therefore, that he merely chose those that suited him whilst deliberately disregarding the one above, in spite of its crucial significance in interpreting all of Orwell’s political philosophy.

The fact that Moore gave in to embellishing his findings so ludicrously robs him of all credibility, something which his opponents (incidentally the primary target audience of his documentaries) will certainly not fail to point out, and thus his careful -and in many respects, valid- examination of the injustices that go on in conservative America will be utterly lost except on those who already share his opinions. Those who do not, on the other hand, will merely become even more incensed at this new evidence of what they see as the unshakable dishonesty and untrustworthiness of the liberals, and their view in this instance will be fully justified: even being a hardcore liberal (and therefore, ironically, a proponent of the inherent validity of several different points of view), Moore still cannot quite shake the puritanical orthodoxy that dictates that his is the only “right” view and commands him to annihilate all opposition to it, regardless of the means employed. Moore, like too many in America, proposes to fight unjustly for the sake of justice, untruthfully for the sake of truth and intolerantly for the sake of tolerance.

I am surprised that in discussing this film, no one else seems to have had the vision to leave all the partisan ranting aside, and simply take the film on its own merits, which are few indeed. I urge all those who would like to learn more about the hidden facets of the Bush administration, whatever your political affiliation, to give this dangerously biased film a miss, and rely instead on sources which look at these issues with a genuine respect for the truth.

Kind regards,

C

DO THE POST-MODERN

I skimmed through this review without the slightest interest, the heading A lamentable piece of intellectual dishonesty already containing everything required for an OD of anti-Mooreness of the lethal kind (and it's the only kind around), and I found exactly what I thought I'd find : "dirty tricks of propaganda"... "no way of verifying or disproving most of the factual basis for his claims"... Orwell used against a socialist... "he merely chose those that suited him"... "unshakable dishonesty and untrustworthiness of the liberals, and their view in this instance will be fully justified"... "unjustly for the sake of justice, untruthfully for the sake of truth and intolerantly for the sake of tolerance."... The pleasant phraseology, the educated style only made the lack of imagination, of common sense, of everything, more obvious.

There was, of course, no possible reply to a naive masterpiece of such dimensions.

But the cruel innocence of this infinitely sad tirade (what is sadder than a nice, open-minded and civil person who spouts garbage, unaware of the ventriloquist who first sneaked the “free”, “spontaneous” opinions inside his head ?) put me through such an agony that I couldn’t leave it unanswered.

What on earth could I say ? What would you have told him ?

I said that it wasn’t true. I said that it was a string of stereotypes. That all of the cliches which survived the defeat were here. A string of nonsensical, groundless propositions selected by the collective unconscious like the atheists say that randomness chose in the dance of atoms, to form the apologetic, self-hating discourse which explains reasonably, level-headedly, rationally why Fahrenheit 9/11 sucked, why we should never trust nor have trusted Michael Moore, and how beautiful we would be and look if not for him.

I told Mr Nice Guy that he was dreaming awake. That his piece was reasonably, level-headedly, rationally stark raving mad. That this was the kind of stance which appealed to confused, mediocre and cowardly minds who find in it a reason to think of treason as tolerance, of gross lack of realism as nuance, of cluelessness as subtlety, of lack of identity as broad-mindedness and of lack of sense of class and empathy as evolved enlightenment. That this was ass fùcked by Bush. That this was the reason why we lose and lose and lose and lose, and the reason why we will lose again for a long, long time.

That this was centrist.

Mr Nice Guy replied. For the life of me I couldn’t paste this second dissertation here. Suffice to say that it was so kind, so polite, that I couldn’t read until the end.

I told him :

”Your post begins with the supposition I must be quite keen on the post-modern school of social science. I loathe post-modernism. Post-modernism says that there is no truth. It's one of the factories of cynicism, apathy and trendy chic despair. Post-modernism is what Michael Moore defeated in 2004, before being himself defeated by the beast.”

I told him :

”What do you want me to tell you ? Uh ? What do you want me to tell you ? I'm sure you're very nice. But you're like a lot of other people. Absolutely clueless. Clueless beyond words, beyond anything I could ever express. Well, I tried.”

And then I ran.

WAS IT JUST A DREAM ?

Fahrenheit 9/11 has carried the immense hope of a whole nation – perhaps of a whole world – and opened the door for a string of important and often difficult political documentaries, bringing us unprecedented awareness and a genuine mutation in art whose depth and impact are too considerable to be measured as yet. And still.

Still… It seems like there is, as a rule, NO real possibility to explain that a new political movie is important, serious and accurate WITHOUT trashing Michael Moore while doing so. Moore is the foil that every director, every critic will use to swear he's "not like Moore" or that such movie is good because it's "not like Moore". Anything will look greater, deeper and more lasting if you DO belittle Fahrenheit 9/11 while praising it (“The opposite of Michael Moore, honest”). The more it's like Moore, the more it's not like Moore. At best, Fahrenheit 9/11 is just cut down to an "electioneering documentary" (polite phrasing for “kleenex propaganda”), now out of time and past its sell-by date.

To start like a flag and to end like a yogurt. What a sad fate.

In real life, Mike is forgotten or gets mindlessly smeared on the “obvious” mode : “Moore may be a fraud, but Bush…”, “Sure, Osama likes him, but Bush…”, “Yeah, he’s a hack, but Bush…”. Across the Internet, part of the once hyperactive pro-Moore sites are now dormant, and part have turned to Crocodile City and Rattlesnake Gulch, attracting the worst scum (true right, fake left, real swines, real jerks, real bastards) and functioning like more insidious, more hypocritical versions of moorewatch. And when once in a blue moon Mike is actually discussed, it’s always on negative, absent mode : Damon’s ridiculous suit yes, the Traverse City Film Festival no.

An armless jackass makes up a new deceit (YAWN !!!!!!), and woosh – it gets Smalltown slightly going. As that stupid affair of “no-problem with a name” functioned as a minor political fad lately, I could only make note of the persistence of the general blackout on any kind of positive or normal (ie professional) news about Michael Moore over the weeks and over the months that it made obvious. A rather strange silence in view of the positive and important news about the Traverse City Film Festival, his Freedom of Speech Scholarship, a bit about "Sicko", his note on "An Inconvenient Truth"… and finally, of course, the imperturbable drone of the neo-con slander machine.

He’s not there.

That’s what post-modernism does : it doesn’t debunk, it dissolves. There is no truth, therefore there is no truth-teller. If one turns up, let’s bring on the bath of muriatic acid for him then. Post-Fahrenheitism.

There was no sell-by date to Fahrenheit 9/11. It's a timeless work of art in its own right portraying the power of the artist against the power of the power, and, in parallel, the power of awareness in a common woman against the power of blindness in the master of the world. There is no opposition between Moore and Spurlock, Moore and Greenwald, Moore and Moretti. Different filmmakers do different parts of the same immense tasks.

But Fahrenheit 9/11 is a kind of "matrix", whose meaning is primary, basic, fundamental, and generates all of the other meanings. All we need to know and do is in F9/11. That's why it shook the world and that's why it also took all the backlash. Dura media lex, sed media lex. What if anyone was going to realize that the normal, healthy fate of Fahrenheit 9/11 would have been to spread out harmoniously into the ongoing fights to function as their pattern ? What if all the movie-goers of all like-minded movies should connect the dots between the different parts of the same work ? What if the American left was to turn into something else than tribes and factions engaged in power plays and ego trips with no real leader, no real agenda, no synthesis and no vision ?

Hush….

Somebody once told me that my response to attacks against Fahrenheit 9/11 was "comparable to the response of the Jewish to Holocaust Denial". He was only half-joking and I only half-smiled. This denial is a crime against collective conscience in the spiritual order. It killed nobody, but it kills millions of minds. There's no torture but the cynicism is there, the lie is there, the death wish is there, the machine is there, and it's moved by the "Jews" more and better than by anyone else.

Can a great movie ever really die ? Of course not….

But it can be killed.

Nighty-night everybody. Sleep tight.