Tables Turned on Michael Moore in New Documentary
According to a report from the Associated Press, the filmmakers are huge fans of Michael Moore who initially set out to make a biography of their hero. However as they learned more facts about Moore they began to question his ethics and his tactics and began to make a more hard-hitting film while chronicling the filmmaker on his 2004 Fahrenheit 9/11 and Slacker Uprising tours.
Michael Moore has made a career out of documentaries which spend great amounts of time showing the difficulty Moore has trying to talk to the biggest names in the business and political worlds. In 2004 he released Fahrenheit 9/11 which grossed $200 million, the highest grossing documentary of all time. It won the People's Choice Award for Favorite Motion Picture as well as a number of other awards for 2004.
His career was launched by the documentary Roger and Me, released in 1989 and detailing his unsuccessful efforts to talk with Roger Smith, then chairman of General Motors. The only problem was, as Manufacturing Dissent points out, Moore did successfully meet with Smith. He decided to leave out the footage for the final cut in an editorial decision.
The trailer for the film Manufacturing Dissent, which can be viewed on its South by Southwest web site, gives a glimpse of director Debbie Melnyk attempting to get Michael Moore to talk at one of the stops on his tour and being shut down by the filmmaker, just has happened to Michael Moore in so many of his movies.
According to the Associated Press, Melnyk and Caine did not set out on the film using Michael Moore style tactics to engage the filmmaker, but began to do so after spending four months trying to get a sit-down interview with him. Because of his reluctance to speak with him they began to treat him just as Michael Moore treats others in his own works. The reluctance to speak has also carried over to Moore's refusal to discuss Manufacturing Dissent with the Associated Press and in fact making no public statement on it at all.
The husband and wife directorial team of Melnyk and Caine have made a number of documentaries, including Junket Whore, The Frank Truth and Citizen Black. They are based in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
Published by Allen Butler
Allen Butler is a freelance writer and tutor living in Austin, TX. View profile
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31 Comments
Post a CommentI've just seen most of the film SICKO and I must say that I found most of it very interesting. I'm 53 years old and find myself back at home helping out with my aging parents. They live 17 miles from Canadian boarder. In these parts more and people are literaly losing their farms to the high cost of health care. My question is this: What are the chances of a farmer in Canada, Great Britan, or France in losing there family farms do to unforseeable health problems? My parents have medicare and blue cross, but no nursing home insurance. The family farm will be literaly taken away if either of them ends up there! Again, I ask what are the chances of this happening in other countries?
I'm on Paul's side....most of you missed exactly what Moore was trying to show...America is not what I grew up believing in the 70's (I'm 49). Most of you are too young to remember when America started it's downward spiral(except when Clinton was president and we had a surplus, jobs, cheaper gas and prosperity even for the less fortunate)that day was when the "Military Industrial Complex" took over the country. Throughout the Presidencies of Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Reagan, the country played on Americans fears of Communism. When the Cold War eneded they invented another country to fear,or another philosophy to hate, or they created puppet leaders to run third world countries to help keep the Military Complex viable and financed! Cheney has made millions for his old company Halliburton. So much of our debt to the world is tied up in fragile investments that get shakier each day, such as Iraq (Stock market is in turmoil). Bush has never been a success at anything he has trie
Michael Moore is a liar and a hypocrite. Glad to see someone is finally going to tell the truth about him. Great article!
Rond--I don't care about how much money Roger Smith would like to earn--what I am concerned about, and what more was illustrating in Roger & Me, is the ability of corporations to close shop in the US--in the process devastating communities--and move operations to nations with cheap, sometimes slave wage labor. Corps are able to do this with literally no penalty. In fact they are often rewarded for their selling out American workers.. You don't find this to be a problem I guess. By the way, I had no idea there is a liberal smear campaign targeting former 007 Roger Moore. Sign me up though--I am more of a Sean Connery fan--and the new guy ain't so bad either.
Jerome--could you be more naive? I think it is safe to call the top executive of GM a "out of touch corporate giant"--don't you think? The bottome line is that Roger & Me was well ahead of the curve in confronting the issues of "free trade", outsourcing, and the ongoing devaluation of American workers at the hands of Reagan-style conservative economics. The fact that Moore may have indeed met with Roger Smith completely misses the point that Moore was trying to make--which is that the average American--more importantly the average American worker--has very little access to insulated executives, who regardless of their failings, are hardly ever held to account. As I said, Moore does take some questionable creative liberties, but there is no evidence that he completely fabricates anything, and doesn't represent himself as unbiased anyway.
Michael Moore's big secret
A critically important segment in the new film,Manufacturing Dissent, deals with Michael Moore's beginning on the Phil Donahue show. Check out these relative newsworthy eye opening links...
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1797962/posts
http://westfallmike.tripod.com/
Bill W.
And... Paul Angelo, even if as you allege, the film makers did set out to do a hit piece...how is that different from what Moore does? Of course, to do his hit pieces Moore has to lie, lie, lie, and edit out the parts that don't jive with his version of the truth. For Moore, it's about money, not truth. I say, if it's a hit piece, then good job!
Interesting how one of the comments was "I like Mike, I think he is a wee bit extreme at times." So that's how libs excuse outright lying and editing to create a false story? "A wee bit extreme"? And better still, another big lib lets Moore off the hook for his lying because, says lib, Roger Smith is an "out of touch corporate giant." No proof offered of that, by the way. Suppose though that it's true about Smith. Only a liberal would use that as an excuse to lie... no surprise there!
Excellent article. Even honest liberals have pointed out that Moore's so called-documentaries contain enormous fallacies. But hey... it's all about making a buck and trashing Bush right? So even if you have to lie through your teeth... well, the ends justify the means if that's the kind of person you are. I love the way the libs automatically trash Roger Moore because he is successful and rich, as though libs don't aspire to be rich and successful.
This is interesting...I've just started getting into his stuff. This shows me a different side of him. Thanks for the heads up.