Michael Moore S&D

Sergei would not hear that shit (xpost) but mike moore, in columbine he did choke me up over the kmart, somethings nobody can what debase? but i can't believe journalist made me want to see fahrenheit in 2 shakes im a sucker. who claps for godard

Jean-Luc Godard hasn't made a good film in over 30 years and James T. Kirk was a much better starship captain.

30 yrs is good aim, you want to try 35? 40? 45? ps what if histoire(s) is good? ppl can admit that jlg/jlg is cute i'd think

Meanwhile, Ray Bradbury seriously loses his shit

Wow, is he deluded or what? Shame.

"Who cares? Nobody will see his movie. It is almost dead already. Never mind, nobody cares."

"Tonight, on Stars In Their Eyes, Ray Bradbury IS Melissa Marchant!!"

I brought up Eisenstein to react to this comment: Bowling For Columbine was a fun movie to watch but it was so full of incredibly tenuous links and caricature arguments that it gave the Right too many easy targets. Because Eisenstein is on film syllabuses, the radically totalitarian implications of his work are sort of neutralized. I might ban myself from talking abt Godard, but during the Vietnam war he had quite interesting things to say -- even if they were usually about the difficulty of saying them.

eisenstein did not pretend to be a documentary filmmaker.

Well, that complicated: he was certainly considered a documentarist by people like Paul Rotha and John Grierson--obviously he isn't one by modern standards, but...

what are the "totalitarian implications" of eisenstein?

i mean, he made films in the service of a totalitarian state. does this mean his style was essentially "totalitarian" (whatever that might mean)?

Totalitarian in the way Renoir isn't I guess (I'm following Bazin, natch): Eisenstein wants to control the audience's reaction to real-world phenomena by means of total control over mise-en-scene and editing. I think in practice this doesn't hold up, but certainly the purpose of the films was to 'educate' audiences -- well, let's just say his depiction of historical events, meant to support the Soviet government in a very direct way, wasn't exactly nuanced!

tell me about goddard and vietnam as well.

i will anyway, though am paranoid and feel 'got at'.

from 'pierrot le fou' (shot spring 1965, ie just as LBJ was ramping things up in Nam) onwards jlg put Nam refs in all his films. in the collective effort 'loin de vietnam' (assembled by chris marker, mainly) he contributed a segment which is basically him pissing about with a camera about the problems inherent in a frenchman contributing to this struggle, ie needing to reinvent the language of cinema... that old stuff.)

'ici et ailleurs' is about palestine, or about the relation of tv viewers to war coverage on tv, so it's about the codes used to represent wars and how much they limit expression of political aims to those determined by -- etc. i haven;t seen this film, however, and it's a while since i saw 'loin'. or, actually, any of his films. bear in mind jlg was a great fan of the film 'the american friend' and not exactly 'committed' in his youth (cf 'le petit soldat' about france's other former colony, algeria and jlg's lack of decisiiveness...)

Bradbury's off the deep-end obv. (is he older than Reagan now?) but Fahrenheit 9/11 IS a shit title. That said I'll still go see it, it can't be any worse than Canadian Bacon.

Incidentally, Ebert & Roeper gave it "two thumbs way up."

haha omg i doubt that godard like 'the american friend'. he liked 'the quiet american'. god.

He hasn't been around in a while, but that doesn't mean FoxNews can't use him as a bugaboo, what with Chris Matthews comparing the latest Osama tape to "an over the top Michael Moore...if not a Michael Moore."

I finally saw Fahrenheit 9/11 last week. The parts that weren't "Six Degrees Of Saudis (P.S. Saudis Are Evil)" were pretty good.

He's been accused of far worse. Apparently Roger Smith did give him an interview, but Moore didn't use it in Roger & Me.

Film showing at SXSW seems to explode all remaining claims that Moore makes "documentaries" ...


Michael & Them: Filmmakers Chase Moore
By JOHN ANDERSON
MICHAEL MOORE, who carries around controversy the way Paul Bunyan toted an ax, has won legions of fans for being a ball-cap-wearing fly in the ointment of Republican politics. For tweaking the documentary form. Even for making millions of dollars in the traditionally poverty-stricken genre of nonfiction film.

Many despise him for the same reasons.

The Toronto-based documentary filmmakers Rick Caine and Debbie Melnyk started out in the first camp. But during the course of making an unauthorized film about Mr. Moore they wound up somewhere in between. In the process, their experience has added a twist to the long-running story of an abrasive social critic who has frequently been criticized from the right, but far less often, as is the case with Ms. Melnyk and Mr. Caine, from his own end of the political spectrum.

“What he’s done for documentaries is amazing,” said Ms. Melnyk, 48, a native of Toronto and a freelance TV producer, who even now expounds on the good he says Mr. Moore has done. “People go to see documentaries now and, as documentary makers, we’re grateful.”

But according to Mr. Caine, 46, an Ohio-born journalist and cameraman, the freewheeling persona cultivated by Mr. Moore, and the free-thinking rhetoric expounded by his friends and associates were not quite what they encountered when they decided to examine his work. “As investigative documentarists we always thought we could look at anything we wanted,” Mr. Caine said. “But when we turned the cameras on one of the leading figures in our own industry, the people we wanted to talk to were like: ‘What are you doing? Why are you throwing stones at the parade leader?’ ”

Ms. Melnyk added, “We were very lonely.”

Their film “Manufacturing Dissent” will have its premiere on March 10 at the South by Southwest Film Festival in Austin, Tex. To say it sheds an unflattering light on Mr. Moore — whose work includes the hit “Fahrenheit 9/11” and the Oscar-winning “Bowling for Columbine” — would be an understatement.

Mr. Moore, who was reportedly in London finishing “Sicko,” a planned exposé of the American health care system, did not respond to voice mail, e-mail messages or third-party requests for an interview; a spokeswoman for the Weinstein Company, the distributor of “Sicko,” said Mr. Moore had no comment on “Manufacturing Dissent,” and referred inquiries to a Web address, www.michaelmoore.com/books-films/f911reader/index.php?id=16as.

That link contains a refutation of a number of complaints taken up by conservatives regarding “Fahrenheit 9/11,” but the Melnyk-Caine movie isn’t really about that. “We didn’t want to refute anything,” Ms. Melnyk said. “We just wanted to take a look at Michael Moore and his films. It was only by talking to people that we found out this other stuff.”

In part the “stuff” amounts to a catalog of alleged errors — both of omission and commission — in Mr. Moore’s films, beginning with his 1989 debut, “Roger & Me.” That film largely revolved around Mr. Moore’s fruitless attempts to interview Roger Smith, then the chairman of General Motors, after his company closed plants in Mr. Moore’s birthplace, Flint, Mich.: an interview that occurred, Ms. Melnyk and Mr. Caine said, although Mr. Moore left it on the cutting-room floor.

“I’m still a big proponent of ‘Roger & Me,’ especially for its importance in American documentary making,” said John Pierson, the longtime producers’ representative who helped sell the film to Warner Brothers and now teaches at the University of Texas in Austin. “But it was disheartening to see some of the material in Debbie and Rick’s film. I wouldn’t say I was crushed. I’m too old to be crushed. But my students were.”

Calling the Melnyk-Caine film “unbelievably fair,” Mr. Pierson said it asks what really matters in nonfiction filmmaking: Should all documentary-making be considered subjective and ultimately manipulative, or should the viewer be able to believe what he or she sees? “I found it encouraging,” he said, “that my students were dumbstruck.”

Mr. Pierson and students in his advanced producing class have even made a project out of promoting “Manufacturing Dissent” (a title that echoes “Manufacturing Consent,” the 1992 Mark Achbar and Peter Wintonick film about Noam Chomsky). They have helped to publicize the Austin premiere with slogans that include: “Michael Moore doesn’t like documentaries. That’s why he doesn’t make them.” And “It’s never been so hard to get Michael Moore in front of a camera.”

In “Manufacturing Dissent” Mr. Caine and Ms. Melnyk — whose previous films include “Junket Whore,” about movie journalists, and “Citizen Black,” about Conrad Black — note that the scene in “Fahrenheit 9/11” in which President Bush greets “the haves, and the have-mores” took place at the annual Al Smith Dinner, where politicians traditionally make sport of themselves. Ms. Melnyk and Mr. Caine received a video of the speeches from the dinner’s sponsor, the Archdiocese of New York. “Al Gore later answers a question by saying, ‘I invented the Internet,’ ” Mr. Caine said. “It’s all about them making jokes at their own expense.”

Still, support for Mr. Moore can be found in the film, from the likes of friends like Ben Hamper, from the actress Janeane Garofalo, and even from Mr. Pierson, a self-proclaimed “flag-waver” for “Roger & Me.” Others, including the writer Christopher Hitchens, and filmmakers Albert Maysles and Errol Morris, take exception to Mr. Moore’s methods, which have involved questionable lapses in chronology and what some would call a convenient neglect of pertinent material.

There have been attacks on Mr. Moore: “Michael Moore Hates America,” a rebuttal of “Bowling for Columbine” was produced in 2004 by Mike Wilson, who says he was inspired by “righteous indignation,” but came to a more temperate conclusion. “I understood what the guy struggles with,” Mr. Wilson said. “I interviewed John Stossel of ABC and asked him how he managed to keep out of trouble with what are essentially op-ed pieces, and he said ‘Because I could get fired.’ Michael Moore doesn’t have that.”

Ms. Melnyk and Mr. Caine, who are married, admit to one fabrication of their own: They printed their own business cards before an appearance by Mr. Moore at Kent State University, identifying themselves with Toronto’s City TV and its owner, CHUM Ltd., their chief financial backer and owner of Bravo! in Canada, where the film will eventually be broadcast. (The network is no relation to the American Bravo! network.) “We weren’t employees, so we didn’t have cards,” Ms. Melnyk said. Despite their ruse, the Kent State sequence ends with them being banished from the event by Mr. Moore’s sister, Anne, who also knocks away Mr. Caine’s camera.

The incident represents in microcosm the obstacles Ms. Melnyk and Mr. Caine said they faced while trying to make their portrait of Mr. Moore. Among other incidents, they said, they were prevented from plugging into the sound board at Wayne State University during a stop on Mr. Moore’s “Slacker Uprising” tour and were kicked out of his film festival in Traverse City, Mich., while other press members were admitted.

“I don’t think he expected us to follow him around,” Ms. Melnyk said.

Mr. Caine added: “We’re bit more persistent than your average film crew that way.”



Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

I can't say any of that sounds especially damning or interesting (a TS with Janeane Garafaolo and Christopher Hitchens?! Gross.)

huh? that sounds really damning, and very interesting

I can't think of anything the documentary would say that Hitchens' 2004 essay didn't already.

also people who take issue with documentaries not being "objective" or being manipulative = snoozeville. All documentaries omit things, highlight others, manipulate the audience, etc. Its like complaining about the milkshake shot in Thin Blue Line as being obviously staged (duh OF COURSE IT IS)

like OMG filmmakers have agendas stop the presses

also, Moore came right and said 3 years ago that F9/11 was straight polemic, not a docu

That film largely revolved around Mr. Moore’s fruitless attempts to interview Roger Smith, then the chairman of General Motors, after his company closed plants in Mr. Moore’s birthplace, Flint, Mich.: an interview that occurred, Ms. Melnyk and Mr. Caine said, although Mr. Moore left it on the cutting-room floor

in fairness i thought everybody knew he cut things together "for filmic purposes" shall we say. i thought the fact that did DID interview ppl at GM and shelved the material was common knowledge!

plus Maysles and Morris on record knocking him! that's pretty serious.

full disclosure I've always thought MM was a specious self-aggrandizing know-nothing

this is good too

Moore's worst infraction, however, was also the most intimate. There's a scene that depicts a 'Great Gatsby' party, ostensibly an arrogant display of wealth in the face of Flint's misery. It was actually an annual fundraiser for a battered women's shelter, something Moore had supported in his Flint Voice editorials. One guest, a middle-aged man, speaks about Flint's many virtues and comes across as a heartless, privileged ass. Moore does not disclose that this man, Larry Stecco, is an acquaintance of his, a lawyer who had given money to the Flint Voice and performed pro bono civil rights work in the area. Stecco is now a judge, and Larner met with him. We learn that Moore asked Stecco a misleading question to elicit the desired quote. Stecco sued Moore and won; he tells Larner that the black actors paid to pose as 'human statues' at the Gatsby event sued as well (Moore chose not to film the white actors). In a commentary for the 'Roger & Me' DVD recorded in 2003, Moore not only fails to mention any of this – he continues to badmouth Stecco as part of 'the other side'. If Moore is this dishonest toward a friend at a tiny local event, he can scarcely be trusted on matters of world-historical scope. Larner's summation hits the mark: Moore 'exhibits both a solid show-business instinct and a cold, hard core of relentless ideology, an attitude that, as with Leninists of yore, will always put the cause of increasing human well-being before the well-being of any particular human, and will put the meta-truth before the actual, immediate truth of any situation' (p. 78).

"as with Leninists of yore"

ROFLZ

there were Leninists, once, you know.

way to pick out the one red-flag sentence in a whole very very damning paragraph, kudos

I'm sorry but anyone who uses Leninists/Stalinists/Communists as some kind of strawman I'm prepared to dismiss out of hand, its such a common and misapplied bogeyman. Apples n oranges being compared, with an ideological bias being clearly betrayed.

Y'know, Michael Moore does not work for a government propaganda machine out of a need for self-preservation as was the case with the majority of Soviet propagandists.

and what's with this opening paragraph where he holds up John Stewart, South Park, and Bill Maher(?!?!) as paragons of balanced political commentary is beyond laughable. Those guys are self-serving all bozos on a par with Moore.

Uh, Stewart ain't.

ahh Stewart's not balanced, look at the way he regularly genuflects before guests he would otherwise be obliged to deride. South Park and Maher have their own self-serving, predictable (and rather unappealling, in my opinion) libertarian positions which they don't really deviate from.

While Moore's background is in grassroots organising and muckraking journalism, his ticket to fame was America's flourishing medium of satire – a medium he did much to reinvent. His forebears range from Charlie Chaplin to Abbie Hoffman, as Kevin Mattson observed in a 2003 critique for Dissent. Today, Moore operates in a crowded comedic field, much of which could be called 'post-ideological'. Jon Stewart of 'The Daily Show' is unmistakably liberal, but he can be equally merciless toward George W. Bush and Hugo Chávez. Bill Maher, a spirited Bush-basher and opponent of the Iraq war, staunchly defended Israel's July 2006 bombardment of Lebanon and gave an obsequious interview to Benjamin Netanyahu. 'South Park' routinely mocks the pieties of the right and the left. But in Moore's top-grossing documentaries and polemical books, there is no mistaking where his flag is planted. And despite his old-school labour movement roots, he fully understands (to quote Mattson) that today's 'young people are reached via satellite dishes and mega-mall bookstores rather than through cafés or union halls or small magazines'.

point out to me where the reviewer "holds up [xx] as paragons of balanced political commentary."

Shakey, there were plenty Leninists who didn't live under Lenin or Stalin. (god why do i bother?) Anyway, it's not even a "strawman" (does anyone know wtf this means anymore?) the comparison is with people who "will always put the cause of increasing human well-being before the well-being of any particular human, and will put the meta-truth before the actual, immediate truth of any situation" the second clause there, considering how you're defending Moore's shortcuts as a documentarian, it sounds like you supported. right?

uhhh....

can you read? just makin sure

"Moore operates in a crowded comedic field, much of which could be called 'post-ideological'. Jon Stewart of 'The Daily Show' is unmistakably liberal, but he can be equally merciless toward George W. Bush and Hugo Chávez. Bill Maher, a spirited Bush-basher and opponent of the Iraq war, staunchly defended Israel's July 2006 bombardment of Lebanon and gave an obsequious interview to Benjamin Netanyahu. 'South Park' routinely mocks the pieties of the right and the left. But in Moore's top-grossing documentaries and polemical books, there is no mistaking where his flag is planted."

In no way does he call them "balanced" much less paragons of journalistic virtue, Shakey.

Jesus Christ, Fuck Moore. His work is such a scatter-shot of facts and assertions, distortions and omissions, that anything worthwhile in his films is obscured by the rest. It was a relief to see a movie critical of Bush in 2004, but Moore muddied the water more than he shed light.

A lot of people go to his movies not knowing a lot about the subject, and Moore makes it easy for them to come away with more doubts about legitimate facts and and arguments than they went in with.

He said point-blank that the CIA trained and funded bin Laden, which I have not seen corroborated.

That's true, dude. We trained and funded Bin Laden. Unfortunately you heard that first in a Moore flick.

Moore's an asshole.

though I think he misses his own point (Moore lacks any kind of nuance or ability to self-criticize) with the last part of that sentence.

MM, in Roger & Me, made a guy that he knew, who was a liberal, and who supported Moore's paper in Flint, out to look like a racist prick, and the dude sued him for it, and won, years ago. And Moore's own subsequent commentary on the film totally elides this, and still takes a shot at the guy. This is pretty low behavior, to say the least, but let's dismiss it cos some bookreviewer on a webmag said 'Leninist'!!

I'm not defending Moore's shortcuts so much as I don't care that he makes them. It doesn't bother me, its par for the course with filmmaking. I don't accept anything he displays on-screen as "the truth" and am saddened and surprised that anyone would do so.

The characterization of Leninism as being concerned with the well-being of humanity is rather disingenuous. Or at least overly simplistic. Lenin (and to much greater degree Stalin) were concerned with preserving their own power, nothing else - ideology (and propaganda) were just a tool to that end. And the Leninist and Stalinist apologists in the west were laboring under all kinds of misconceptions, in addition to their own self-serving political goals.

I'll say it again: "TV Nation" was great, "The Awful Truth" wasn't(except for the Alan Keyes bit), and when he went after Ted Turner, I gave it up and never watched another ep.

shakey are we just gonna quote the same 75 words back and forth at each other until one of us gets less stupid? seriously, nothing in that paragraph is essentially laudatory of any of those comedians, it's just contextual throat-clearing of the current state of satire.

but milo the writer's concluding sentence about there being "no question which side his flag is planted on' is made in contrast to the other previous three examples - the implication being that the side(s) the other "post ideological" comedians/critics take are more nuanced, balanced, etc., that it ISN'T clear which side their flag is planted on.

so many x-postsssss

I'm not defending Moore's shortcuts so much as I don't care that he makes them. It doesn't bother me, its par for the course with filmmaking. I don't accept anything he displays on-screen as "the truth" and am saddened and surprised that anyone would do so.

Then please keep him away from subjects of which the American public is poorly informed.

There are real issues and real conflicts to be explored... ...But they are handled so clumsily and incoherently by this film that watching it is like seeing someone start a drunken brawl over a spilled pint, then lamping his friends when they try to restrain him

standard Michael Moore approach then