Obituary For Michael Moore’s Career?
This is kind of interesting. Michael Moore's biographer, Roger Rapaport, writes a fairly long essay asking whether Michael Moore's career as a maker of "documentary" films is over. And Rapaport himself questions the integrity of Moore's filmmaking.
He is one of the greatest documentary makers of his time and ours, a folk hero of the left, the scourge of presidents, politicians and business leaders, winner of Oscars in Hollywood, Palmes d'Or at Cannes, and the inventor of the personal-essay-style feature-length political documentary. His latest film, Sicko, has had a vast amount of publicity. But amid the glad-handing, one awkward question is being whispered: could Michael Moore be running out of steam?
Let us consider the evidence. His new documentary, on the subject of health care, appears to not be doing such good box office as his last one (Fahrenheit 9/11, on George Bush). While some Sicko reviewers have been kind, others are not convinced: the influential New Yorker says Moore "scrapes bottom" with "superfluous" Sicko. And this is a film that does not even have a release date in the UK.
Elsewhere, Moore's methods and past work are under scrutiny while another film about Bush's last election campaign appears to have been placed firmly on the back-burner. Rumours abound, sparked by the man himself, that he may now decide to abandon documentaries to write romantic comedies and straight dramatic features (with a slice of wry) instead. Where else is there left for Moore to go?
The long gestation period for Sicko, Moore's paintball-style attack on the American health-care system, reflects parallel changes in his own life. Recognising the irony of an overweight director on a bad diet preaching healthy living, Moore decided to heal himself. He hired a personal trainer and began taking long walks. He also created the Traverse City Film Festival near his impressive home on Michigan's Torch Lake. As he personally reviewed entries, Moore also continued working on fictional screenplay ideas of his own…….
……But a more likely reason ties in to the most-asked question I've been hearing from audiences and interviewers: "Are his films documentaries, or are they fictional comedies?" Since Moore gets the credit for making documentaries as popular as dramatic films, let's turn to the first cameraman Michael that ever hired, Kevin Rafferty, for the answer. This famed cinéma-vérité film-maker, who is also George W Bush's first cousin, gave Moore his film debut in Blood in the Face, an exposé of the "racialist right". The then Flint journalist Moore scored a major coup when he helped Rafferty's team film a Michigan Ku Klux Klan rally where two lovebirds said their marital vows in a ceremony illuminated by the glow of a burning cross.
Rafferty says that he was stunned when he arrived in Flint and Moore handed him a terrific shot-list for Roger & Me. This was simply not the way cinema verité documentaries were made: a director would create the storyline after shooting was finished. Two-and-a-half years later, Rafferty was even more astonished when he saw that the shot-list had become the movie. Instead of shooting first and editing afterwards, in the traditional manner of documentaries, Michael had scripted Roger & Me like a dramatic feature.
Another problem is a lack of trust. There are nagging questions about well-documented omissions. Moore's decision to leave two filmed interviews with the General Motors chief executive Roger Smith on the Roger & Me cutting-room floor raises questions he has not answered. The ethics of launching his career by falsely claiming that he couldn't get an interview with the head of General Motors creates a credibility gap. Is it a good idea to rewrite history so that it creates the storyline and publicity necessary to reach an audience that normally skips documentaries?
After years of dodging the subject, Moore confirmed my story that he did, in fact, film an interview with Smith. Then he made the mistake of arguing that this event took place before he began working on Roger & Me. According to his commentary on the documentary's DVD, shooting began in February 1987, three months before the first filmed interview at a GM annual meeting in Detroit. The second deleted interview, a "home run" according to the soundman, also Moore's friend and Ralph Nader's attorney, Jim Musselman, took place in January 1988.
Read it all, it is, shall we say, less than flattering to Moore. I did learn one thing I had not known before: Moore was responsible for the execrable Canadian Bacon, John Candy's last - and arguably worst - film. Somehow I can't see Moore transitioning to romantic comedy.
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Maggie's Farm — Sunday, 15 July , 2007 @ 1:18 pm
By Purple Avenger, Saturday, 14 July , 2007 @ 7:57 am
He launched his career on a lie? Wow, real shocker that.
By rlpete2, Saturday, 14 July , 2007 @ 1:23 pm
Moore is an opportunist, who jumps on a moving current of public opinion, in the same way Oliver Stone did with the Kennedy assasination conspiracy theories. He has adopted a disheveled, “Everyman” appearance, in the same manner as Dubya, Harvard and Yale educated, portrays himself as a “good old boy” (with a ranch that has no cattle or horses.)
But the impact of changes in the auto industry was real, and the American companies brought it on themselves, by ignoring W. Edward Deming’s ideas.
There are significant changes in climate worldwide, and the public is aware of it, with shrinking glaciers and earlier springs. And Americans are similarly aware from their own experience that something is desparately wrong with our healthcare industry.
That Moore is making scripted “documentaries” that sell is not evidence that his premises are wrong, but that they represent the real concerns of the public. His critics would be more credible if they applied the same standards to televangelists and to the administration when there tell us to be afraid of terrorists but not global warming.
By chuck, Saturday, 14 July , 2007 @ 7:08 pm
That Moore is making scripted “documentaries†that sell is not evidence that his premises are wrong, but that they represent the real concerns of the public.
Public concerns are easily manufactured in well understood ways, one of which is propaganda movies. Once scripted stories are accepted in place of real events society is in a world of hurt. Fake but accurate is no basis on which to make useful decisions.
By S. Weasel, Sunday, 15 July , 2007 @ 6:19 am
Feh. These propaganda pieces masquerading as documentaries are a real menace. I’ve got a friend who fills up her Netflix queue with this stuff, and it’s like she thinks there’s a Board of Documentaries somewhere that guarantees these guys aren’t just lying sacks of crap. I tried to explain to her that the Supersize Me guy (for example) had backers and investors before he ever started his project, and he’d be in serious trouble if nothing particularly bad happened to him as a result of his experiment. He *had* to get spectacularly sick or he wouldn’t have a movie. The more spectacularly sick the better.
And she just gives me a blank look, like, “but I saw it with my own eyes!”
This is what makes me so uneasy about actors going into politics (forgive me, St Ronnie). People are just flat-out stupid when it comes to film.
By rlpete2, Sunday, 15 July , 2007 @ 1:32 pm
“Public concerns are easily manufactured in well understood ways”
Which is why Americans know more about Paris Hilton than Paris, France, and more about Texas Hold’m than shariah law.
Moore’s films are more honest than the nature films that shoot as much footage as they can and then edit into a contrived storyline. Opponents of universal health care cherrypick data and select statistics at least as badly.
The main point of “Sicko!” is that Americans are paying too much for the healthcare that they get, because the system is ridiculously inefficient. We do not individually contract for police, fire and defence services; why treat medicine differently?
This partly a class issue, but mostly a national security matter. More death and suffering result from people not being able to afford health insurance than will ever be killed and injured by a terrorist attack. A healthier nation will more productive, and American industries will be more competitive when we have basic healthcare for all citizens.