That's not exactly a fair statement. The closing of the plant in Flint disturbed me greatly, but I understand why it was done. They weren't just lining their pockets. The plant was closed at a time when GM was losing market share rapidly to the Japanese. They were slashing costs in order to bring the company out of a tailspin. The choice they had: a) risk public backlash by closing the plant...b) risk the ire of the stockholders to whom they owe a fiduciary duty. Any businessman worth his salt would rather anger Moore than the shareholders. I think that more creative solutions could have been had...but that was the reality of the time.
I saw this film last night, and I think it's his best work. He *does* really look for deeper answers in this difficult topic. Just want to make a few comment to wet everybody's appetite and address some of the points in this thread. 1) M.M. grew up as a champion marksman in Michigan, so his NRA membership is not really a sham. 2) The movie criticizes some aspects of gun laws, but it is far from anti-gun. Some of the most informative scenes in the movie are filmed in Canada, where M.M. discovers that in the 10 million Canadian households, there are 7 million registered guns! He even has an easy time buying 9 mm ammo in Canada as an American citizen. Guns are not the problem. So he goes on to ask, why did Canada have 68 deaths by gun last year, while we had over 11,000 deaths by gun? 3) Marilyn Manson (sp?) gives a fantastic interview. 4) The producer of COPS gives a fantastic interview. 5) The interview with Heston is the weakest part of the film, IMHO. Mrs. B-Bob disagrees wholeheartedly. But Heston is just senile now, a straw man far too easily torched, according to me. 6) I LOL'ed a lot in this movie, believe it or not. Guy has a wicked sense of humor here. I also teared up, which is rare for me (YES! true! even though I'm a liberal.) 7) If you see this film, many of you may rework your notion of "wellfare mother," after M.M. describes the life of a Michigan mother whose 6-yr-old took a gun to school and killed another 6-yr-old in Flint. 8) There is fresh animation here done by the southpark guys for M.M. Priceless! 9) There are no firm conclusions, but the topic of race is a central theme in this film. I learned a lot on this front. Amazing and sad. On the one hand, he looks at the history of whites fearing blacks in this country, and how that fear is now strongly supported in the news media. On the more lighthearted but still striking side, he splices together some old news clips about the fear of the "africanized" bees that were coming to kill us.
I really want to see this film but it's only at the artsy theaters. I saw Moore do interviews with Tim Russert and Chris Mathews, the film sounded very interesting. Freakin b*stard film industry... give us Jackass and hide the good stuff. Bravo!
Well, the good news is that B. for C. will be a great rental. Moore's doesn't put much emphasis on cinematography, so the only bonus for us seeing it live was to be in a packed theater hearing people's reactions. I do recommend anyone and everyone renting this when they get the chance!
I saw the movie last night at the River Oaks Theater in Houston. It was relatively well attended for a Sunday night. As B-Bob said it does not make the direct point that guns lead to the world record gun deaths in the U.S. At first it seems to say that, but the long Canada segment certainly questions that. There is a really interesting sement on how fearful people in the US are vs Canadians. Canadians even in multi-ethnic Toronto don't lock their doors often. They can buy guns but don't buy them with the idea that there is this constant level of extreme danger that they need to protect themselves from. Moore seems to blame the tremendous fear level in the US on the media, "Crime weather and Sports" as I call the local news. He cites the constant flood of other scare stories like how escalators, common over the counter drugs and generalize "terrorist alerts" from Bush. He cites the tremendous spike in gun sales after 911. In short I guess he concludes (and it isn't too obvious) that what makes us the world capitol of gun violence is handguns plus generalized fear. In other words the cluntries that control guns doe not have these deaths, and neither does Canada, that has the guns, but not the generalized fear.
Overall I thought the film was pretty good. It had its funny parts (the interview with the missile in the background, him opening people's front doors in Canada, the weird kids in the arcade/pool hall) but it also was more than a bit preachy. I did not like the interview with Heston (A guy lets you show up to his house unnannounced, invites you to interview him on camera, and you proceed to badger him? That really shows tons of class.), the attacks on the Welfare to Work program, and the return to the well, talking again about Flint. How many films does they guy need to make about GM leaving Flint? I also found that he was a little to broad and didn't cover some of his topics well enough. For example, he mentions Virgin, Utah, but then said nothing about what level of gun violence they had there. He also compares our violent culture with that of Germany, Russia, etc. but does not draw a distinction between the government commiting violent acts, and the people doing so.
Guardian recently had a 2 part interview session with Michael Moore. Is he serious? Is he an egotistical jackass? Or is he trying to entertain his audience... Part 1 Part 2
All I have to say is: GREAT FILM!! The ending with Charleston Heston is brilliant and I left the theaters thinking differently about gun's and American's warped perception of safety. I highly reccomend that if you have not seen this film, go see it now!!!
Thanks for the interview. He is for real. This is America. People are entitled to their opinion. I agree with most of what he said and so do a lot of other people.
Viewer beware http://www.spinsanity.org/columns/20021119.html In "Bowling for Columbine," Michael Moore once again puts distortions and contradictions before the truth By Ben Fritz (ben@spinsanity.org) November 19, 2002 Michael Moore insists he wants to be taken seriously. The author and filmmaker, an unabashed champion for liberal causes, is challenging America's gun culture with his latest endeavor, the documentary "Bowling for Columbine." Like his first film, "Roger and Me," it consists of a mix of satirical interviews with average people, confrontational interviews with celebrities and Moore's thoughts on what is going wrong with America. The argument often takes a back seat to the humor, but that's just Moore's style, as he explained to the Contra Costa Times in March: "I always assume that only 10 to 20 percent of people who read my books or see my films will take the facts and hard-core analysis and do something with it. If I can bring the other 80 percent to it through entertainment and comedy, then some of it will trickle through." The problem is, once you delve beneath the humor, it turns out his "facts and hard-core analysis" are frequently inaccurate, contradictory and confused. At one point in the film, Moore apparently even alters a Bush-Quayle campaign ad, changing history to make a point. Like many of the political celebrities increasingly filling our TV screens and bookstores, he is entertaining, explicitly partisan, and all too willing to twist facts to promote himself and his vision of the truth. Moore's problems with veracity date back to "Roger and Me," in which he famously shifted the actual timeline of events for dramatic effect. While garnering some criticism, most notably from the New Yorker's Pauline Kael, the distortions didn't get too many people riled up; indeed, the movie made him a celebrity. This year, with the double-whammy of his best-selling book Stupid White Men and the box office success of "Bowling for Columbine," one of the most financially successful documentaries ever, Moore has become the American left's most prominent media figure. They could use a better spokesman. As I showed in April, Stupid White Men is riddled with inaccuracies and ad hominem attacks. In it, Moore claims that five-sixths of the 2001 defense budget went towards a single plane and that two-thirds of President Bush's campaign funds came from just over seven hundred people. Both facts are obviously untrue to anyone remotely familiar with the defense budget or campaign finance law and are disproved by the very sources Moore cites. He accuses former President Clinton of having "kick[ed] ten million people off of welfare," assuming that every person who left the rolls during the '90s boom was brutally left to fend for herself, rather than leaving for a job. The book is riddled with similarly absurd arguments, most notably that the recession is a creation of the wealthy who "are wallowing in the loot they've accumulated in the past two decades, and now they want to make sure you don't come a-lookin' for your piece of the pie." "Bowling for Columbine" is more of the same. Although, like Stupid White Men, it's full of hilarious moments, Moore can't seem to keep his facts or his arguments straight. Counterintuitively for a liberal, he wants to argue that gun control is not a significant factor in America's high rate of gun deaths compared to other countries, and to do so, he travels to Canada, which he claims is similar to the U.S. in every way except its attitude towards self-reliance. He dismisses typical liberal concerns about poverty creating crime, noting that, "Liberals contend [gun violence is a result of] all the poverty we have here. But the unemployment rate in Canada is twice what we have here." By every measure of international comparison, though, Canada's poverty rate is significantly lower than that of the U.S., thanks to the generous social insurance programs that he repeatedly praises in the film. Much more mendaciously, Moore has apparently altered footage of an ad run by the Bush/Quayle campaign in 1988 to implicate Bush in the Willie Horton scandal. Making a point about the use of racial symbols to scare the American public, he shows the Bush/Quayle ad called "Revolving Doors," which attacked Michael Dukakis for a Massachusetts prison furlough program by showing prisoners entering and exiting a prison (the original ad can be seen here [Real Player video]). Superimposed over the footage of the prisoners is the text "Willie Horton released. Then kills again." This caption is displayed as if it is part of the original ad. However, existing footage, media reports and the recollections of several high-level people involved in the campaign indicate that the "Revolving Doors" ad did not explicitly mention Horton, unlike the notorious ad run by the National Security Political Action Committee (which had close ties to Bush media advisor Roger Ailes). In addition, the caption is incorrect -- Horton did not kill anyone while on prison furlough (he raped a woman). Although he uses statistics much less frequently in "Bowling for Columbine" than in Stupid White Men, Moore still manages to present at least one figure inaccurately. During a stylized overview of US foreign policy, he claims that the U.S. gave $245 million in aid to the Taliban rulers of Afghanistan in 2000 and 2001. The Taliban aid tale is a favorite of Moore's that he has repeated in numerous media appearances over the past year. Contrary to his claim, the aid did not go to the Taliban -- it actually consisted of food and food security programs administered by the United Nations and non-governmental organizations to relieve an impending famine. Beyond the satire and the fabrications, just what is Moore's argument? It's often hard to tell. At times, while dismissing the influence of pop culture, he blames the government's militarism, suggesting that it's somehow relevant that the day of the Columbine High School shootings was also the day of one of the heaviest U.S.-led NATO bombings in Yugoslavia. (Moore is an ardent opponent of U.S. military intervention - soon after the war on terrorism began, he called the President and Vice President "Bin Bush" and "Bin Cheney" and said on the radio program "Democracy Now" [Real Player audio], "We're the national sniper when it comes to going after countries like Iraq.") Even setting aside this questionable chain of causality, Moore contradicts his own thesis that foreign bombing leads to domestic gun violence when he approvingly notes that the United Kingdom, which played a leading role in bombing Yugoslavia with the U.S., had only 68 gun homicides the same year America had 11,127. Contradicting himself doesn't seem to be a problem for Moore, though. In the movie and subsequent media appearances, he has derided America's lack of a social safety net, comparing us unfavorably to Canada, even though he states explicitly in the film that the two countries don't differ significantly in terms of poverty. Moore also claims several times that our higher gun homicide rate must be the result of American culture rather than the greater number of guns in our country, citing the fact that Canada has a much lower gun homicide rate despite having seven million guns in its ten million homes (Moore ignores the fact that Canada has significantly fewer handguns and a much stricter gun licensing system). Yet that doesn't stop him from repeatedly bashing the anti-gun control NRA and even making a visit to the home of its president, Charlton Heston, the climax of the movie. In an e-mail to supporters , Moore even referred to Heston as a "gun supremacist." And in an interview on Phil Donahue's MSNBC show recently, Moore said he supports banning all handguns just minutes before stating, "I don't think, ultimately, getting rid of the guns will be the answer." Repeatedly, though, he returns to the issue of fear in the movie, claiming that excessive coverage of gun violence by the media makes Americans scared of each other and therefore more violent. This circular argument doesn't make any sense either. On the one hand, Moore has made an entire film purporting to investigate why the U.S. has the highest rate of gun violence in the developed world. He then attempts to answer the question by theorizing that the media provides too much coverage of gun violence, causing citizens to fear each other. If gun violence is really so bad, though, shouldn't the media be covering it and don't citizens have something to be afraid of? And if the media is indeed over-covering the issue and America is safer than we think, why did Moore make this film? Ironically, Moore interviews and cites the work of USC Professor Barry Glassner, whose book The Culture of Fear attacks the media for sensationalizing incidents of bad news while ignoring the bigger picture. One of the book's primary examples is extensive media coverage of school shootings that ignores the overall downward trend in youth violence in recent years. Indeed, Glassner points out that people are three times more likely to be struck dead by lightning than die in a school shooting. Moore, however, focuses extensively in the film on the Columbine massacre and a school shooting in his hometown of Flint, Michigan, and doesn't seem all that concerned with the country's epidemic of lightning strikes. Here, as ever, Michael Moore just doesn't seem to know what he thinks. When pressed, in fact, he isn't even sure he actually has a point. Appearing on CNN's Moneyline last spring, host Lou Dobbs asked him about the inaccuracies in Stupid White Men. "How can there be inaccuracy in comedy?" Moore responded. Satire is not an excuse for dissembling. Great satirists like Jonathan Swift and Mark Twain used hyperbole as a form of social criticism. Michael Moore, however, uses lies, distortions, and nonsensical arguments to mask cheap attacks and promote his own political agenda. Take him seriously at your own risk.
micheal moore...isnt he the same guy who was making fun of condoleeza rice in a pretty racist fashion or was that another liberal talk show host?
Okay, so Ben has an axe to grind and Moore isn't a journalist. Two big surprises. I do appreciate the article, Buck, I mean that. But one thing I hate about being a liberal and one reason we're in such bad shape nation-wide, is that every time one liberal tries to say something, there's another even-more-smarty-pants liberal waiting to bash him with the vehemence of Rush Limbaugh after 8 double lattes (skim milk, please). If I'm replying to Ben, though, the "facts" in the movie aren't really the point, IMHO. And I completely disagree with with two points that Ben states as his own "facts." 1) That Moore dismisses poverty as a factor. Did this guy really watch the entire movie? One of the most moving moments in the film has Moore asking Canadians to take him to "the worst neighborhood in town." What he finds is so comfortable, so non-American-slum, that it completely makes a strong point about poverty in the two nations. 2) That Moore reduces the treatment of fear in the US to simply pointing a finger at the media. While Moore does take on the media, that's not the entire point in the discussion of fear. The discussion is actually much deeper and more open ended than "it's the media's fault." Ben likes to ignore the parts of the film that don't help him reduce it neatly. Moore opens the question of fear in the fabric of American history, and he does not close that question by movie's end. I want to reiterate that, while it's not perfect or a factotum, the film is thought-provoking (and entertaining, is that a crime?) and will get ANY viewer thinking about this crucial problem in new ways. Have you seen the film, Buck?
Yeah, I saw it a few days ago. Like you said, it is a very thought provoking work (and entertaining, and no, there's nothing wrong with combining the two). As a film, it's extremely well done. It's his concept of "fear" as a driving force behind crime, and gun-related crime in particular, that I didn't particularly agree with. In my eyes, it's still the old one-two of poverty and lack of education that are predominantly responsible. Also, comparing Canadian society (or any other country's, for that matter) to America is a pretty big stretch. There's simply not another country on the face of the Earth like America, and I don't think we can look to other Western states for solutions to, or explainations for, the social problems we face.
I met Michael Moore at the 1992 Dem convention in NY. I was working for Jerry Brown and Moore was one of our delegates. (So was Don Novello, by the way.) I haven't seen the movie yet, but I'm looking forward to it. I love his books, his movies and his TV shows. In fact, my theater company was featured on an episode of The Awful Truth. Jay Martel was a funny guy and a great drinker. We closed Rudz that night. Here's the story: http://houstonpress.com/issues/2000-02-03/news.html/1/index.html Stand Up and Holler A Huntsville execution draws a strange crowd BY LAUREN KERN Jay Martel wandered through the pro-death-penalty crowd outside the Huntsville prison on the night of January 24 without arousing suspicion. Wearing blue jeans, a baseball cap and a windbreaker that looked a lot like the state flag, he fit right in. He offered cans of ginger ale, passed out foam fingers and praised George W. Bush. If there had been a baby, you can bet he would have kissed it. If there had been cheerleaders, which there were, you can bet he wasn't surprised. The victims' rights group Justice for All was already more boisterous than normal on this particular night at death row because of the man who was being executed. Billy Hughes Jr. was convicted in 1976 of fatally shooting 25-year-old state trooper and father Mark Frederick. But Hughes, who was wanted for credit card theft when Frederick pulled him over, claimed he had merely returned fire when the officers shot at him as he reached for his wallet, and he managed to avoid his death sentence for 24 years by launching numerous appeals. While the cop killer "abused the system," he also became a college graduate (with two degrees in religion), a paralegal, an anti-death-penalty lobbyist, a well-known cartoonist and, at least according to the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, a humanitarian. Needless to say, the anti-death-penalty camp was a little sadder than normal to see a "reformed" man die. Beyond that, it was business as usual at the Walls Unit. Justice for All stood at the left end of the police line, holding signs that said, "No Murder Equals No Execution." The Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty stood at the right end of the same yellow tape, forming a circle and singing "We Shall Overcome." Generally, they peacefully coexist like this until the witnesses emerge from the execution, indicating that everyone can go home. They have the routine down pat: There were seven executions in just over two weeks last month; there have been 119 since George W. took office. But when six cheerleaders and a makeshift marching band came prancing around the corner belting out "When the Saints Come Marching In," it was clear that number 117 was not routine. In pigtails, letter sweaters and red-pleated skirts, the fresh-faced drill team chanted, "We are Texas" and "Go, George, Go." As the antis struggled to maintain their circle vigil, the pros turned into fans at a football game. Fire up, fire up Fire up, and up And up and up and up! They grinned, cheered and waved their foam fingers. Two bits, four bits, six bits, a dollar All for the death penalty stand up and holler! They were already standing, but they sure hollered. P, P-O, P-O-W-E-R We've got power Woo! Killing power! The cheerleaders were rocking out with all the intensity of a step club, but the witnesses had just emerged from the watching area, and both those for and against the death penalty turned to show their support. Execute, execute, sis, boom, bah Lethal injection, rah, rah, rah! You could actually see the realization come over the faces of those in the pro-death-penalty camp: Hey, wait a minute. These death row cheerleaders aren't on our side after all. Florida oranges, Texas cactus We kill convicts just for practice! That did it. Rick Lemmon, a man who has lost both his twin brother and only son to murder, shouted back through a megaphone: "We have never killed anybody for practiceŠ.Y'all don't forget the victim here." Kill 'em to the left Kill 'em to the right Here in Texas We kill 'em every night! David Atwood, president of the Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, and Dudley Sharp, vice president of Justice for All, both visibly pissed off, yelled at each other at almost exactly the same time, "Did you do this?" then, "No!" We're number one, can't be number two If you don't agree with us, we'll kill you too Texas is good, Texas is great We kill more than any other state! "Is this what George Bush wants?" asked Atwood. "The cheerleaders?" Sharp put his hand on Atwood's shoulder and said, "Anti-death-penalty and pro-death-penalty strongly believe in what they're doing, and that doesn't include disrespecting the other side." Meanwhile, a bare-chested, body-painted, football-helmeted man ran through the crowd with a "Death" pennant. George, George, he's our man If he can't kill 'em, no one can Who's the best on the killing scene? George Bush, he's a killing machine! He's a killing machine! He's a killing machine! The confusion moved to a nearby parking lot where a scoreboard read: George 117, Jeb 2. (In all fairness, Jeb has only one execution to his credit. Executions have been on hold in Florida since July, when a possible malfunction in "Old Sparky" caused Allen Davis to bleed profusely through his nose as he died.) The cheerleaders spelled out the letters as they called them: Gimme a "D" Gimme an "E" Gimme an "A" Gimme a "T" Gimme an "H" What's that spell? Death! Pardons are for wimps! Pardons are for wimps! "It shouldn't have been this way," Atwood said, shaking his head. "I bet you have Monica Lewinsky sex!" shouted a particularly rabid member of Justice for All. "Desperate times call for desperate measures," muttered Martel. Nah, nah, nah, nah Nah, nah, nah, nah Hey, hey, hey Good-bye After failed attempts to ignore the demonstration, shout down the cheerleaders, circle the band and blame Canada for the fiasco, attentions finally turned to Martel, who seemed to be enjoying all the mischief a little too much. "You did this!" they shouted at him from both sides. "They're not here all the time?" he asked, pushing the limits of playing dumb. They wanted answers: "Are you pro or against the death penalty?" "I'm pro Texas!" he whooped. In a place where affiliations are always clearly delineated, this was as infuriating as the cheerleaders themselves. Even the news media -- well, those outlets that didn't miss the demonstration for days by relying on the AP feed -- didn't know where to put the blame or the credit. Channel 2's Suzanne Boase called it an "anti-death-penalty commercial." No one recognized Martel or his gonzo journalism as trademarks of Michael Moore's popular, populist and political television show, The Awful Truth. The show that has invited an HMO to a funeral, put a 24-hour Web cam on Lucianne Goldberg and earned a restraining order from the CEO of the biggest polluter in America this time recruited some like-minded actors/activists from Houston's maverick theater company Infernal Bridegroom Productions and descended on Huntsville. The piece, which will include a segment shot in Florida, is "a celebration," says Awful Truth producer Dave Hamilton, "of two states who have long embraced the death penalty and turned their ability to kill Americans into a state pastime." The episode is expected to air on Bravo sometime next season. One man at the prison that night did know the score: Billy Hughes. Citizen provocateur and KPFT Prison Show host Ray Hill was a gold mine of information for Moore's segment producers. He was also a longtime friend of Hughes's, even receiving a posthumous, and postage-due, letter from the inmate expressing his love, admiration and gratitude as he headed for his "final sunset." Hill was sworn to secrecy when he was contacted by the show, but during his last visit with Hughes before the execution, he says, "I had to confide in Billy what was going on. My conscience required me to." How did Hughes take the news that his death would be surrounded by satirical fanfare? According to Hill, he said, "Thank you."
That Ben Fritz articleis a disjointed stupid hatchet job on the movie. So the movie does not prove all of its points in a straight forward logical manner. Fritz should be able to relate to this as his piece is an example of what he is complaining about. That confusing incoherent piece by Fritz is even worse as he doesn't have as an excuse that he isn't trying to make a film that is not just another boring documentary. I'm not familiar with Fritz, but I am surprised by B-bob's claiming that he is a liberal.
I know. But... "Ben Fritz is co-editor of Spinsanity, a website that exposes and analyzes manipulative rhetoric in American politics, a contributing writer for Salon and a staff editor of Venture Reporter."
