Xixax Film Forum

The Director's Chair => The Director's Chair => Topic started by: Rudie Obias on March 23, 2003, 09:27:38 PM

Title: michael moore: oscars, truths, and fictitions
Post by: Rudie Obias on March 23, 2003, 09:27:38 PM
i can't believe he won the oscar for BOWLING FOR COLUMBINE.  what a great speech!
Title: Re: micheal moore
Post by: MacGuffin on March 23, 2003, 09:37:50 PM
Quote from: rudieobwhat a great speech!

Exact same speech he gave at the Independent Spirit Awards, but it didn't result in the same reaction.
Title: Re: micheal moore
Post by: Rudie Obias on March 23, 2003, 10:01:49 PM
Quote from: MacGuffin
Exact same speech he gave at the Independent Spirit Awards, but it didn't result in the same reaction.

i'm sorry, i don't have cable.
Title: michael moore: oscars, truths, and fictitions
Post by: Sleuth on March 23, 2003, 10:14:11 PM
That was gold
Title: michael moore: oscars, truths, and fictitions
Post by: Duck Sauce on March 23, 2003, 10:14:16 PM
I missed it, does anybody have a transcript or video cap of the speech? What other antiwar things were said?
Title: michael moore: oscars, truths, and fictitions
Post by: bonanzataz on March 23, 2003, 11:35:29 PM
that "shame on you, bush!" thing was a bit much, don't you think?
Title: michael moore: oscars, truths, and fictitions
Post by: AlguienEstolamiPantalones on March 23, 2003, 11:37:42 PM
Quote from: bonanzatazthat "shame on you, bush!" thing was a bit much, don't you think?

YES
Title: michael moore: oscars, truths, and fictitions
Post by: Jeremy Blackman on March 23, 2003, 11:46:32 PM
Something is right with the world when Michael  Moore wins an Oscar.

Does anyone else see the obvious impossibility of Michael  Moore selling out? He makes it to the top only to risk it all.

Here's what I remember:

"We like nonfiction, and we live in fictitious times"

"fictitious president fighting a war for fictitious reasons"

"shame on you, Mr. Bush, shame on you ... [as the music cuts him off] your time is up"

Classic.
Title: michael moore: oscars, truths, and fictitions
Post by: Victor on March 23, 2003, 11:56:09 PM
craaazy white man
Title: michael moore: oscars, truths, and fictitions
Post by: MacGuffin on March 23, 2003, 11:56:39 PM
Quote from: Duck SauceI missed it, does anybody have a transcript or video cap of the speech? What other antiwar things were said?

Steve Martin: If you want a transcript of the show, type down everything said.

So just for you, Duck:

Thank you very much. On behalf of our producers, Kathleen Glenn and Michael Donovan, from Canada, I'd like to thank the Academy for this. I've invited my fellow documentry nominees on the stage with us. They are here in solidarity with me because we like non-fiction. We like non-fiction and we live in fictitious times. We live in a time when we have fictitious election results, that elects a fictitious president. :cheers, then boos: We live in a time where we have a man sending us to war for fictitious reasons. Whether it is the fictition of duct tape, :boos: or the fictitious of orange alerts. We are against this war, Mr. Bush! Shame on you, Mr. Bush! Shame on you! :louder boos: And any time :music starts to play: you've got the Pope and the Dixie Chicks against you, you're time is up. Thank you very much.
Title: michael moore: oscars, truths, and fictitions
Post by: bonanzataz on March 23, 2003, 11:59:02 PM
Quote from: MacGuffin
Steve Martin: If you want a transcript of the show, type down everything said.

He stole that from Kevin Nealon.
Title: michael moore: oscars, truths, and fictitions
Post by: MacGuffin on March 24, 2003, 12:14:25 AM
Asked backstage why he made the remarks, Moore answered: "I'm an American. And you don't leave your citizenship at the doors when you enter the doors of the Kodak theater. What's great about this country is that you're able to speak your mind. And that's what I do, I do that in my filmmaking and I do that in my daily life and I don't stop being who I am when I come into this ceremony..."

"Tonight I put America in a good light. I showed how vital it is to have free speech in our country, and that all Americans have a right to stand up for what they believe in."

"My finger's on the pulse of where I believe the majority of Americans are at. And it would be irresponsible of me to not say how I felt. And I think anyone voting for me for this award knew they weren't going to get a speech thanking agents, lawyers, lawyers of agents and agents of lawyers."
Title: michael moore: oscars, truths, and fictitions
Post by: sphinx on March 24, 2003, 12:28:53 AM
this is an even better quote:

"Q: How did you feel about the people who booed?
"Everybody that booed were my friends and relatives. I told them to do that."

and then there's this

Q: Are you afraid of being blacklisted by Hollywood after causing this ruckus?
"I'm not funded by Americans. I'm funded by Candians usually. Hollywood voted for me, so it seems to me they'd still like me."
At this point, Michael asked he reporters to do him a favor: "Please do your job and tell the truth. Don't just make this sound like nobody agreed with me. The majority of Americans oppose this law. Don't make this about me being booed."


this night has made me appreciate the word boo.  i really like it

booooooo

hahaha
Title: michael moore: oscars, truths, and fictitions
Post by: bonanzataz on March 24, 2003, 12:35:34 AM
I like what steve martin said about the teamsters escorting him to the trunk of his limo!
Title: not really
Post by: underdog on March 24, 2003, 12:58:19 AM
Quote from: bonanzatazthat "shame on you, bush!" thing was a bit much, don't you think?
no..not really.. i can say a lot worst thing about bush than "shame on you"
peace
Title: Re: not really
Post by: Duck Sauce on March 24, 2003, 01:53:15 AM
Quote from: underdog
no..not really.. i can say a lot worst thing about bush than "shame on you"

do it then tough guy
Title: Re: not really
Post by: AlguienEstolamiPantalones on March 24, 2003, 01:56:48 AM
Quote from: underdog
Quote from: bonanzatazthat "shame on you, bush!" thing was a bit much, don't you think?
no..not really.. i can say a lot worst thing about bush than "shame on you"
peace

How dare you speak ill of a man who has the good fashion sense to wear a " Dont fuck with texas" belt buckle around the oval office.
Title: Re: not really
Post by: underdog on March 24, 2003, 03:09:52 AM
Quote from: Duck Sauce
Quote from: underdog
no..not really.. i can say a lot worst thing about bush than "shame on you"

do it then tough guy

to easy to make fun of bush...
Title: michael moore: oscars, truths, and fictitions
Post by: oakmanc234 on March 24, 2003, 04:26:11 AM
Michael Moore. The guy's got some balls.
Title: michael moore: oscars, truths, and fictitions
Post by: pgr on March 24, 2003, 08:25:22 AM
Quote from: bonanzatazthat "shame on you, bush!" thing was a bit much, don't you think?
Yeah, that was going too far. At first the audience were cheering but he just wouldn't shut up and then the boos started..
Title: michael moore: oscars, truths, and fictitions
Post by: Raikus on March 24, 2003, 10:04:27 AM
Michael Moore = one note song.
Title: michael moore: oscars, truths, and fictitions
Post by: Jeremy Blackman on March 24, 2003, 12:47:46 PM
Quote from: pgrYeah, that was going too far

I would have been disappointed by anything less. It only proves that he can't be diluted, and he can't be silenced.
Title: michael moore: oscars, truths, and fictitions
Post by: Recce on March 24, 2003, 01:37:59 PM
I captured the Micheal Moore acceptance speech if anyone is interested and hasn't seen it. Unfortunately, being a complete idiot, I have no idea how I might go about posting it. Anyone have any ideas? Its 27mb.
Title: michael moore: oscars, truths, and fictitions
Post by: bonanzataz on March 24, 2003, 02:44:42 PM
Quote from: Jeremy Blackman
Quote from: pgrYeah, that was going too far

I would have been disappointed by anything less. It only proves that he can't be diluted, and he can't be silenced.

Yeah, but he could have been a little more eloquent.
Title: michael moore: oscars, truths, and fictitions
Post by: Jeremy Blackman on March 24, 2003, 03:15:34 PM
Quote from: RecceI captured the Micheal Moore acceptance speech if anyone is interested and hasn't seen it. Unfortunately, being a complete idiot, I have no idea how I might go about posting it. Anyone have any ideas? Its 27mb.

Yes, I believe Mr. Xixax would be happy to host it. Although there is the fact that it's Michael Moore ......
Title: michael moore: oscars, truths, and fictitions
Post by: Ernie on March 24, 2003, 05:03:33 PM
Quote from: RaikusMichael Moore = one note song.

It certainly seems so. I hadn't even heard of him before all the Bowling For Columbine hype started up and he's already starting to annoy the hell out of me. He's way too cool for school.
Title: michael moore: oscars, truths, and fictitions
Post by: xerxes on March 24, 2003, 06:24:16 PM
i thought what he did last night was great... i applaud him
Title: michael moore: oscars, truths, and fictitions
Post by: Gold Trumpet on March 24, 2003, 07:25:41 PM
Moore does comedy better than insight. His gestures and lame speech only reinforced it.

~rougerum
Title: michael moore: oscars, truths, and fictitions
Post by: RegularKarate on March 24, 2003, 08:48:49 PM
I really like Micheal Moore and I'm glad BFC won because it deserved it.

But I think that sometimes the way Moore goes about things is too exagerated.  Sometimes he makes a big deal about too much and it makes the people who take it a little more seriously look like extremists.

Bush didn't win the popular vote and he's still the president... that sucks, but it's in the past.  War is what's happening now...
I didn't march in one of the recent anti-war protests last week here because there were all these retards with "Impeach Bush" signs.  It just makes the whole crowd look stupid... people who are realistic about the anti-war movement can't be taken seriously with this kind of behavior.

I don't know... maybe I'm not making and sense, I really like Micheal Moore, but I wouldn't have been one of the ones cheering or one of the ones booing... I would have been one of the ones just laughing at the whole situation.
Title: michael moore: oscars, truths, and fictitions
Post by: Gold Trumpet on March 24, 2003, 10:24:29 PM
I agree with you RK. Dissention on the war is fine, but Moore is doing himself no favors with these actions.

But on the political elections of 2000, I believe Bush rightly did win, but that's another discussion.

~rougerum
Title: michael moore: oscars, truths, and fictitions
Post by: bonanzataz on March 25, 2003, 01:51:47 AM
My friend was at the academy awards and was one of those booing. Both of us love BFC and were glad it won, but we just don't like Moore. He's annoying.
Title: michael moore: oscars, truths, and fictitions
Post by: Ghostboy on March 25, 2003, 01:58:40 AM
I agree with JB in that I would have been disappointed by anything less, but I do wish he hadn't simply recycled his speech from the previous night.

Adrien Brody's speech was much more graceful, mature and powerful. But MM is a rabble-rouser, and he lived up to his reputation.
Title: michael moore: oscars, truths, and fictitions
Post by: AlguienEstolamiPantalones on March 25, 2003, 02:31:35 AM
the funny thing is he pleaded to the media to not make the booing the main focus of their storys

then all the storys about him mentioned the booing in the headline

i can see him going back to his hotel hoping on to yahoo  and going

" D'oh"
Title: michael moore: oscars, truths, and fictitions
Post by: fulty on March 25, 2003, 08:45:06 AM
Whether you agree with his point of view or not, he was discussing a very serious subject.   Yet, it appeared he was straining to contain his glee when the boos began.   I got the impression he was more interested in grandstanding for a crowd reaction on national TV.   It looked a bit foolish.
Title: michael moore: oscars, truths, and fictitions
Post by: Jeremy Blackman on March 25, 2003, 10:43:46 AM
Quote from: Butterscotch Jonesi can see him going back to his hotel hoping on to yahoo  and going

" D'oh"

I think it was Yahoo! that reported he was "booed off stage"...
Title: michael moore: oscars, truths, and fictitions
Post by: Recce on March 25, 2003, 12:49:05 PM
he wasn't booed off stage. He said what he had to say, the music started and he left. They don't give enough time to talk at the oscars to actually be booed off. He got the same amount of time as everyone else. Well, except the big stars.
Title: michael moore: oscars, truths, and fictitions
Post by: Duck Sauce on March 25, 2003, 01:21:02 PM
Yeah, I had a hard time imagine him getting booed off the stage, I didnt get to see it. I was thinking he had to say something pretty far out there to not only get booed after winning at the oscars but also by people who for the most part agree with him.
Title: michael moore: oscars, truths, and fictitions
Post by: ©brad on March 25, 2003, 01:28:52 PM
Haha, reminds me of that funny bit Steve Martin did about people in Hollywood. i don't remember the whole thing but he was saying something like "There's democrats, and then.... (long pause)"

remember tho, a lot of the acamedy is super conservative. I think most people do agree with him to some degree, it's just the manner in which he did it might of pissed some people off.
Title: michael moore: oscars, truths, and fictitions
Post by: Duck Sauce on March 25, 2003, 01:33:12 PM
Quote from: cbrad4dHaha, reminds me of that funny bit Steve Martin did about people in Hollywood. i don't remember the whole thing but he was saying something like "There's democrats, and then.... (long pause)"

remember tho, a lot of the acamedy is super conservative. I think most people do agree with him to some degree, it's just the manner in which he did it might of pissed some people off.

My friend paraphrased it for me since I didnt see it. Was it something like "Celebrities are short and they are tall.... they are democrats......and they are tall"
Title: michael moore: oscars, truths, and fictitions
Post by: bonanzataz on March 25, 2003, 02:49:16 PM
no, it was, "celebrities can be tall, or short. they can be thin, or they can be skinny. They can be democrats.... or they could be thin!"
Title: michael moore: oscars, truths, and fictitions
Post by: MacGuffin on March 27, 2003, 06:11:25 PM
Oscars producer Gil Cates drowned out Best Documentary award winner Michael Moore with music on Sunday night to prevent a clash at the Kodak Theatre. Cates feared those booing and those applauding the outspoken Bowling For Columbine director would provoke ugly scenes, so he chose to cut off his controversial anti-war speech early. But Cates was happy to kill the music and let Best Actor winner Adrien Brody have a few extra moments to pay tribute to a pal fighting in Iraq. Cates says, "I thought it was inappropriate for Michael Moore to start calling names but I was happy to let Adrien Brody have his moment. It was a great speech."

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Bowling For Columbine director Michael Moore was delighted with the response to his anti war tirade when accepting an Oscar for best documentary. Moore didn't think he was going to win the Oscar at the Sunday ceremony - and thought he might remain silent if he did. Before the awards he said, "I may say nothing - just ask for a moment of silence and stand there for those 45 seconds." But he's delighted he changed his mind. Despite a generally unimpressed reception from the audience, he labels the response to his out-burst "wonderful." He added, "The people that seemed to disagree with it all seemed to be in one section - up in the balcony."
Title: michael moore: oscars, truths, and fictitions
Post by: Cecil on March 27, 2003, 06:18:41 PM
Quote from: MacGuffin"The people that seemed to disagree with it all seemed to be in one section - up in the balcony."

who sits up in the balcony? studio execs?
Title: michael moore: oscars, truths, and fictitions
Post by: Xixax on March 27, 2003, 07:01:49 PM
In the most eloquent way possible, I'd like to unequivocally state that

MICHAEL MOORE IS THE MOST NOBLE AND SAINTLY PUBLIC FIGURE EVER TO LAY HIS FEET UPON THIS HUMBLED EARTH

Thank you.
Title: michael moore: oscars, truths, and fictitions
Post by: Sleuth on March 27, 2003, 07:03:21 PM
What are you saying?
Title: michael moore: oscars, truths, and fictitions
Post by: sphinx on March 27, 2003, 08:26:59 PM
Quote from: cecil b. dementedwho sits up in the balcony? studio execs?

friends and family, like he said before
Title: michael moore: oscars, truths, and fictitions
Post by: AlguienEstolamiPantalones on March 28, 2003, 04:25:46 AM
Quote from: Xixax

MICHAEL MOORE IS THE MOST NOBLE AND SAINTLY PUBLIC FIGURE EVER TO LAY HIS FEET UPON THIS HUMBLED EARTH

Thank you.

i belive Xixax was quoteing betty white , she said this the day after the acadmy awards, when she was on b.e.t
Title: michael moore: oscars, truths, and fictitions
Post by: MacGuffin on March 30, 2003, 01:46:04 PM
Both stories from the Los Angeles Times:

I'd Like to Thank the Vatican...
Michael Moore fesses up to his Oscar day 'mistake' -- going to Mass first.

By Michael Moore, Michael Moore won an Academy Award for "Bowling for Columbine."

A word of advice to future Oscar winners: Don't begin Oscar day by going to church.

That is where I found myself this past Sunday morning, at the Church of the Good Shepherd on Santa Monica Boulevard, at Mass with my sister and my dad. My problem with the Catholic Mass is that sometimes I find my mind wandering after I hear something the priest says, and I start thinking all these crazy thoughts like how it is wrong to kill people and that you are not allowed to use violence upon another human being unless it is in true self-defense.

The pope even came right out and said it: This war in Iraq is not a just war and, thus, it is a sin.

Those thoughts were with me the rest of the day, from the moment I left the church and passed by the homeless begging for change (one in six American children living in poverty is another form of violence), to the streets around the Kodak Theater where antiwar protesters were being arrested as I drove by in my studio-sponsored limo.

I had not planned on winning an Academy Award for "Bowling for Columbine" (no documentary that was a big box-office success had won since "Woodstock"), and so I had no speech prepared. I'm not much of a speech-preparer anyway, and besides, I had already received awards in the days leading up to the Oscars and used the same acceptance remarks. I spoke of the need for nonfiction films when we live in such fictitious times. We have a fictitious president who was elected with fictitious election results. (If you still believe that 3,000 elderly Jewish Americans -- many of them Holocaust survivors -- voted for Pat Buchanan in West Palm Beach in 2000, then you are a true devotee to the beauty of fiction!) He is now conducting a war for a fictitious reason (the claim that Saddam Hussein has stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction when in fact we are there to get the world's second-largest supply of oil).

Whether it is a tax cut that is passed off as a gift to the middle class or a desire to drill holes in the wilds of Alaska, we are continually bombarded with one fictitious story after another from the Bush White House. And that is why it is important that filmmakers make nonfiction, so that all the little lies can be exposed and the public informed. An uninformed public in a democracy is a sure-fire way to end up with little or no democracy at all.

That is what I have been saying for some time. Millions of Americans seem to agree. My book "Stupid White Men" still sits at No. 1 on the bestseller list (it's been on that list now for 53 weeks and is the largest-selling nonfiction book of the year). "Bowling for Columbine" has broken all box-office records for a documentary. My Web site is now getting up to 20 million hits a day (more than the White House's site). My opinions about the state of the nation are neither unknown nor on the fringe, but rather they exist with mainstream majority opinion. The majority of Americans, according to polls, want stronger environmental laws, support Roe vs. Wade and did not want to go into this war without the backing of the United Nations and all of our allies.

That is where the country is at. It's liberal, it's for peace and it is only tacitly in support of its leader because that is what you are supposed to do when you are at war and you want your kids to come back from Iraq alive.

In the commercial break before the best documentary Oscar was to be announced, I suddenly thought that maybe this community of film people was also part of that American majority and just might have voted for my film, which, in part, takes on the Bush administration for manipulating the public with fear so it can conduct its acts of aggression against the Third World. I leaned over to my fellow nominees and told them that, should I win, I was going to say something about President Bush and the war and would they like to join me up on the stage? I told them that I felt like I'd already had my moment with the success of the film and that I would love for them to share the stage with me so they could have their moment too. (They had all made exceptional films and I wanted the public to see these filmmakers and hopefully go see their films.)

They all agreed.

Moments later, Diane Lane opened the envelope and announced the winner: "Bowling for Columbine." The entire main floor rose to its feet for a standing ovation. I was immeasurably moved and humbled as I motioned for the other nominees to join my wife (the film's producer) and me up on the stage.

I then said what I had been saying all week at those other awards ceremonies. I guess a few other people had heard me say those things too because before I had finished my first sentence about the fictitious president, a couple of men (some reported it was "stagehands" just to the left of me) near a microphone started some loud yelling. Then a group in the upper balcony joined in. What was so confusing to me, as I continued my remarks, was that I could hear this noise but looking out on the main floor, I didn't see a single person booing. But then the majority in the balcony -- who were in support of my remarks -- started booing the booers.

It all turned into one humungous cacophony of yells and cheers and jeers. And all I'm thinking is, "Hey, I put on a tux for this?"

I tried to get out my last line ("Any time you've got both the pope and the Dixie Chicks against you, you're not long for the White House") and the orchestra struck up its tune to end the melee. (A few orchestra members came up to me later and apologized, saying they had wanted to hear what I had to say.) I had gone 55 seconds, 10 more than allowed.

Was it appropriate? To me, the inappropriate thing would have been to say nothing at all or to thank my agent, my lawyer and the designer who dressed me -- Sears Roebuck. I made a movie about the American desire to use violence both at home and around the world. My remarks were in keeping with exactly what my film was about. If I had a movie about birds or insects, I would have talked about birds or insects. I made a movie about guns and Americans' tradition of using them against the world and each other.

And, as I walked up to the stage, I was still thinking about the lessons that morning at Mass. About how silence, when you observe wrongs being committed, is the same as committing those wrongs yourself. And so I followed my conscience and my heart.

On the way back home to Flint, Mich., the day after the Oscars, two flight attendants told me how they had gotten stuck overnight in Flint with no flight -- and wound up earning only $30 for the day because they are paid by the hour.

They said they were telling me this in the hope that I would tell others. Because they, and the millions like them, have no voice. They don't get to be commentators on cable news like the bevy of retired generals we've been watching all week. (Can we please demand that the U.S. military remove its troops from ABC/CBS/NBC/CNN/MSNBC/Fox?) They don't get to make movies or talk to a billion people on Oscar night. They are the American majority who are being asked to send their sons and daughters over to Iraq to possibly die so Bush's buddies can have the oil.

Who will speak for them if I don't? That's what I do, or try to do, every day of my life, and March 23, 2003 -- though it was one of the greatest days of my life and an honor I will long cherish -- was no different.

Except I made the mistake of beginning it in a church.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Michael Moore, the new diplomat
In Europe, the director has come to symbolize the American underdog.

Paris -- When Michael Moore won best documentary for "Bowling for Columbine" at last week's Academy Awards, his antiwar comments -- "Shame on you, Mr. Bush!" -- were met with cheers and jeers. The orchestra cut him off. Steve Martin made a joke.

The mood was quite different at the Césars, the French Oscars, a few weeks beforehand, as Moore lumbered up to accept the best foreign film award. He made the routine apology for his high-school French. Then he delivered a well-rehearsed, improvisational-style speech in English, pausing expertly for the translator. At a leisurely pace, he thanked our French allies for the cinema, for French fries and French kisses. For helping us in the War of Independence and saying no to the war we had not yet officially begun.

"One of the best definitions of an ally, of a friend," he said, "is that your friend is the one who can tell you when you're wrong. So thank you for showing us the way, for standing up for something very important."

Moore insisted that he represented "tens of millions" of Americans who praised the firm French antiwar stance, not a lone voice in a self-styled wilderness. In crooked bow tie and schlumpy tux, the filmmaker and bestselling author was the ultimate antihero, earnestly dragging his wife and producer Kathleen Glynn up on stage, laughing his "yuk, yuk, yuk" laugh -- and getting the night's most rousing and spontaneous standing ovation.

Europeans have always had an appetite for subversive American voices, and Moore's provocative, outspoken, sarcastic, muckraking style, which some also label glib and narcissistic -- is closely watched here. It would be overstating the case to say that he is more appreciated here than at home, but Europeans have come to rely on him as a singular voice for the American underdog since he made an international name for himself with his 1989 breakthrough documentary "Roger and Me." In this era of troubled U.S. diplomacy, you might even say that Moore has become perhaps America's chief cultural ambassador in this part of the world.

"Bowling for Columbine" was the first documentary in half a century to be admitted to the main competition at last May's Cannes Film Festival, where it won the special jury prize. Moore's bestselling book "Stupid White Men ... and Other Sorry Excuses for the State of the Nation" is No. 1 and No. 2 on Amazon.de (in German and English, respectively) and is a bestseller in France, where its title is "Mike Contre-attaque!" or "Mike Counterattack!" It won Book of the Year from the British Book Awards this winter. Last fall in London, Moore's one-man show "Michael Moore -- Live!" was full for its five-week run at the Roundhouse theater.

A bookseller at the Waterstone's in the London neighborhood of Notting Hill, where "Stupid White Men" is No. 1, said, "It's still flying off the shelves -- too bad it hasn't been able to change anything politically." Moore's name comes up in conversation at Parisian dinner parties, and in French political debates, he's used as shorthand proof that the American left is alive and well, despite the image projected by Washington.

"Moore has amassed a sizable following on both sides of the Atlantic, not only as a satirical writer, but also as a comedian and mickey-taking documentary maker," said London's Independent on Sunday, in a review of "Stupid White Men," adding that "Michael Moore, the people's champion, has just turned into a brand." The paper headlined another review: "THE BESTSELLER THAT BUSH'S AMERICA TRIED TO BAN."

The startling success of "Stupid White Men," the article said, suggests "that the 'popularity' of George Bush is not nearly as universal as the manufactured consensus would suggest." It went on to praise American book-buyers "who are reinforcing that proudest of all American traditions: the right to freedom of speech, information and opinion."

Heard in many arenas

Nobody embodies the cliché of an American more prosaically than Moore, of the XXL frame, the baseball cap and sneakers; the sloppy, loud, in-your-face delivery. But if he is quintessentially American, Moore has often found support for his ideas outside the United States.

The BBC offered to produce his first television series, "TV Nation," a TV newsmagazine spoof that focused on big business' exploitation of the little people, after it was rejected by NBC (which later picked it up), as well as his 1998 documentary "The Big One," about his cross-country book tour for 1996's "Downsize This!" The U.K.'s Channel Four produced the first season of his follow-up to "TV Nation," "The Awful Truth," and its Canadian producing partner Salter Street Films funded "Bowling for Columbine."

Moore is not without his critics on both sides of the Atlantic. But like those Americans who sympathize with his work, Europeans tend to begrudgingly forgive his shortcomings for the simple reason that he is one of the few loud, clear voices of the American left. The French daily Liberation called him "the hero of the leftist fight in the United States," and "Bowling for Columbine" "an anti-American diatribe." The Independent on Sunday wrote in a review of the film: "Moore's Achilles heel is this awful self-aggrandizing streak, his flaunting of plain-guy compassion.... 'Bowling for Columbine' is a big confused hectoring righteous mess, but it'll make you laugh a lot and chill your marrow even more."

On press night of "Michael Moore -- Live!" last November in slightly out-of-the-way Camden, the sympathetic audience -- which included actor Alan Rickman snorting it up a few rows back -- laughed, cheered and generally went along for the ride as Moore did his shtick: a whole skit about the things you can't bring on a post-Sept. 11 plane; real-time calls to fast-food joints in the Middle East to gather intelligence on Osama bin Laden. A call to the FBI switchboard, in which an operator had never heard of the Office of Homeland Security. He ate Doritos while sitting in a scruffy easy chair, with blown-up photos of a young W, Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Laden and Tony Blair hanging behind him.

In a rather blatant exercise in what London's Observer called "national self-deprecation," he held an intelligence quiz in which he drafted two hapless audience members to the stage -- an American and a Brit -- and led them through a rigged series of faux-game show questions. At the end, he answered questions -- showing off his comic timing and gift for politically incorrect political correctness.

The Observer found his "tirades against the bombing of Afghanistan or the deaths of half a million Iraqi children from US bombs ... viscerally inspiring." But the review was critical of Moore's disparagement of the passengers of Sept. 11's hijacked planes for their white, middle-class complacency, and the parents of the Columbine students for not breaking through the police tape. His analysis "looks like a thoughtless over-simplification from the armchair of hindsight," the review said.

The Times of London went one step further: "The average American is not stupid; Michael Moore is."

Stupid or not, he definitely entertained the sellout crowds. "Michael Moore -- Live!" was a surprise success, says David Johnson, the show's British producer and the man responsible for bringing "Puppetry of the Penis" to the U.S. He hopes to use the box-office numbers to persuade reluctant New York theater owners to stage a version of the show, updated to address current events, on Broadway sometime this year.

A self-deprecating critic

Part of Moore's popularity abroad, cynics might point out, is that he flatters the wisdom and civility of other nations while confirming their worst suspicions about America. At the Cannes press conference for "Bowling for Columbine," a Canadian journalist respectfully objected to Moore's contention that all Canadians didn't lock their doors (in one scene in the film, he'd tested his theory by barging into several strangers' homes unannounced). But Moore deflected the comment, insisting that something in the Canadian "cultural DNA" made it a less fearful and violent country than its neighbor.

During the festival, Moore made foreign friends all around with his effusive thanks, his self-deprecating humor -- the press conference also felt like stand-up, with a forcefully charismatic Moore hardly in need of the microphone to amplify his booming voice.

After "Bowling for Columbine's" world premiere at Cannes, a reviewer for London's Guardian newspaper wrote that "both performances I've been to have ended with fervent applause and a great deal of earnest Europeans streaming back out into the foyer, their determination re-doubled and re-tripled never to agree with the American practice of spraying the nearest McDonald's with bullets before turning the gun on oneself."

Moore struck the Guardian's writer as "a lone figure in the American media mainstream, challenging gun culture -- a heresy in which the rest of Hollywood's pampered progressives have no interest. For most of them, there are no votes, and no ticket sales, in saying that guns aren't sexy. It's a pleasure to a hear a dissenting voice."

Part of Moore's appeal abroad may lie in the fact that he seems, unlike America's political leaders, to listen to foreign nations, to take them seriously. On his Web site, MichaelMoore.com, he has taken the highly unpopular step of defending the French.

In "A Letter from Michael Moore to George W. Bush on the Eve of War," dated March 17, 2003, he writes: "We love France. Yes, they have pulled some royal screw-ups.... But have you forgotten we wouldn't even have this country known as America if it weren't for the French? That it was their help in the Revolutionary War that won it for us?" Quit complaining about the French, he urges, "and thank them for getting it right for once."

Moore also satisfies a voracious and profound European curiosity about the inner workings of the world's "hyperpower," and part of Europe's fascination with Moore undoubtedly stems from his ability to exploit the tantalizing notion that what's bad for America will one day be just as bad for the rest of the world.

For example: "There is nothing sadder than seeing leaders of other countries trying to mimic the leaders of our country," he writes in the foreword to the U.K. edition of "Stupid White Men." "America decides to bomb some country -- and your head of state joins right in .... We decide to eliminate the safety net for our poor, and your legislative bodies can't wait to start cutting numerous social services that have been in place for decades.... To see you in your countries start to beat up on those who are less fortunate, to make life more difficult for them, I'm convinced that this will be the unraveling of your soul."

Don't trade cheaper running shoes for school shootings and fewer civil liberties, he warns our friends around the globe. "Maybe there is still hope for you," he continues. "It may be too late for us, I dunno."
Title: michael moore: oscars, truths, and fictitions
Post by: ©brad on March 31, 2003, 09:15:52 AM
Documentarian Michael Moore will next focus on the relationship between President George W. Bush and the family of Osama bin Laden. As Moore tells Variety, "The primary thrust of the new film is what has happened to the country since Sept. 11, and how the Bush administration used this tragic event to push its agenda." The director's previous film, Bowling for Columbine, and its Oscar win for Best Documentary, helped ignite a bidding war, won by Mel Gibson's Icon Productions, for Fahrenheit 9/11.

According to Variety, Michael Moore has put a year's worth of research into the film. He'll finish it in time to be submitted for the 2004 Cannes Film Festival, and the documentary will be released in time for the presidential election that fall. (Variety)
Title: michael moore: oscars, truths, and fictitions
Post by: Jeremy Blackman on March 31, 2003, 09:51:05 AM
Quote from: cbrad4dDocumentarian Michael Moore will next focus on the relationship between President George W. Bush and the family of Osama bin Laden. As Moore tells Variety, "The primary thrust of the new film is what has happened to the country since Sept. 11, and how the Bush administration used this tragic event to push its agenda." The director's previous film, Bowling for Columbine, and its Oscar win for Best Documentary, helped ignite a bidding war, won by Mel Gibson's Icon Productions, for Fahrenheit 9/11.

According to Variety, Michael Moore has put a year's worth of research into the film. He'll finish it in time to be submitted for the 2004 Cannes Film Festival, and the documentary will be released in time for the presidential election that fall. (Variety)

:kiss: ... :multi: ... :yabbse-grin: ... :yabbse-exclamation:
Title: michael moore: oscars, truths, and fictitions
Post by: Duck Sauce on March 31, 2003, 10:06:30 AM
I was kind of wondering how long it would take for him to start a war doc. I hope he doesnt go over the edge, this is sure to piss a lot of people off.
Title: michael moore: oscars, truths, and fictitions
Post by: Jeremy Blackman on March 31, 2003, 10:14:00 AM
Quote from: Duck SauceI hope he doesnt go over the edge

:lol:
Title: michael moore: oscars, truths, and fictitions
Post by: budgie on March 31, 2003, 11:17:27 AM
Quote from: Ghostboy
Adrien Brody's speech was much more graceful, mature and powerful. But MM is a rabble-rouser, and he lived up to his reputation.
There's 'powerful' and 'powerful'. Who's the one giving people a pain in the ass? Fuck restraint!


However:
Quote from: MacGuffinWhether it is the fictition of duct tape.
Tsk.
Title: michael moore: oscars, truths, and fictitions
Post by: RegularKarate on March 31, 2003, 03:21:49 PM
Quote from: cbrad4dFahrenheit 9/11.

A+
Title: michael moore: oscars, truths, and fictitions
Post by: Jeremy Blackman on April 08, 2003, 08:46:54 PM
Michael Moore talks about his post-Oscar experiences on his website (http://www.michaelmoore.com/):    

It appears that the Bush administration will have succeeded in colonizing Iraq sometime in the next few days. This is a blunder of such magnitude -- and we will pay for it for years to come. It was not worth the life of one single American kid in uniform, let alone the thousands of Iraqis who have died, and my condolences and prayers go out to all of them.

So, where are all those weapons of mass destruction that were the pretense for this war? Ha! There is so much to say about all this, but I will save it for later.

What I am most concerned about right now is that all of you -- the majority of Americans who did not support this war in the first place -- not go silent or be intimidated by what will be touted as some great military victory. Now, more than ever, the voices of peace and truth must be heard. I have received a lot of mail from people who are feeling a profound sense of despair and believe that their voices have been drowned out by the drums and bombs of false patriotism. Some are afraid of retaliation at work or at school or in their neighborhoods because they have been vocal proponents of peace. They have been told over and over that it is not "appropriate" to protest once the country is at war, and that your only duty now is to "support the troops."

Can I share with you what it's been like for me since I used my time on the Oscar stage two weeks ago to speak out against Bush and this war? I hope that, in reading what I'm about to tell you, you'll feel a bit more emboldened to make your voice heard in whatever way or forum that is open to you.

When "Bowling for Columbine" was announced as the Oscar winner for Best Documentary at the Academy Awards, the audience rose to its feet. It was a great moment, one that I will always cherish. They were standing and cheering for a film that says we Americans are a uniquely violent people, using our massive stash of guns to kill each other and to use them against many countries around the world. They were applauding a film that shows George W. Bush using fictitious fears to frighten the public into giving him whatever he wants. And they were honoring a film that states the following: The first Gulf War was an attempt to reinstall the dictator of Kuwait; Saddam Hussein was armed with weapons from the United States; and the American government is responsible for the deaths of a half-million children in Iraq over the past decade through its sanctions and bombing. That was the movie they were cheering, that was the movie they voted for, and so I decided that is what I should acknowledge in my speech.

And, thus, I said the following from the Oscar stage:

"On behalf of our producers Kathleen Glynn and Michael Donovan (from Canada), I would like to thank the Academy for this award. I have invited the other Documentary nominees on stage with me. They are here in solidarity because we like non-fiction. We like non-fiction because we live in fictitious times. We live in a time where fictitious election results give us a fictitious president. We are now fighting a war for fictitious reasons. Whether it's the fiction of duct tape or the fictitious 'Orange Alerts,' we are against this war, Mr. Bush. Shame on you, Mr. Bush, shame on you. And, whenever you've got the Pope and the Dixie Chicks against you, your time is up."

Halfway through my remarks, some in the audience started to cheer. That immediately set off a group of people in the balcony who started to boo. Then those supporting my remarks started to shout down the booers. The L. A. Times reported that the director of the show started screaming at the orchestra "Music! Music!" in order to cut me off, so the band dutifully struck up a tune and my time was up. (For more on why I said what I said, you can read the op-ed I wrote for the L.A. Times, plus other reaction from around the country at my website)

The next day -- and in the two weeks since -- the right-wing pundits and radio shock jocks have been calling for my head. So, has all this ruckus hurt me? Have they succeeded in "silencing" me?

Well, take a look at my Oscar "backlash":

-- On the day after I criticized Bush and the war at the Academy Awards, attendance at "Bowling for Columbine" in theaters around the country went up 110% (source: Daily Variety/BoxOfficeMojo.com). The following weekend, the box office gross was up a whopping 73% (Variety). It is now the longest-running consecutive commercial release in America, 26 weeks in a row and still thriving. The number of theaters showing the film since the Oscars has INCREASED, and it has now bested the previous box office record for a documentary by nearly 300%.

-- Yesterday (April 6), "Stupid White Men" shot back to #1 on the New York Times bestseller list. This is my book's 50th week on the list, 8 of them at number one, and this marks its fourth return to the top position, something that virtually never happens.

-- In the week after the Oscars, my website was getting 10-20 million hits A DAY (one day we even got more hits than the White House!). The mail has been overwhelmingly positive and supportive (and the hate mail has been hilarious!).

-- In the two days following the Oscars, more people pre-ordered the video for "Bowling for Columbine" on Amazon.com than the video for the Oscar winner for Best Picture, "Chicago."

-- In the past week, I have obtained funding for my next documentary, and I have been offered a slot back on television to do an updated version of "TV Nation"/ "The Awful Truth."

I tell you all of this because I want to counteract a message that is told to us all the time -- that, if you take a chance to speak out politically, you will live to regret it. It will hurt you in some way, usually financially. You could lose your job. Others may not hire you. You will lose friends. And on and on and on.

Take the Dixie Chicks. I'm sure you've all heard by now that, because their lead singer mentioned how she was ashamed that Bush was from her home state of Texas, their record sales have "plummeted" and country stations are boycotting their music. The truth is that their sales are NOT down. This week, after all the attacks, their album is still at #1 on the Billboard country charts and, according to Entertainment Weekly, on the pop charts during all the brouhaha, they ROSE from #6 to #4. In the New York Times, Frank Rich reports that he tried to find a ticket to ANY of the Dixie Chicks' upcoming concerts but he couldn't because they were all sold out. (To read Rich's column from yesterday's Times, "Bowling for Kennebunkport," go here. He does a pretty good job of laying it all out and talks about my next film and the impact it could potentially have.) Their song, "Travelin' Soldier" (a beautiful anti-war ballad) was the most requested song on the internet last week. They have not been hurt at all -- but that is not what the media would have you believe. Why is that? Because there is nothing more important now than to keep the voices of dissent -- and those who would dare to ask a question -- SILENT. And what better way than to try and take a few well-known entertainers down with a pack of lies so that the average Joe or Jane gets the message loud and clear: "Wow, if they would do that to the Dixie Chicks or Michael Moore, what would they do to little ol' me?" In other words, shut the f--- up.

And that, my friends, is the real point of this film that I just got an Oscar for -- how those in charge use FEAR to manipulate the public into doing whatever they are told.

Well, the good news -- if there can be any good news this week -- is that not only have neither I nor others been silenced, we have been joined by millions of Americans who think the same way we do. Don't let the false patriots intimidate you by setting the agenda or the terms of the debate. Don't be defeated by polls that show 70% of the public in favor of the war. Remember that these Americans being polled are the same Americans whose kids (or neighbor's kids) have been sent over to Iraq. They are scared for the troops and they are being cowed into supporting a war they did not want -- and they want even less to see their friends, family, and neighbors come home dead. Everyone supports the troops returning home alive and all of us need to reach out and let their families know that.

Unfortunately, Bush and Co. are not through yet. This invasion and conquest will encourage them to do it again elsewhere. The real purpose of this war was to say to the rest of the world, "Don't Mess with Texas - If You Got What We Want, We're Coming to Get It!" This is not the time for the majority of us who believe in a peaceful America to be quiet. Make your voices heard. Despite what they have pulled off, it is still our country.
Title: michael moore: oscars, truths, and fictitions
Post by: cowboykurtis on April 08, 2003, 08:59:10 PM
the thing that kind of bothered me about bowling for columbine was it s inability to have an opinion. there was much emphasis put on sensationalist news broadcasting. if he doesnt think that he made a sensationalist documentary, he should look up the word in the dictionary. when it comes down to it micheal moore doesnt shit about anything -- no one knows know shit about anything. if micheal moore, or any of you can say that you know what this war is about, you're either lying or misinformed.
Title: michael moore: oscars, truths, and fictitions
Post by: Jeremy Blackman on April 08, 2003, 09:02:07 PM
Quote from: cowboykurtisno one knows know shit about anything. if micheal moore, or any of you can say that you know what this war is about, you're either lying or misinformed.

So knowledge is impossible, information is an illusion, ignorance is inevitable*, and life is meaningless?

*then how can you say that your whole theory about this is not ignorant?
Title: michael moore: oscars, truths, and fictitions
Post by: cowboykurtis on April 08, 2003, 09:17:24 PM
Quote from: Jeremy Blackman
Quote from: cowboykurtisno one knows know shit about anything. if micheal moore, or any of you can say that you know what this war is about, you're either lying or misinformed.

So knowledge is impossible, information is an illusion, ignorance is inevitable*, and life is meaningless?

*then how can you say that your whole theory about this is not ignorant?

my theory is referring to specific  issues that our government do not want to be public knowledge,. this is done in order to preserve a specific public "image". my "theory" was very cleary speaking about our government's motives for war.  when did i ever say that "information" all together is unobtainable making our life useless. if thats what you got out of my words -- read them again. you took my words, which were specified towards a very narrow issue, and turned them into heady philosophical banter. the reason why my theory isnt ignorant is, our media has to report the truth "as they know it." that's not the truth. the only people who know the truth about this war, are the people up top hitting the buttons.
Title: michael moore: oscars, truths, and fictitions
Post by: Jeremy Blackman on April 09, 2003, 10:41:19 AM
Quote from: cowboykurtisyou took my words, which were specified towards a very narrow issue, and turned them into heady philosophical banter.

fair enough...

Quote from: cowboykurtisthe reason why my theory isnt ignorant is, our media has to report the truth "as they know it." that's not the truth.

..true...

Quote from: cowboykurtisthe only people who know the truth about this war, are the people up top hitting the buttons.

They might be the only people who know the whole truth, but that doesn't mean all of the information in every media source has no truth in it. Of course most of the media is biased, but saying that journalists can't figure anything out, so we can't know anything anyway, seems like a strange way to justify apathy.

Or are you just saying that we can know some truths, but since we can't know the complete truth, then it's not the truth at all?
Title: michael moore: oscars, truths, and fictitions
Post by: blu on April 09, 2003, 12:18:03 PM
fuck micheal moore.  

http://www.hardylaw.net/Truth_About_Bowling.html

i actually believed the guy.  i loved bfc until I found out it is bullshit.
Title: michael moore: oscars, truths, and fictitions
Post by: Jeremy Blackman on April 09, 2003, 01:34:36 PM
Quote from: blufuck micheal moore.  

http://www.hardylaw.net/Truth_About_Bowling.html

i actually believed the guy.  i loved bfc until I found out it is bullshit.

Interesting stuff. That proves that

1) he edited stuff down (the Heston speech) to make it more concise and to the point, and used Heston footage from multiple speeched (I never thought that all the Heston footage was one speech.. I don't see how that's a deception)

2) Moore exaggerated the particular use and intention of missiles in the Columbine plant of Lockheed Martin, which makes weapons of mass destruction and technologies to assist weapons of mass destruction.

3) The KKK is not synonymous with the NRA. (This is something that is jokingly suggested in the "I loves my gun" animation, when a KKK guys become NRA guys. Moore is known for jokingly suggesting things. And I mean, look at it, it's a cartoon.)

4) The kid who did the shooting Buell Elementary School in Michigan came from a troubled family that was involved with drugs.

5) The money that the U.S. gave $245 million in aid to the Taliban government was for "humanitarian aid" (Anyone who knows anything about international politics knows that humanitarian aid is not always used for humanitarian aid)

6) Moore's homicide statistics are selected from a particular time. (This site doesn't even know when Moore's statistics are from, and goes out of its way to find conflicting counts. Of course there will always be conflicting homicide counts from different organizations, and the FBI (one of its sources) is not exactly on top of every homicide in the United States.


And I don't know if I could really trust that website anyway, it's run by some conservative descendant of an 1800s Arizona law man ("The Hardys have been providing speedy justice in Arizona since 1871")...
Title: michael moore: oscars, truths, and fictitions
Post by: blu on April 09, 2003, 04:15:12 PM
a director being sensationalist shouldn't surprise me.  i hear the man will be responding to this article on his website soon.
Title: michael moore: oscars, truths, and fictitions
Post by: Pedro on April 09, 2003, 06:49:52 PM
Alot of these exaggerations and edits seemed pretty obvious to me the first time I saw the movie, anyway.  I mean ok, so the speech that was cut in the movie was from two separate speeches...doesn't really matter...It seems that people who disagree with his views will use anything to say something negative about him.  That isn't necessarily always bad, I mean, I can do similar things.  I guess I don't like this and find such actions extreme because they go against someone who holds my views.  If this was something geared against, say, Bill O'Reily(first thing that came to me head...no arguments please) I would be happy about this existing.
Title: michael moore: oscars, truths, and fictitions
Post by: Pastor Parsley on April 11, 2003, 01:49:31 PM
The website claims that Heston never said "from my cold dead hands" in denver.  He did, I lived in denver at the time and they quoted him in the newspaper the following day...he may have said it in north carolina as well and the footage might have been shot there too, but who cares.  I mean he probably said the same speech everywhere he went.  It makes me think the whole website is a an effort to discredit moore.
Title: michael moore: oscars, truths, and fictitions
Post by: Jeremy Blackman on April 11, 2003, 02:01:25 PM
I found out that the guy who made that website (the one that "dispels" Moore's facts) is a lawyer with the NRA.

:roll:
Title: michael moore: oscars, truths, and fictitions
Post by: Pastor Parsley on April 11, 2003, 02:49:41 PM
Quote from: Jeremy BlackmanI found out that the guy who made that website (the one that "dispels" Moore's facts) is a lawyer with the NRA.

:roll:

Bingo!
Title: michael moore: oscars, truths, and fictitions
Post by: MacGuffin on April 16, 2003, 12:12:50 PM
Moore still ashamed of Bush  

Source: Los Angeles Times:

Filmmaker Michael Moore, who slammed President Bush and the U.S.-led war in Iraq during his Oscar acceptance speech, continued his criticism before a university crowd in Bush's home state.

Moore said this week that the president's approval ratings are high because the American people rally around their leader after a tragedy, and Bush "is the one occupying the federal land at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave."

Moore said the United States is at war with Iraq because of the former Texas governor's need to keep the public's eye off his domestic failures as president.

"It's not about the weapons of mass destruction; it's about the weapons of mass distraction," he told students and guests at the University of Texas.
Title: michael moore: oscars, truths, and fictitions
Post by: Xixax on August 09, 2003, 11:23:07 AM
Another nice one about that big piece of shit, Michael Moore:

http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110003807
Title: michael moore: oscars, truths, and fictitions
Post by: mutinyco on August 09, 2003, 12:56:02 PM
Like him or not, we NEED him right now.
Title: michael moore: oscars, truths, and fictitions
Post by: Gamblour. on August 14, 2003, 04:46:06 PM
Quote from: XIXAXthat big piece of shit, Michael Moore

You get a standing ovation (or boos, depending on where you're at in the audience (haha, that was a mockery of Moore, okay I'm done.)), on my part.

Like my friends have said, how can this guy complain about the indulgences of America, when he's clearly indulged a little too much (aka, he's a fat little fucker)? Extremists can kiss my ass, on both sides. We don't need fascists or communists. Go neutralists.
Title: michael moore: oscars, truths, and fictitions
Post by: NEON MERCURY on August 29, 2003, 01:00:11 PM
Quote from: mutinycoLike him or not, we NEED him right now.

....to leave our country!!!!!!!

i cannot stand this guy .. total idiot for attacking our president like that in front of our nation and all of the soldiers watching the telecast abroad who give their life for our country andf fight oppressive regimes to keep our  country safe.. THINK ABOUT IT !!!!! if you are a soldier thats the last thing you want to hear is someone criticizing the presidents actions on this matter.....i was surprised that even liberal hollywood started to boo him ...i canot stand it that people criticize Bush for liberating a country and making the world safer for ALL THE WORLD!!!!!!  what can you say negative about this ....???..NOTHING really!  //michael moore abusues the right of freedom of speech , a right that was won for us b/c  of war....


to all our armed forces : :yabbse-thumbup:

to President Bush and his administration: :yabbse-thumbup:

to michael moore: :yabbse-thumbdown:

...just gettin gthis off my chest i know it's been awhile
Title: michael moore: oscars, truths, and fictitions
Post by: jokerspath on August 29, 2003, 01:11:00 PM
Neon Mercury: Don't be naive.  Bush has made nothing safer.  This country is too quiet.  Michael Moore's actions, though at times they may be misguided or left to an extreme, are still an error in the right direction.  If you're not angry, if you're not seething with rage at the state of politics and its control on the media than you need to look a little harder, listen a bit more intently.

aw
Title: michael moore: oscars, truths, and fictitions
Post by: SoNowThen on August 29, 2003, 01:20:34 PM
Quote from: mutinycoLike him or not, we NEED him right now.

Why?
Title: michael moore: oscars, truths, and fictitions
Post by: NEON MERCURY on August 29, 2003, 01:23:51 PM
Quote from: jokerspathIf you're not angry, if you're not seething with rage at the state of politics and its control on the media than you need to look a little harder, listen a bit more intently.

aw

what  are things i should be looking out for in your opinion?...

i am not that big into politics so i don't follow that perspective of it all...

i am just a proud American who supports his country and values the freedoms that comes w/ living in America..
Title: michael moore: oscars, truths, and fictitions
Post by: Vile5 on August 29, 2003, 05:43:03 PM
Quote from: NEON MERCURYi cannot stand this guy .. total idiot for attacking our president like that in front of our nation and all of the soldiers watching the telecast abroad who give their life for our country andf fight oppressive regimes to keep our  country safe.. THINK ABOUT IT !!!!! if you are a soldier thats the last thing you want to hear is someone criticizing the presidents actions on this matter.....i was surprised that even liberal hollywood started to boo him ...i canot stand it that people criticize Bush for liberating a country and making the world safer for ALL THE WORLD!!!!!!  what can you say negative about this ....???..NOTHING really!  //michael moore abusues the right of freedom of speech , a right that was won for us b/c  of war....


to all our armed forces : :yabbse-thumbup:

to President Bush and his administration: :yabbse-thumbup:

to michael moore: :yabbse-thumbdown:

...just gettin gthis off my chest i know it's been awhile

how old are you???
Title: michael moore: oscars, truths, and fictitions
Post by: NEON MERCURY on August 30, 2003, 10:02:49 PM
..lol......why ?.  do you think iam some 5 yr old experiencing my first 4th of july, playing w/fireworks  and feeling overly partiotic?...lol...



::wipes eyebrows and has a serious smirk:: or ...do i sound like i know politics...and care....



explain..why you ask this .....
Title: michael moore: oscars, truths, and fictitions
Post by: RegularKarate on August 30, 2003, 10:44:10 PM
Quote from: NEON MERCURY.i canot stand it that people criticize Bush for liberating a country and making the world safer for ALL THE WORLD!!!!!!  what can you say negative about this ....???..NOTHING really!  //michael moore abusues the right of freedom of speech , a right that was won for us b/c  of war....


to President Bush and his administration: :yabbse-thumbup:

to michael moore: :yabbse-thumbdown:

Quote from: NEON MERCURY
i am not that big into politics ...

i am just a proud American who supports his country and values the freedoms that comes w/ living in America..

you probably vote, too
Title: michael moore: oscars, truths, and fictitions
Post by: NEON MERCURY on August 30, 2003, 10:47:20 PM
Quote from: RegularKarate

you probably vote, too

.... :oops: i havn't in  a while..It's been a few elections since.....
Title: michael moore: oscars, truths, and fictitions
Post by: Jeremy Blackman on August 30, 2003, 10:55:33 PM
Quote from: NEON MERCURYmichael moore abusues the right of freedom of speech , a right that was won for us b/c  of war....

(and is now being taken from us b/c of war....)

This is one of the saddest things I've heard in a while. I don't really mean that condescendingly, I mean that it really makes me sad. It's sad that people don't understand freedom of speech. They don't understand that every movement that has made this country better was done through dissent. Presidents rarely lead this country into progress.

Quote from: NEON MERCURYtotal idiot for attacking our president like that in front of our nation and all of the soldiers watching the telecast abroad who give their life for our country

I wouldn't have had it any other way. He didn't attack the soldiers, did he? Isn't it possible to attack Bush without attacking his soldiers? Isn't it possible to attack a corrupt corporation without attacking its employees? You would have a better case if you called him reckless rather than idiotic (although I would say "brave"). Is a dissenter an idiot just because they dissent?


Quote from: NEON MERCURYwho give their life for our country andf fight oppressive regimes to keep our  country safe.. THINK ABOUT IT !!!!!

That's regurgitation. Can you justify Bush's wars in your own words?


Quote from: NEON MERCURY.i canot stand it that people criticize Bush for liberating a country and making the world safer for ALL THE WORLD!!!!!!  what can you say negative about this ....???..NOTHING really!

Except that it has cost 7,000 civillian deaths and 71 billion dollars. Except that violence rages on day after day in a guerilla war. Except that most Iraqis don't have water or electricty, and haven't since the "end" of the war. Except that the world is not safer, with reports of large upsurges in the size of terrorist groups. Except that, with the festering humanitarian disaster in Iraq, local terrorist groups will inevitably grow (with the help of ethnic tension), fighting against American forces and whatever administration they eventually install. Except that the reason for going to war (WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION) has all but been completely disproven.

Quote from: NEON MERCURYi am not that big into politics so i don't follow that perspective of it all...

i am just a proud American who supports his country and values the freedoms that comes w/ living in America..

Please, for the sake of this country, pay more attention to what's going on.
Title: michael moore: oscars, truths, and fictitions
Post by: NEON MERCURY on August 30, 2003, 11:18:23 PM
The first response you made about MM/freedom of speech i feeel that  you make some valid points...


The second respone about MM and his jibberish and the soldiers ..was about this mindset::..let's say you are a soldier and happened to watch the telecast and then you hear  Michae Moore criticize the president which is something DURING THE TIME OR WAR  a soldier does not need to hear...i myself if i was asoldier wouldn't want to hear that garbage i'm over here fighting for the US and this is the praise/animosity/thanks/"words of encouragement" i get ...from who!??......someone like michael moore..WTF....??..it was not right IMO..if you are gonna say stuff like this keep it out of something thats seen all over the world like the Acad. awrds.(the soldiers need to hear words of encouragement not negativity)....I mean come, on EVEN LIBERAL HOLLYWOOD BOOED HIM...what MM said was not what the soldiers needed to hear..and whatever backlash he gets from that jabber was/is well deserved...and that is how i thought he attacked the soldiers...

The third response: in my own words..I BELIEVE THIS WAR WAS STARTRED TO RID THE WORLD OR TERROR/IST/ISM...TO MAKE THE 'WORLD A BETTER PLACE FOR ALL''..(cliched, but it's what i believe in my own words)..

The forth response ...you have opened my eyes to some of the things that  i was not aware of ..but i can only say that this wasn't gona be easy and hope for a swift recovery..(for something like this their are going to be negatives)

For the fifth response ...your right i should i am just responding to "what i know"....
Title: michael moore: oscars, truths, and fictitions
Post by: Vile5 on September 01, 2003, 01:56:14 PM
Quote from: NEON MERCURY
Quote from: RegularKarate

you probably vote, too

.... :oops: i havn't in  a while..It's been a few elections since.....

now i get it, i'm sure you're so proud of your country and that's great! but just being careful when you listen to politicians, ok? because they almost never and i mean never say the true...just don't trust them, ok?
Title: michael moore: oscars, truths, and fictitions
Post by: Cecil on September 01, 2003, 02:39:31 PM
Quote from: Vile5just don't trust them, ok?

exactly. trust no one
Title: michael moore: oscars, truths, and fictitions
Post by: Jeremy Blackman on September 01, 2003, 03:02:35 PM
Quote from: Vile5now i get it, i'm sure you're so proud of your country and that's great! but just being careful when you listen to politicians, ok?

That's an important point, because when those two things are combined the whole thing gets perverted. Politicians and patriotism is not a good combination.
Title: michael moore: oscars, truths, and fictitions
Post by: jokerspath on September 04, 2003, 10:33:54 AM
Quote from: Jeremy Blackman
Quote from: Vile5now i get it, i'm sure you're so proud of your country and that's great! but just being careful when you listen to politicians, ok?

That's an important point, because when those two things are combined the whole thing gets perverted. Politicians and patriotism is not a good combination.

JB: As well as making some really great points in your last two posts, you also have a terrific avatar.  Good times...

aw
Title: michael moore: oscars, truths, and fictitions
Post by: Jeremy Blackman on September 29, 2003, 01:56:35 PM
Michael Moore responds (http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/wackoattacko/) to claims that Bowling for Columbine (or parts of it) is fake.
Title: michael moore: oscars, truths, and fictitions
Post by: SoNowThen on September 29, 2003, 02:05:19 PM
"just be careful when you listen to politicians" is a good policy, and can also be applied to "just be careful when you listen to documentary filmmakers".

Let's be fair in our mistrust, please.

Now, I've only seen about 10 minutes of this movie (which so disgusted me I had to go away), but did I hear right that Moore claims we don't lock our doors in Canada? Correct me if I'm wrong here, 'cause I don't wanna go off on a rant over this unless it was actually claimed...

Also, the good majority of murders in Edmonton this year and last were caused by young adult gang members who didn't register their guns. Just though I'd point that out about our "safe, sane" country.
Title: michael moore: oscars, truths, and fictitions
Post by: ©brad on September 29, 2003, 02:13:08 PM
Quote from: SoNowThen"just be careful when you listen to politicians" is a good policy, and can also be applied to "just be careful when you listen to documentary filmmakers".

Let's be fair in our mistrust, please.

Now, I've only seen about 10 minutes of this movie (which so disgusted me I had to go away), but did I hear right that Moore claims we don't lock our doors in Canada? Correct me if I'm wrong here, 'cause I don't wanna go off on a rant over this unless it was actually claimed...

Also, the good majority of murders in Edmonton this year and last were caused by young adult gang members who didn't register their guns. Just though I'd point that out about our "safe, sane" country.

look, u need to see the movie. what 10 mins did u see, and why were u so disgusted?
Title: michael moore: oscars, truths, and fictitions
Post by: SoNowThen on September 29, 2003, 02:27:39 PM
The cartoon.
Title: michael moore: oscars, truths, and fictitions
Post by: Jeremy Blackman on September 29, 2003, 04:17:40 PM
Quote from: SoNowThen"just be careful when you listen to politicians" is a good policy, and can also be applied to "just be careful when you listen to documentary filmmakers".

Of course we should be careful when we listen to documentary filmmakers. Which is why I read all the claims that Moore faked parts of BFC. Now, we can take this skepticism further when a documentary filmmaker becomes president.

Quote from: SoNowThenNow, I've only seen about 10 minutes of this movie

Be careful of judging this movie based on one scene. Especially that scene, which is one of the most sensationalized scenes in this movie. You may not be as horrified with the rest of it.

Quote from: SoNowThenbut did I hear right that Moore claims we don't lock our doors in Canada?

In that part of the movie, he's in Toronto, which (as far as I know) is a little different from Edmonton.
Title: michael moore: oscars, truths, and fictitions
Post by: SoNowThen on September 29, 2003, 04:24:49 PM
True enough. I'll probably see it one day, when all this dies down. I was a huge fan of Roger And Me.

But yeah, Edmonton is way safer than Toronto, that was my point. I guess that's what I object to. It's the painting of us here as this safe, wonderful haven. But we're just as fucked up as you folks south of the border. We also have lots of good too. Lots of good and lots of bad, but certainly not better.
Title: michael moore: oscars, truths, and fictitions
Post by: godardian on September 29, 2003, 04:31:41 PM
I can't say I was "disgusted" with Moore's film, but I do have to say that SoNowThen's reaction to it is exemplary of why I'm so ambivalent about Moore. I'm torn between wanting the left to have a richly deserved comeback for the spittle-drenched likes of Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter, those exploitative, lying hypocrites, and feeling like it's not so much WHAT Limbaugh and Coulter supposedly believe in (though I'm convinced that this sort of right-winger actually "believes in" nothing but their own celebrity and the easiness of their audience), but HOW they get it across, in that lowest-common-denominator, rabble-rousing way, and Moore's tactics do come too close to that too often for my comfort.

I know Blackman and I have strongly disagreed on this before, and my anti-Moore feeling isn't quite so strong now, as we descend deeper and deeper into Bush/Cheney/Ashcroft's nightmare Depression, but... I nominate Al Franken way before Michael Moore to be Spokesperson for the Rational Majority. I guess Moore means well, and I definitely think he's right in his beliefs and what he's trying to say, but I just found parts of that movie too manipulative.
Title: michael moore: oscars, truths, and fictitions
Post by: Sleuth on September 29, 2003, 04:32:58 PM
Franken 8)
Title: michael moore: oscars, truths, and fictitions
Post by: Jeremy Blackman on September 29, 2003, 04:40:00 PM
Quote from: SoNowThenEdmonton is way safer than Toronto

Wait a second. This article (http://www.statcan.ca/Daily/English/020717/d020717b.htm) (first one I found.. I'm sure there are others) shows that there's more violent crime in Edmonton (bottom of the page). Just for some perspective, Edmonton's population is 650,000 and Toronto's is 3,840,000.

Quote from: godardianI nominate Al Franken way before Michael Moore to be Spokesperson for the Rational Majority

Except for his opinions on racial profiling. He might have changed that by now, though... I hope he has. I like Franken outside of that, but he's a little too moderate, and I'm not sure that he's taken as seriously as Michael Moore is.
Title: michael moore: oscars, truths, and fictitions
Post by: godardian on September 29, 2003, 04:45:02 PM
Quote from: Jeremy Blackman
Quote from: SoNowThenEdmonton is way safer than Toronto

Wait a second. This article (http://www.statcan.ca/Daily/English/020717/d020717b.htm) (first one I found.. I'm sure there are others) shows that there's more violent crime in Edmonton (bottom of the page). Just for some perspective, Edmonton's population is 650,000 and Toronto's is 3,840,000.

Quote from: godardianI nominate Al Franken way before Michael Moore to be Spokesperson for the Rational Majority

Except for his opinions on racial profiling. He might have changed that by now, though... I hope he has. I like Franken outside of that, but he's a little too moderate, and I'm not sure that he's taken as seriously as Michael Moore is.

Franken is a bit too moderate for me, also, but I like his articulateness. It's too bad if he was pro-racial-profiling... I hadn't heard that. I've just read his books and seen him speak.

He hasn't made a movie (please, everyone, forget Stuart Saves His Family!), but he HAS sold scads of books! I agree he's obviously more a comedian than Moore is, but I think of Moore as something of a comedian, too... certainly, neither of them are what you'd consider really original political thinkers. They're activists, not intellectuals, but that's what they do best, and that's what's needed right now. Theory and idealism are luxuries best indulged in less urgent times than these...
Title: michael moore: oscars, truths, and fictitions
Post by: Jeremy Blackman on September 29, 2003, 04:50:40 PM
Quote from: godardianIt's too bad if he was pro-racial-profiling... I hadn't heard that. I've just read his books and seen him speak.

I heard that in an interview a few months after Sept 11. He said that profiling Arabs was probably the best thing, and that he knew some Arab-Americans who also agreed with it (he sincerely wasn't joking, I swear). I'd like to know if his opinion has changed.
Title: michael moore: oscars, truths, and fictitions
Post by: Jeremy Blackman on October 07, 2003, 06:56:52 PM
(https://xixax.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fak.buy.com%2Fdb_assets%2Flarge_images%2F255%2F33832255.jpg&hash=0145249e9fcd9103326cf3929246b9db32f6db13)

I've read the first chapter.

I'll just say one thing... People are not going to take this lightly. And they shouldn't.

It's currently #1 at Amazon.
Title: michael moore: oscars, truths, and fictitions
Post by: godardian on October 07, 2003, 06:59:23 PM
Quote from: Jeremy Blackman(https://xixax.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fak.buy.com%2Fdb_assets%2Flarge_images%2F255%2F33832255.jpg&hash=0145249e9fcd9103326cf3929246b9db32f6db13)

I've read the first chapter.

I'll just say one thing... People are not going to take this lightly. And they shouldn't.

It's currently #1 at Amazon.

You see him last night on "The Daily Show"? If only he could say "inhumane" instead of "inhuman." That sort of just-this-short-of-articulation is why he fails to completely win me over.

I'm still interested in reading his books, though. I haven't read one yet.
Title: michael moore: oscars, truths, and fictitions
Post by: NEON MERCURY on October 07, 2003, 07:04:20 PM
"Dude where's my country"?

-michael moore



"dude  if you don't like your country you can always LEAVE..
 :roll: "

-the rest of this rational country.

his ACT is getting tired.....
HE IS A FAD NOW NOTHOING MORE..AND ALL FADS GO OUT OF STYLE
Title: michael moore: oscars, truths, and fictitions
Post by: Gloria on October 07, 2003, 07:09:42 PM
I don't know why his opinion matters so much (and can fill up books). Then again, I don't know why people concern themselves with any opinion but their own. I think that if people think and educate themselves on issues and politics, they will figure out their own answers without having to listen or read about someone elses.
Title: michael moore: oscars, truths, and fictitions
Post by: godardian on October 07, 2003, 07:12:49 PM
Quote from: NEON MERCURY"Dude where's my country"?

-michael moore



"dude  if you don't like your country you can always LEAVE..
 :roll: "

-the rest of this rational country.

his ACT is getting tired.....
HE IS A FAD NOW NOTHOING MORE..AND ALL FADS GO OUT OF STYLE

Implying that dissenters should leave is a few steps too close to fascism, isn't it? PARTICULARLY in this great country, I would think.

He's saying, however crudely, that Bush has usurped good things like patriotic feeling, open debate, and public trust and perverted them. There's Bush's tiny-minded country, and then there's the country as it could be: Prosperous, peaceful, open, honest, and reasonable.

People who question Bush aren't going to leave this country to the wolves- we're going to question our flawed, wrongheaded leaders and try to change things. There is no way to argue that that is not PRECISELY "The American Way."
Title: michael moore: oscars, truths, and fictitions
Post by: godardian on October 07, 2003, 07:19:18 PM
Quote from: GloriaI don't know why his opinion matters so much (and can fill up books). Then again, I don't know why people concern themselves with any opinion but their own. I think that if people think and educate themselves on issues and politics, they will figure out their own answers without having to listen or read about someone elses.

That seems rational, but forming our opinions usually involves listening to a broad spectrum of other people's opinions and choosing which seems most correct and reasonable to us.

In other words, it's naive to think that opinions can be formed in a perfectly objective vacuum. "Educating yourself" is nothing but processing other people's ideas and opinions- versions of and spins on the facts- and public opinion, particularly, is notoriously mutable and easily affected by multifarious factors.
Title: michael moore: oscars, truths, and fictitions
Post by: NEON MERCURY on October 07, 2003, 07:25:43 PM
Quote from: godardian
Quote from: NEON MERCURY"Dude where's my country"?

-michael moore



"dude  if you don't like your country you can always LEAVE..
 :roll: "

-the rest of this rational country.

his ACT is getting tired.....
HE IS A FAD NOW NOTHOING MORE..AND ALL FADS GO OUT OF STYLE

Implying that dissenters should leave is a few steps too close to fascism, isn't it? PARTICULARLY in this great country, I would think.

He's saying, however crudely, that Bush has usurped good things like patriotic feeling, open debate, and public trust and perverted them. There's Bush's tiny-minded country, and then there's the country as it could be: Prosperous, peaceful, open, honest, and reasonable.

People who question Bush aren't going to leave this country to the wolves- we're going to question our flawed, wrongheaded leaders and try to change things. There is no way to argue that that is not PRECISELY "The American Way."


I ..mean that I am gewtting tired of him bashing our country and the country that gives him the free sppeeech to ramble on the eway he does..  IF IT IS OUR COUNTRY/SOCIETY/NATION/ETC.  is SO BAD off or(insert all of Michael moore's negatives about the US and Governemnt here___________________________-, ________blah, blah, _____--)..then he is not forced to "deal" w/ all the "hardships" going on in the US..

as for unsurped Patriotic feelings et al..I HAVE NEVER FELT MORE PATRIOTIC THAN AFTER 9-11,  WE AS A COUNTRY BANDED TOGETHER AND FOUGHT TRHOUGH THIS AND PUNISHED PEOPLE RESPONSIBLE FOR THIS (i know not everyone was caught but give us some time)..as for open debate  ..Michael more is living proof that you can say whatever rediculuos thing and the amendment for free speech is still intact and ..i think public trust is IMO fine..........
Title: michael moore: oscars, truths, and fictitions
Post by: Gloria on October 07, 2003, 07:29:56 PM
Quote from: godardian
Quote from: GloriaI don't know why his opinion matters so much (and can fill up books). Then again, I don't know why people concern themselves with any opinion but their own. I think that if people think and educate themselves on issues and politics, they will figure out their own answers without having to listen or read about someone elses.

That seems rational, but forming our opinions usually involves listening to a broad spectrum of other people's opinions and choosing which seems most correct and reasonable to us.

In other words, it's naive to think that opinions can be formed in a perfectly objective vacuum. "Educating yourself" is nothing but processing other people's ideas and opinions- versions of and spins on the facts- and public opinion, particularly, is notoriously mutable and easily affected by multifarious factors.

I do think that debates of qualified and educated people are a great way to see all sides of an opinion, but I don't understand the facination with one person's point of view.  We should see all sides of an arguement in order to educate ourselves, but we should not depend on someone to varify our views.
Title: michael moore: oscars, truths, and fictitions
Post by: godardian on October 07, 2003, 07:30:25 PM
Quote from: NEON MERCURY
Quote from: godardian
Quote from: NEON MERCURY"Dude where's my country"?

-michael moore



"dude  if you don't like your country you can always LEAVE..
 :roll: "

-the rest of this rational country.

his ACT is getting tired.....
HE IS A FAD NOW NOTHOING MORE..AND ALL FADS GO OUT OF STYLE

Implying that dissenters should leave is a few steps too close to fascism, isn't it? PARTICULARLY in this great country, I would think.

He's saying, however crudely, that Bush has usurped good things like patriotic feeling, open debate, and public trust and perverted them. There's Bush's tiny-minded country, and then there's the country as it could be: Prosperous, peaceful, open, honest, and reasonable.

People who question Bush aren't going to leave this country to the wolves- we're going to question our flawed, wrongheaded leaders and try to change things. There is no way to argue that that is not PRECISELY "The American Way."


I ..mean that I am gewtting tired of him bashing our country and the country that gives him the free sppeeech to ramble on the eway he does..  IF IT IS OUR COUNTRY/SOCIETY/NATION/ETC.  is SO BAD off or(insert all of Michael moore's negatives about the US and Governemnt here___________________________-, ________blah, blah, _____--)..then he is not forced to "deal" w/ all the "hardships" going on in the US..

as for unsurped Patriotic feelings et al..I HAVE NEVER FELT MORE PATRIOTIC THAN AFTER 9-11,  WE AS A COUNTRY BANDED TOGETHER AND FOUGHT TRHOUGH THIS AND PUNISHED PEOPLE RESPONSIBLE FOR THIS (i know not everyone was caught but give us some time)..as for open debate  ..Michael more is living proof that you can say whatever rediculuos thing and the amendment for free speech is still intact and ..i think public trust is IMO fine..........

I have never heard Michael Moore bash this country; I think it would only seem that he was if you're incapable of separating this country and what it stands for from its leaders and their interests. I would laugh in the face of anyone who claimed the current administration is acting in the best interests of the average American.  

George Bush has, in Al Franken's words, "squandered" public trust by ruthlessly EXPLOITING post 9-11 patriotism for his own short-sighted and destructive political goals, which have consisted of bait-and-switch LYING on a fairly relentless basis.

"It's one thing to lie about your sex life while you're in office... it's another to lie about something that's going to put the lives of American troops on the line." - Al Franken
Title: michael moore: oscars, truths, and fictitions
Post by: NEON MERCURY on October 07, 2003, 07:35:34 PM
You got . a point there I admit...

but i just see things a little differently..

but whoever runs the country it works.. out for the most part
democrat/republican/liberal/whatever..its almost the same
Title: michael moore: oscars, truths, and fictitions
Post by: godardian on October 07, 2003, 07:38:29 PM
Quote from: NEON MERCURYYou got . a point there I admit...

but i just see things a little differently..

but whoever runs the country it works.. out for the most part
democrat/republican/liberal/whatever..its almost the same

Well... for WHOM it works out is really the question, but I agree that it's set up so that things can get pretty bad without destroying the nation.
Title: michael moore: oscars, truths, and fictitions
Post by: Jeremy Blackman on October 07, 2003, 09:53:31 PM
Quote from: GloriaI don't know why his opinion matters so much (and can fill up books). Then again, I don't know why people concern themselves with any opinion but their own. I think that if people think and educate themselves on issues and politics, they will figure out their own answers without having to listen or read about someone elses.

You might be surprised to find out how journalistic the book is (the part that I've read, at least). He proves things in the first chapter that you can have two responses to... it's okay or it's not okay. He has the "it's not okay" reponse. Nonetheless, he shows exactly what he's drawing on. It's amazing how quickly people forget that Moore's books are filled with facts, and direct references to news reports that have been swept under the rug.

Quote from: NEON MERCURYHE IS A FAD NOW NOTHOING MORE..AND ALL FADS GO OUT OF STYLE

A fad that's been around for 20 years?

Quote from: NEON MERCURYdude  if you don't like your country you can always LEAVE..

That's a good formula for killing democracy. If every dissenter left the country, we would have a nation of apathetic idiots.
Title: michael moore: oscars, truths, and fictitions
Post by: snaporaz on October 08, 2003, 04:42:44 AM
in my opinion, i think michael moore is a completely useless fat man.

do i bear a fucking hatred for his views? no, not really. i do wish he would get down to some serious, incriminating sources instead of the usual "the november eighth edition of the new york times".

sure, i agree that i can't really trust my government on serious issues - issues that affect the entire frickin' planet - but i seriously don't wanna believe the shit moore spews out just because he says it's true either.

i've read a bunch of crap, saying how moore and his crew edited the film bowling for columbine in a completely subjective way, falsifying truths and whatnot.

but christ, i really don't know what to believe, and alot of times, i find myself refusing to listen to anybody - or at least anybody trying to sound like they're the fucking morality police.

but back to the man - this degenerate, greedy, embellished, pretentious asshole piece of shit - this ugly fuck that won a prestigious award and was embraced with a standing ovation by his peers, [which i'm not saying he deserved or did not deserve] used his time of thanks to embarrass his fellow documentarians, and to basically piss and moan and stir shit just for the sake of it, instead of being a graceful man with class and taking his award with modesty and sincere gratitude.

as someone i know likes to say...fuck that limousine liberal.

7 January 2003
American satirist Michael Moore has stormed out of Britain after a bust up with the London theatre hosting his one-man show. The Bowling For Columbine moviemaker performed Michael Moore - Live! to packed audiences for two months before Christmas at The Roundhouse in Camden, North London. But on the penultimate night he reportedly flew into a rage, verbally attacked everyone associated with the theatre because he thought he wasn't being paid enough. During the performance he complained he was making just $750 a night. A member of the stage crew says, "He completely lost the plot. He stormed around all day screaming at everyone, even the £5-an-hour bar staff, telling them how we were all conmen and useless. Then he went on stage and did it in public." Staff retaliated by refusing to work the following night, which led to the show being held up for an hour. Eventually he made a groveling apology to staff and the angry audience finally took to their seats. A source reports that Moore then packed his bags and flew to New York the next day without saying thank you or goodbye to anyone.
Title: michael moore: oscars, truths, and fictitions
Post by: Cecil on October 08, 2003, 07:00:04 AM
Quote from: snaporazi've read a bunch of crap, saying how moore and his crew edited the film bowling for columbine in a completely subjective way, falsifying truths and whatnot.

you mean america ISNT that gun crazy? oh thank god. i was beginning to suspect this myself after seeing all those cuts between each word during the interviews. did you know that he actually got the gun a few days later? and that the kids didnt even bowl that day? i mean, cmon... the whole point of the movie doesnt make any sense now. they didnt even bowl that day!

dont you love your guns, god and government? fuck yeah
Title: michael moore: oscars, truths, and fictitions
Post by: snaporaz on October 08, 2003, 08:00:43 AM
Quote from: Cecil
Quote from: snaporazi've read a bunch of crap, saying how moore and his crew edited the film bowling for columbine in a completely subjective way, falsifying truths and whatnot.

you mean america ISNT that gun crazy? oh thank god. i was beginning to suspect this myself after seeing all those cuts between each word during the interviews. did you know that he actually got the gun a few days later? and that the kids didnt even bowl that day? i mean, cmon... the whole point of the movie doesnt make any sense now. they didnt even bowl that day!

dont you love your guns, god and government? fuck yeah

next time you feel like sucking michael moore's cock, try not to be so fucking immature and sarcastic about it.

you want to talk about our different thoughts on the film, talk it like an adult.

also, in case you're fucking blind, i was just mentioning stuff i have read, unlike you who will believe anything this useless fuck says just because he makes a movie.

must i say again?: i do not disagree, nor do i disbelieve what this fat man says, nor vice-versa. for the blind and incompetent, i simply see this queer's methods and behaviours as pathetic and juvenile.

idiot.
Title: michael moore: oscars, truths, and fictitions
Post by: godardian on October 08, 2003, 09:43:57 AM
Quote from: snaporaz

next time you feel like sucking michael moore's cock, try not to be so fucking immature and sarcastic about it.

you want to talk about our different thoughts on the film, talk it like an adult.

must i say again?: i do not disagree, nor do i disbelieve what this fat man says, nor vice-versa. for the blind and incompetent, i simply see this queer's methods and behaviours as pathetic and juvenile.

idiot.

I think it's pathetic and juvenile to sort of quasi-homophobically throw around the idea of cocksucking and the word "queer" as insults (you presumably mean "fat" as some sort of incrimination, too), and it degenerates the tone of this discussion much further than anything anyone else has said.

You truly and thoroughly failed to "talk it like an adult." You talked it like a drunken, incoherent meathead!
Title: michael moore: oscars, truths, and fictitions
Post by: ©brad on October 08, 2003, 01:02:38 PM
Quote from: godardian
I think it's pathetic and juvenile to sort of quasi-homophobically throw around the idea of cocksucking and the word "queer" as insults (you presumably mean "fat" as some sort of incrimination, too), and it degenerates the tone of this discussion much further than anything anyone else has said.

You truly and thoroughly failed to "talk it like an adult." You talked it like a drunken, incoherent meathead!

agreed. snaporaz, think about what you say before you hit that submit button. either that or don't hit it at all.
Title: michael moore: oscars, truths, and fictitions
Post by: Fernando on October 08, 2003, 01:10:11 PM
FWIW, Moore will be on Conan today.
Title: michael moore: oscars, truths, and fictitions
Post by: Cecil on October 08, 2003, 07:02:42 PM
snaporaz, i agree that moore, the individual, can be an annoying jerk (its called the human race, ive somewhat gotten used to it). but i find that the  complaints made against his films or "method of filmmaking" completely ridiculous. ive stated why somewhere in the previous pages
Title: michael moore: oscars, truths, and fictitions
Post by: Gamblour. on October 08, 2003, 07:20:52 PM
Alright, I hate Michael Moore. But he can make a damn good convincing piece of cinema. I've only seen Bowling for Columbine, and I liked it when I first saw it. But when you step back, there are very big problems with what he did. The section of the film in which he compares the amount of murders (I'm unsure if they were only gun murders or not) to other nations is complete bullshit, simply because he uses the actual statistic, not the gun murder rate per however many people in the country.

Secondly, he blames the media for manipulating the public by using fear, which is almost exactly what he's doing to persuade the audience that we have a gun problem. He seems to have a double standard. One more thing, what kind of psycho/sociological reasoning did he use to come up with the shitty argument that the production of nukes at Lockheed could somehow make a kid think that it's ok to massacre other kids because of it? It sounded like a lame excuse to make the Lockheed representative start stuttering, and then the audience thinks, "Look at that, he must be lying/incorrect. Kick his ass, Michael."

Now, I'm not disagreeing with him, there is a gun problem, but the film is pretty shaky in that way that it tries to use humor or 'powerful' moments to counterbalance, I guess, "clever" editing or the way he blends his images (the Heston interview comes to mind with the picture of the girl, I recall a website that proved he had to have used another camera a different time, and then later pieced it together to make it seem real-time) so that people don't get suspicious. There are many right-wing idiots out there, but I'll be damned if Moore doesn't even it out on the left side. He should have included his film in his rant of "fictious" things at the Oscars.
Title: michael moore: oscars, truths, and fictitions
Post by: Reinhold on October 08, 2003, 09:41:15 PM
anybody catch Michael Moore on the daily show last night? He said he was the first american elected after the voting age was changed to 18 in the 70's. he also said that he beat a recall election. it was one of the first interviews that, while he still came off as pompous and generally useless, he appeared human.  he's not the boogie man that a large part of the right wing seems to want to make him, but i still personally have no use for him.

i also have to say, to keep my conscience clean, that i haven't seen most of his major work. i'm working on it, but i'm trying not to spend any money at all on the effort. i did, however, encounter Stupid White Men on the double-solid yellow line on a normally busy road while on a 3AM walk on a cold, rainy night last year or the year before. i didn't pick it up because there was something on it that i really didn't want to touch.
Title: michael moore: oscars, truths, and fictitions
Post by: ᾦɐļᵲʊʂ on October 08, 2003, 09:47:36 PM
Quote from: Reinhold Messneri didn't pick it up because there was something on it that i really didn't want to touch.

You didn't want to touch the gushing amount of liberal that spewed out of his book or was it covered in mud?
Title: michael moore: oscars, truths, and fictitions
Post by: Reinhold on October 08, 2003, 09:49:58 PM
not sure what it was, but it was shinier than the water in the street light... and a car was coming. i just left it there without too much inspection.
Title: michael moore: oscars, truths, and fictitions
Post by: Pedro on October 09, 2003, 12:20:50 AM
Quote from: GamblorAlright, I hate Michael Moore. But he can make a damn good convincing piece of cinema. I've only seen Bowling for Columbine, and I liked it when I first saw it. But when you step back, there are very big problems with what he did. The section of the film in which he compares the amount of murders (I'm unsure if they were only gun murders or not) to other nations is complete bullshit, simply because he uses the actual statistic, not the gun murder rate per however many people in the country.

Secondly, he blames the media for manipulating the public by using fear, which is almost exactly what he's doing to persuade the audience that we have a gun problem. He seems to have a double standard. One more thing, what kind of psycho/sociological reasoning did he use to come up with the shitty argument that the production of nukes at Lockheed could somehow make a kid think that it's ok to massacre other kids because of it? It sounded like a lame excuse to make the Lockheed representative start stuttering, and then the audience thinks, "Look at that, he must be lying/incorrect. Kick his ass, Michael."

Now, I'm not disagreeing with him, there is a gun problem, but the film is pretty shaky in that way that it tries to use humor or 'powerful' moments to counterbalance, I guess, "clever" editing or the way he blends his images (the Heston interview comes to mind with the picture of the girl, I recall a website that proved he had to have used another camera a different time, and then later pieced it together to make it seem real-time) so that people don't get suspicious. There are many right-wing idiots out there, but I'll be damned if Moore doesn't even it out on the left side. He should have included his film in his rant of "fictious" things at the Oscars.
I'm gonna let Jeremy handle most of this...but i wouldn't really trust the websites like moorelies.com or something run by an NRA lawyer as a source of information about his films...
Title: michael moore: oscars, truths, and fictitions
Post by: snaporaz on October 09, 2003, 01:52:15 AM
Quote from: Cecilsnaporaz, i agree that moore, the individual, can be an annoying jerk (its called the human race, ive somewhat gotten used to it). but i find that the  complaints made against his films or "method of filmmaking" completely ridiculous. ive stated why somewhere in the previous pages

i never said i thought his filmmaking sucked.

and not to sound self-serving, i think i articulated myself well enough to say the occassional homophobic or fat remark without invalidating my argument. fucking cheap shots, i swear.

also, i think that the "sucking dick" remark was an obvious metaphor for the better-known metaphor - "kissing ass".

if you guys want to argue, let's do it, and on good topics, not nitpicking several individual words out of a reply.

i'll ask you guys...what makes you think moore has all the right answers? did you ever think about how reliable his sources are, or do you just believe it because he says it's true?

i'd rather see people doing their own research than just listening to this assclown. surely it can't be too hard, considering all his sources are publickly available, aren't they?
Title: michael moore: oscars, truths, and fictitions
Post by: Jeremy Blackman on October 09, 2003, 08:19:17 AM
Quote from: snaporazi'll ask you guys...what makes you think moore has all the right answers? did you ever think about how reliable his sources are, or do you just believe it because he says it's true?

i'd rather see people doing their own research than just listening to this assclown. surely it can't be too hard, considering all his sources are publickly available, aren't they?

Have you read his books? He backs up every single thing he says with a news source that you can personally check if you want to.
Title: michael moore: oscars, truths, and fictitions
Post by: Cecil on October 09, 2003, 09:24:10 AM
exactly. you dont trust what he says, but you trust what people say against him. have you checked those sources out?
Title: michael moore: oscars, truths, and fictitions
Post by: snaporaz on October 09, 2003, 09:57:30 AM
Quote from: Jeremy BlackmanHave you read his books? He backs up every single thing he says with a news source that you can personally check if you want to.

i've already brought up that point. a fucking news article isn't solid proof of anything.

Quote from: Cecilexactly. you dont trust what he says, but you trust what people say against him. have you checked those sources out?

christ, man. how many times do i have to fucking tell you?! i just mentioned something i read, not something i'm saying to be true. i "trust" his sources just as much as donald fucking rumsfeld's or colin powell's. are you deaf? for fuck sake, man. try listening to me: i refuse to automcatically believe these "facts" just because someone says they're true, be it michael moore or my government. even if moore has a "source", i'm still skeptical. i don't even fucking believe the media when it comes to bizarre world happenings like 9/11 and whatnot. fucking colin powell presented satellite images of wmd sites in iraq to the U.N., and apparently that isn't true. if i can't believe satellite images from the united states government intelligence, i sure as hell ain't going to swallow just anything a news article will say.

this whole thing everyone has against me and my thoughts on michael moore...you people still think i'm saying he's full of shit. i never said that. i was simply commenting on his entire persona, and that i'm not very impressed by his so-called journalism; he just takes whatever articles and statistics that serve him well and declares them fact.

bottom line, he's as good - and just as bad - as what he reads.

you guys should watch this movie.

(https://xixax.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimages.amazon.com%2Fimages%2FP%2FB00005Y726.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg&hash=3decb9d66d12599b36cfedaace1c5b9e8fc911a5)

...someone who can own a debate intellectually, instead of being a self-righteous, sarcastic wise-ass.
Title: michael moore: oscars, truths, and fictitions
Post by: Jeremy Blackman on October 09, 2003, 02:09:58 PM
Quote from: snaporaz
Quote from: Jeremy BlackmanHave you read his books? He backs up every single thing he says with a news source that you can personally check if you want to.

i've already brought up that point. a fucking news article isn't solid proof of anything.

So now you're criticising him for backing up his assertions with news sources? What else would you like him to use? The word of God?

Quote from: snaporazchrist, man. how many times do i have to fucking tell you?! i just mentioned something i read, not something i'm saying to be true. i "trust" his sources just as much as donald fucking rumsfeld's or colin powell's.

There's a huge difference between the two, and it's pretty easy to check the validity of sources. Rumsfeld and Powell used outdated intelligence that was disproven by the latest news, not to mention that doctoral thesis, pre-Gulf War I, which Tony Blair used (and which was later regretted by its author). Any person with reasonable effort can actually distinguish between government propaganda and legitimate news sources (especially when it's that clear). You can't just give up on learning the truth. It may take some effort to find, but it's out there.

Quote from: GamblorThe section of the film in which he compares the amount of murders (I'm unsure if they were only gun murders or not) to other nations is complete bullshit, simply because he uses the actual statistic, not the gun murder rate per however many people in the country.

I think any reasonable person knows that the United States has a larger population than Canada. And some of the countries he lists have populations greater than or equal to ours.

Quote from: GamblorSecondly, he blames the media for manipulating the public by using fear, which is almost exactly what he's doing to persuade the audience that we have a gun problem.

Is it really fear, though? That's the way we think. If someone is warning us about something, it's fear, because we're used to being afraid. You can't really say that he's telling you to fear fear, because he would be solving his own problem. There's a difference between manipulating people into being afraid and warning them about manipulation. Fear is more of an oppressive force, manipulating people into surrendering to the status quo, and what Moore is doing, warning us, is more of an inspiring call to action. For example, I don't think people would say that a fire alarm is an oppressive force. Convincing someone that they're going to burn alive in their sleep is an oppressive force.

Quote from: GamblorOne more thing, what kind of psycho/sociological reasoning did he use to come up with the shitty argument that the production of nukes at Lockheed could somehow make a kid think that it's ok to massacre other kids because of it?

Simple. The culture of violence is everywhere. We have a proud history of violence and we bring it home to our neighborhoods every day. People begin to accept it. Of course there's not a direct connection... it's a deeper psychological thing embedded in society.
Title: michael moore: oscars, truths, and fictitions
Post by: Gamblour. on October 09, 2003, 03:09:11 PM
Quote from: Jeremy Blackman
Quote from: GamblorThe section of the film in which he compares the amount of murders (I'm unsure if they were only gun murders or not) to other nations is complete bullshit, simply because he uses the actual statistic, not the gun murder rate per however many people in the country.

I think any reasonable person knows that the United States has a larger population than Canada. And some of the countries he lists have populations greater than or equal to ours.

You're right that people should know our population is bigger than Canada, but what's your point? Moore emphasizes those numbers and presents no rates or actual population size so that the audience may determine anything on their own. It was obvious to me that he's attempting to pass those numbers off as comparable figures.

The only countries I really remember were Germany, England, and Canada. Those all have significantly smaller populations than the US, which did he mention that have a larger pop.?

Quote from: Jeremy Blackman
Quote from: GamblorSecondly, he blames the media for manipulating the public by using fear, which is almost exactly what he's doing to persuade the audience that we have a gun problem.

Is it really fear, though? That's the way we think. If someone is warning us about something, it's fear, because we're used to being afraid. You can't really say that he's telling you to fear fear, because he would be solving his own problem. There's a difference between manipulating people into being afraid and warning them about manipulation. Fear is more of an oppressive force, manipulating people into surrendering to the status quo, and what Moore is doing, warning us, is more of an inspiring call to action. For example, I don't think people would say that a fire alarm is an oppressive force. Convincing someone that they're going to burn alive in their sleep is an oppressive force.
That's not what I was saying. I meant that Moore uses fear to manipulate people into being of afraid of guns and gun owners, which is very clear in the case of Heston, who becomes a sort of icon of what to fear. Like I said, Moore has a point that the media uses fear, and all statistics show that we have a high murder rate and gun ownership, but Moore is obviously trying to imbue a sense of fear about gun ownership, which isn't the issue at all. Look at England, guns are illegal, but rates of murder have stayed the same. Like my criminal justice teacher said, give people a toothpick and they'll find a way to kill someone.

Quote from: Jeremy Blackman
Quote from: GamblorOne more thing, what kind of psycho/sociological reasoning did he use to come up with the shitty argument that the production of nukes at Lockheed could somehow make a kid think that it's ok to massacre other kids because of it?

Simple. The culture of violence is everywhere. We have a proud history of violence and we bring it home to our neighborhoods every day. People begin to accept it. Of course there's not a direct connection... it's a deeper psychological thing embedded in society.

Right. Let's look at civilization for the past, say, 2000 years. Historical trends have shown that the murder rates have decreased significantly as we become more organized and civilized. Look cross-nationally. Japan has some of the most violent movies and video games out there (not to say that this causes violence, bear with me), but these are things I would say are a large part of their culture, and they have the lowest murder rates of most countries. If we're talking about an embedding and proud history of violence in our society, it's unfair to say that America is the only country like this. Germany is (mostly) responsible for the largest genocide in history, yet their murder rate isn't astronomical. So, that argument is completely moot.
Title: michael moore: oscars, truths, and fictitions
Post by: Jeremy Blackman on October 09, 2003, 05:51:55 PM
Quote from: GamblorThe only countries I really remember were Germany, England, and Canada. Those all have significantly smaller populations than the US, which did he mention that have a larger pop.?

Sorry. I thought he mentioned China or something (which has a population of 1.2 billion). He mentioned Germany, France, Canada, UK, Australia, and Japan. Still the comparison is pretty significant, and it's a valid point, and not manipulative to anyone who knows that the United States is bigger than these countries.

For example:

Japan: 39 with a population of 127 million.
United States: 11,127 with a population of 281 million.

Quote from: GamblorHeston, who becomes a sort of icon of what to fear.

Not really. To me, he became an icon of someone who fears. I had hoped I resolved the paradox of fear earlier. But if someone wants to fear a person who fears (because they fear), I guess they're free to do that.

Quote from: GamblorLike my criminal justice teacher said, give people a toothpick and they'll find a way to kill someone.

Like Michael Moore said, guns don't kill people... Americans do.

Quote from: GamblorRight. Let's look at civilization for the past, say, 2000 years. Historical trends have shown that the murder rates have decreased significantly as we become more organized and civilized. Look cross-nationally. Japan has some of the most violent movies and video games out there (not to say that this causes violence, bear with me), but these are things I would say are a large part of their culture, and they have the lowest murder rates of most countries. If we're talking about an embedding and proud history of violence in our society, it's unfair to say that America is the only country like this. Germany is (mostly) responsible for the largest genocide in history, yet their murder rate isn't astronomical. So, that argument is completely moot.

That's exactly what Michael Moore says in the movie. That's the question he asks. The point is that there must be something unique to our culture because of our disporportionate murder rate, and we have to find out what it is. Something unique has developed in the undercurrent of our society that hasn't developed in Germany or Japan.
Title: michael moore: oscars, truths, and fictitions
Post by: Cecil on October 09, 2003, 10:19:10 PM
Quote from: snaporazchrist, man. how many times do i have to fucking tell you?! are you deaf? for fuck sake, man. try listening to me

well... soooorry. its just that you shit on moore calling him every name in the book, while the government gets a calm "i cant really trust my government on serious issues" statement. with moore, you can check his sources. you can do the research yourself and make your own mind up. these anti-moore websites dont say shit except for "moore is lying, what hes saying isnt true. aaaaa, nice try fat ass" without any proof whatsoever or sources of their own. moore is stating his opinions and views, hes only introducing you to these issues. you can read all about it for yourself. bowling for columbine isnt the only thing out there about school shootings and guns in america. its only ONE film.
Title: michael moore: oscars, truths, and fictitions
Post by: SoNowThen on October 09, 2003, 10:25:36 PM
Quote from: Jeremy BlackmanThat's exactly what Michael Moore says in the movie. That's the question he asks. The point is that there must be something unique to our culture because of our disporportionate murder rate, and we have to find out what it is. Something unique has developed in the undercurrent of our society that hasn't developed in Germany or Japan.

Yes, they're called Michael Moore films...
Title: michael moore: oscars, truths, and fictitions
Post by: snaporaz on October 10, 2003, 02:58:47 AM
Quote from: Cecil
Quote from: snaporazchrist, man. how many times do i have to fucking tell you?! are you deaf? for fuck sake, man. try listening to me
you can do the research yourself and make your own mind up. these anti-moore websites dont say shit except for "moore is lying, what hes saying isnt true. aaaaa, nice try fat ass" without any proof whatsoever or sources of their own.

that's exactly my point, butt-nugget.

these so-called "anti-michael moore" websites, to me, hold just as much legitimacy as the sources moore brings up. and yes, they do have supposedly reliable facts and sources. but still, i don't really want to believe anybody, on either side. i would rather see things for myself.

granted, like i am saying, the real truth should be the shit you find on your own, sans news articles. and yes, i have not looked for the truth. but does that make me stupid just because i don't absolutely believe what moore says? yeah, i agree with him on the general things, like how bush is using 9/11 as a justification on the war on iraq. i think it's pretty obvious. i even heard some jackass soldier stationed in the middle east saying "if we're not here doing our job, then we can just wait for another 9/11". 9/11 doesn't have anything to do with the war in iraq. but this is what the majority of american voters want to believe; that our soldiers are fighting and dying for our country in iraq, which is complete bullshit, and michael moore will agree with me on that. i just think that his sources are only as credible as, say, anything you can read on the internet. he doesn't seem to do any real journalism on his own - he just repeats it.

this reminds me when i was about fourteen. i was completely obsessed with the assassination of john kennedy. i bought a book that focused on photographic evidence.

real evidence like that, be it photographic or otherwise incriminating, can be believable. reading the news just doesn't do it for me.
Title: michael moore: oscars, truths, and fictitions
Post by: Jeremy Blackman on October 10, 2003, 09:25:42 AM
Quote from: snaporazreal evidence like that, be it photographic or otherwise incriminating, can be believable. reading the news just doesn't do it for me.

I said it before, and I'll say it again:

Quote from: Jeremy BlackmanSo now you're criticising him for backing up his assertions with news sources? What else would you like him to use? The word of God?

You want Michael Moore to sneak into the White House and photograph Bush and a Saudi official having a secret meeting? You want him to go to Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and Iran? He would undoubtedly have less credibility if he was his own source. No one would believe him. Doesn't that make sense?

And, I mean... calling someone a "butt-nugget"? Seriously.
Title: michael moore: oscars, truths, and fictitions
Post by: godardian on October 10, 2003, 10:10:13 AM
Quote from: Jeremy Blackman

And, I mean... calling someone a "butt-nugget"? Seriously.

Yes... it's much more difficult to take someone seriously in a political or cultural argument when their main discursive frame of reference seems to be Beavis and Butt-Head.
Title: michael moore: oscars, truths, and fictitions
Post by: snaporaz on October 11, 2003, 02:57:03 AM
Quote from: Jeremy Blackman
Quote from: snaporazreal evidence like that, be it photographic or otherwise incriminating, can be believable. reading the news just doesn't do it for me.

I said it before, and I'll say it again:

Quote from: Jeremy BlackmanSo now you're criticising him for backing up his assertions with news sources? What else would you like him to use? The word of God?

You want Michael Moore to sneak into the White House and photograph Bush and a Saudi official having a secret meeting? You want him to go to Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and Iran? He would undoubtedly have less credibility if he was his own source. No one would believe him. Doesn't that make sense?

And, I mean... calling someone a "butt-nugget"? Seriously.

yeah. i think i would like moore to get information that way. apparently, that's the way he's basing his sources on.

my point is: i want to know how the sources get their scoops.

and yeah...go ahead and invalidate my argument with my use of slang, even though the tone of my argument is straight-foward.

i'm trying to make this a light-hearted conversation. fucking hell.

go watch the thin blue line.
Title: michael moore: oscars, truths, and fictitions
Post by: godardian on October 15, 2003, 12:59:25 PM
Barely related trivia: My partner is a Butler alumni.

Oct. 15, 2003  |  INDIANAPOLIS (AP) --

Filmmaker Michael Moore told students at Butler University that last week's California recall election offered hope for democracy -- and for defeating President Bush next year.

"Anytime you have an angry mob of voters, that can't be a bad thing," the Oscar-winning maker of "Bowling for Columbine" told about 2,100 people during a speech Monday.

The rotund, scruffy-bearded activist from Flint, Mich., who has repeatedly criticized the war in Iraq, said he hoped voters would be angry enough to deny Bush a second term.

Arnold Schwarzenegger was elected governor in California last week as Gov. Gray Davis became the second in the nation ever to be recalled.

Moore was visiting the Indianapolis college one week after his latest book, "Dude, Where's My Country?" went on sale.

His speech was sponsored by Butler's Visiting Writers Series, Hoosiers Concerned About Gun Violence and Plowshares Collaborative, a peace studies program at three Indiana colleges.
Title: michael moore: oscars, truths, and fictitions
Post by: samuelclemens on October 16, 2003, 06:11:24 AM
i really like michael moore.  so what if his documentary is partly fiction and partly propoganda?  if the government can get away with such things, why not a person like mr. moore?  and who cares if he seems to be anti-american?  why so much pride in you guys?  it's a country....no more no less.  mark twain was a bit on the anti-american side and he is beloved by the masses now.  i don't really care.  i'm all anti everything really.  i don't dislike or like any country more than any other.  it's all the same.  politics is such a boring topic, it bears no weight on any of us really.  and no system of government will really solve anything.....ugh....
Title: michael moore: oscars, truths, and fictitions
Post by: Squawks on October 19, 2003, 05:11:44 PM
I'd say the fundamental difference between Canada and the United States is that we have a hell of a lot more (percentage wise) of our population living in urban areas. And I'd venture to guess that Japan, Germany and England do as well. Perhaps we're more used to living among strangers? But you do have to second guess everything you hear, especially on the topics dealt with in Bowling for Columbine. Living in Canada, I can tell you that everyone I know locks their doors when they go out, unlike the bizarre examples of Canadians in Bowling for Columbine. And there was a school shooting in Taber, Alberta 8 days after Columbine. Of course, only one student was killed (another injured). I guess the main thing to think about is what's not being said.
Title: michael moore: oscars, truths, and fictitions
Post by: Cecil on October 19, 2003, 06:25:42 PM
they dont lock their doors when theyre still in the house, im sure they lock them when they go out
Title: michael moore: oscars, truths, and fictitions
Post by: Jeremy Blackman on October 22, 2003, 03:53:33 PM
from The Denver Post (http://www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,1413,36~53~1712261,00.html):

Harris, Klebold video to be released

The Jefferson County Sheriff's Office will publicly release Wednesday a video tape showing Columbine killers Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold target practicing with handguns, rifles and a shotgun.

The video, shot in the isolated Rampart Range area of Douglas County, was recorded on March 6, 1999, less than two months before the April 20, 1999, rampage at Columbine High School.

An illegal sawed-off shotgun shown and fired on the tape was used by Harris to kill four and wound seven at the high school.

Harris and Klebold killed 12 students and one teacher before taking their own lives.

Mark Manes and Philip Duran, who were convicted of selling weapons to the killers, were at the taped target practice. Shooters on the video tape used trees and bowling pins as targets.
Title: michael moore: oscars, truths, and fictitions
Post by: MacGuffin on October 28, 2003, 09:15:20 AM
From Los Angeles Times:

Biting the hand that flies him
Michael Moore often lashes out at corporate America, but that's no reason to turn down Time Warner's jet for his new book tour.

(https://xixax.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimages.calendarlive.com%2Fmedia%2Fphoto%2F2003-10%2F9971787.jpg&hash=a881821ffa54f5e5fbbf3a567cbf173f92f320a1)

GRASS VALLEY, Calif. — Michael Moore sat in the back seat of a black sedan moving silently along a dark, two-lane highway toward a private airfield ("a marijuana airstrip," Moore had joked) in the Sierra Nevada foothills.

A Time Warner jet awaited him. Moore, the controversial filmmaker behind the documentaries "Roger & Me" and the Academy Award-winning "Bowling for Columbine," was with a bodyguard, a driver and a reporter; an SUV containing the rest of his party followed. They included Moore's sister, Anne, who is a criminal defense attorney, two assistants and another bodyguard. Two other figures in the SUV — Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein — were lifelike but in fact the spawn of Photoshop and cardboard.

Moore is on a lecture/book tour for his latest satirical polemic, "Dude, Where's My Country?" He is barnstorming the country, trashing Republicans and corporate America and what he sees as President Bush's trumped-up, hypocritical war in Iraq.

In getting these messages out, Moore, the Flint, Mich., native and self-styled voice of the average worker, is also availing himself of corporate America's toys — SUVs and a private jet, provided by his publisher, Warner Books.

"I would never pay for this, let me just tell you that right now," Moore had said, earlier in the day, en route from Occidental College to Van Nuys Airport. Of the bodyguards, from Gavin de Becker & Associates, Moore said: "I'm grateful for the security because I want to get through this [tour] OK, and I know the country I live in."

For everything else he is, Moore is a guy who can move books: "Stupid White Men" which came out last year, has sold more than 4 million copies, and "Dude, Where's My Country?" on Sunday hit No. 1 on the Los Angeles Times and New York Times bestseller lists. So if a major publisher was going to supply him with a plane, to sell a book that bashed corporations while it made the corporation money, why not use it?

"Look, it's highly ironic, and the irony is not lost on me," Moore said. He continued to play around with the idea. Reporters in the past have confronted him about seeming contradictions between his public image and private life.

It's boilerplate by now, Moore's reaction indicates. He lives on the Upper West Side of Manhattan but wears Kmart-bought jeans.

"Don't take offense at this," Moore said. "When I've been interviewed in the past, it's rare that anyone from the working class would ask, 'How does the plane, the Town Car affect you?' The working class just thinks it's cool."

Hitting the campuses

Moore, 49, is reviled in some corners as a liberal propagandist, someone who cheats the truth in his movies. On this tour, which started Oct. 9, he is speaking mostly on college campuses, where his films are revered by 20-year-old cinéastes and his role as an oversized slacker-subversive plays well.

But the audience for "Dude, Where's My Country?" is broader, as it is for other anti-Bush administration harangues that are bestsellers alongside titles by conservative commentators Bill O'Reilly and Laura Ingraham. They include Al Franken's "Lies (and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them)" and "Bushwhacked" by Molly Ivins and Lou Dubose.

"It reflects the fact that the progressive, populist end of the spectrum has dusted itself off and realized that it really wants to be heard," Peter Osnos, chief executive and publisher at the independent house PublicAffairs Press, said of the mood being tapped by Moore, Franken, et al. Jillian Manus, a Republican and president of the literary agency Manus & Associates, says the controversial 2000 presidential election stoked the public's hunger for political discourse: "They want confirmation of their own beliefs, or they want criticism."

Having voted for Ralph Nader in 1996 and 2000, Moore says he hasn't decided whom he will support for president.

"Don't you think that I'd better serve the public by being on the outside and commenting on what's going on and trying to push the debate and try to bring up the issues and trying to keep them honest?" In New York, Moore was inside enough to meet with retired Gen. Wesley K. Clark at Rolling Stone magazine founder Jann Wenner's apartment, and with Vermont Gov. Howard Dean at an event thrown by actor Paul Newman and International Creative Management agent Boaty Boatwright.

The image of Moore accepted into polite society clashes with the on-screen provocateur lumbering into the lobby of a glass office in jeans and baseball cap, asking for a sit-down with a CEO. In his guerrilla-style work — which in addition to his films include the 1990s TV series "TV Nation" and "The Awful Truth" — he has taken victims of throat cancer to a tobacco company's headquarters and had them sing Christmas carols through their artificial voice boxes. In "Bowling for Columbine," he took two victims of the Columbine High School shooting to Kmart headquarters to return the bullets still lodged in their bodies.

Now, as the 2004 presidential election nears, Moore is using his book and his lectures and his next film, "Fahrenheit 9/11," to try to hound President Bush out of office. In a way, it's a campaign for our times: A leftist attacking big-media influences, using big media to convey his message. In the end, both the leftist and big media profit.

Like his previous films, "Fahrenheit 9/11," which Moore hopes to complete by the spring, is a documentary, but a documentary in the sense that it documents Moore's worldview. In the case of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, that worldview, essentially, goes as follows: The Bush administration cynically used the attacks to jam through a conservative agenda and sell a false war, based on false fears of an imminent terrorist threat, all of which left a host of more pertinent questions, eventually raised by the press, unanswered by the administration. "Is it true that the Bin Ladens have had business relations with you and your family off and on for the past 25 years?" is one of the "7 Questions for George of Arabia" Moore asks in his book.

Figuratively, anyway, Bush is Moore's new Roger Smith, the General Motors chairman and corporate villain he stalked in "Roger & Me."

"Thank you for letting me finish my Oscar speech," is something Moore has been saying to audience after audience on his lecture tour. The line gets a big laugh and Moore, make no mistake, finishes that speech. Back in March, of course, there were scattered boos and chagrined people in Vera Wang when Moore, holding his Oscar onstage at the Kodak Theatre, had his microphone cut as he shouted: "We live in the time where we have fictitious election results that elects a fictitious president. We live in a time where we have a man sending us to war for fictitious reasons. Whether it's the fiction of duct tape or fiction of orange alerts, we are against this war, Mr. Bush. Shame on you, Mr. Bush, shame on you."

In the months after the Oscars, Moore says, right-wing talk show hosts gave out his home number, and he couldn't walk the streets of Manhattan or use the subways without being confronted physically.

But now, he feels, given mounting U.S. troop casualties, and the fact that weapons of mass destruction have not been found in Hussein's arsenal, and charges that the president used faulty intelligence to push for war, things have changed.

"People now know we were lied to," Moore said. "What I said on that stage was the truth."

Support and scolding

On the jet, heading north to Grass Valley, Moore was eating a chef's salad brought him by a flight attendant. He had done more than three hours at Occidental, speaking and signing books, and would do another four hours that night at the Grass Valley War Memorial Auditorium. Anne Moore sat across the aisle. She is handling some of his press on this tour, handling her older brother. It seems important to have someone around Moore who agrees with his cause but has the power to scold him. Moore can't really be controlled; at times he's more like a giant adolescent, passionate and disarming but also motor-mouthed and oblivious to schedules.

"I got this great interview," Moore said, referring to a former FBI official he'd interviewed about the Al Qaeda terrorist cell for "Fahrenheit 9/11." "They don't let just anybody into their little club.... You make it into Al Qaeda, you get health care, paid vacations. Serious. Hilarious stuff. He was one of the point men on the whole Al Qaeda business," Moore said of the FBI guy.

The plane landed, took off again to avoid some pheasants, then landed again. In the SUV heading into Grass Valley, Moore said: "They can spin the one bad apple story all they want, but the truth, and the videotape that I have in my possession, which I can't speak too much of, shows that Bin Laden family members were supporting [Osama] right up until 9/11. They had contact with him right up until 9/11. The same ones benefiting from family relationships with Bush."

The event in Grass Valley, an old Gold Rush town, drew aging hippies, families, students from nearby colleges. Nevada County is majority Republican, Schwarzenegger country, but this was a liberal pocket. Moore entertained them, venting about weapons of mass destruction (the only ones Hussein had were the ones for which we have the receipts); Democratic presidential candidates ("I'm in the anyone-but-Lieberman camp") and, of course, conservatives (why are these angry white men so angry?).

Moore signed books for two hours, by which time it was midnight. The traveling Michael Moore Show was due back at the airfield, for a short flight to San Francisco. He will be at Cal State University San Marcos on Tuesday and at UCLA's Royce Hall on Nov. 22 and 23.

In the sedan back to the jet, Moore yawned. But he seemed satisfied. And he kept talking. He talked about his flaws ("I'm way too indecisive. I procrastinate for the longest time") and "Fahrenheit 9/11" ("It's not a conspiracy theory movie, it's investigative journalism in the vein of I.F. Stone") and about the amazing footage falling into his hands ("Word is out on the Internet that I'm making this film").

He talked about the crowd tonight — "schoolteachers and social workers and nurses. Boomers who haven't given up on their ideals, they've just gone out and worked."

Michael Moore's America. Or something like it.
Title: michael moore: oscars, truths, and fictitions
Post by: NEON MERCURY on October 28, 2003, 10:56:14 AM
.."The Traveling Michael Moore Show"....i like that ..he is an act .nothing real.. all for show

..i do admit as a documentarian he is brilliant.
.as an American he is an embarrasment.....
Title: michael moore: oscars, truths, and fictitions
Post by: Jeremy Blackman on October 28, 2003, 11:08:50 AM
Quote from: NEON MERCURY.as an American he is an embarrasment.....

More like an awkward merging of two worlds, at this point at least. His image is a little strange right now. He doesn't seem entirely comfortable.
Title: michael moore: oscars, truths, and fictitions
Post by: NEON MERCURY on October 28, 2003, 11:13:44 AM
Quote from: Jeremy Blackman
Quote from: NEON MERCURY.as an American he is an embarrasment.....

More like an awkward merging of two worlds, at this point at least. His image is a little strange right now. He doesn't seem entirely comfortable.

..agree
Title: michael moore: oscars, truths, and fictitions
Post by: godardian on October 29, 2003, 09:48:52 AM
:(



Oct. 29, 2003  |  DETROIT (AP) --

James Nichols, the brother of Oklahoma City bombing conspirator Terry Nichols, says he was tricked into appearing in the documentary "Bowling for Columbine," according to a federal lawsuit filed against filmmaker Michael Moore.

Nichols also alleges in the lawsuit, filed Monday in Detroit, that Moore libeled him by linking him to the terrorist act.

Nichols accuses Moore of libel, defamation of character, invasion of privacy and intentional infliction of emotional distress. His lawyer is asking for a jury trial and damages ranging from $10 million to $20 million on each of nine counts, the Detroit Free Press reported.

A message seeking comment was left Tuesday with Moore's publicist.

In the film, Moore asks Nichols for an interview and steers the subject from the Oklahoma City bombing to gun ownership. Nichols tells Moore he has a gun under his pillow, and Moore asks Nichols to show him.

In the lawsuit, Nichols, who lives in Decker, said Moore misled him about the purpose of the interview.

"Bowling for Columbine" won the feature-length documentary Academy Award earlier this year.
Title: michael moore: oscars, truths, and fictitions
Post by: Cecil on October 29, 2003, 12:07:00 PM
damn that moore. strikes again.
Title: michael moore: oscars, truths, and fictitions
Post by: classical gas on October 30, 2003, 04:13:20 AM
Quote from: NEON MERCURY..
.as an American he is an embarrasment.....

why do you think that?  just curious...i think it's the opposite.  He's maybe more American than anyone.  does anyone like Bill Maher, btw??
Title: michael moore: oscars, truths, and fictitions
Post by: classical gas on October 30, 2003, 04:15:35 AM
Quote from: NEON MERCURY..he is an act .nothing real.. all for show

i remember him saying the exact same thing, almost, about the people running our country....thought it to be funny and true.
Title: michael moore: oscars, truths, and fictitions
Post by: Gamblour. on October 30, 2003, 07:53:13 AM
Quote from: classical gas
Quote from: NEON MERCURY..
.as an American he is an embarrasment.....

why do you think that?  just curious...i think it's the opposite.  He's maybe more American than anyone.  does anyone like Bill Maher, btw??

I love Bill Maher, except for his infatuation with PETA. They actually recommended eating roadkill as a proper way to eat meat. (I can get the link if you want it)

I'm glad Nichols is suing Moore. Not that I like this guy or anything (or think he isn't anything other than the craziest idiot out there) but what Nichols alleges sure seems right to me. Maybe they could revoke Moore's oscar because of this (please!). www.bowlingfortruth.com
Title: michael moore: oscars, truths, and fictitions
Post by: Cecil on October 30, 2003, 09:24:02 AM
but.... ah nevermind
Title: michael moore: oscars, truths, and fictitions
Post by: Gold Trumpet on October 30, 2003, 09:48:28 AM
Quote from: classical gasdoes anyone like Bill Maher, btw??

Love love love love Bill Maher. His new show is the best on tv right now. And I like Moore, but I love Maher. Moore reminds me of Limbaugh in a lot of ways in that he will always be for one side and the loudest person for that side. I think that is why a lot of people are turned off by him. Maher mainly is for one side, but indepedent enough to go to the other side on issues and take boos from his own crowd so, like he says, he is keeping it "real".

~rougerum
Title: michael moore: oscars, truths, and fictitions
Post by: Jeremy Blackman on October 30, 2003, 10:46:04 AM
This lawsuit has no merit. Nichols is going to have to explain himself. It's an interview... it can't really be slander unless Moore adds slanderous voiceover. Nichols can't slander himself and blame it on Moore. And.. it's going to be hard to prove that he was "tricked" into being interviewed or "tricked" into saying certain things, especially because the questions Moore asks are pretty obvious. It's not like he gave an interview about organic farming.

Quote from: Gamblor the Manwhorewww.bowlingfortruth.com

That site is ridiculous. It's subjective... for example... "Marilyn Manson is not smart and harmless... he's a psycho killer!" Any "facts" this site reveals are hardly earth-shattering:

True, the state of North Dakota did issue a permit to McWilliams to carry a concealed weapon. But, he is not totally blind. He is able to distinguish day from night, light from dark.

I laughed when I read that.
Title: michael moore: oscars, truths, and fictitions
Post by: Gamblour. on October 30, 2003, 01:42:15 PM
Quote from: Jeremy BlackmanThis lawsuit has no merit. Nichols is going to have to explain himself. It's an interview... it can't really be slander unless Moore adds slanderous voiceover. Nichols can't slander himself and blame it on Moore. And.. it's going to be hard to prove that he was "tricked" into being interviewed or "tricked" into saying certain things, especially because the questions Moore asks are pretty obvious. It's not like he gave an interview about organic farming.

Quote from: Gamblor the Manwhorewww.bowlingfortruth.com

That site is ridiculous. It's subjective... for example... "Marilyn Manson is not smart and harmless... he's a psycho killer!" Any "facts" this site reveals are hardly earth-shattering:

True, the state of North Dakota did issue a permit to McWilliams to carry a concealed weapon. But, he is not totally blind. He is able to distinguish day from night, light from dark.

I laughed when I read that.

In the case of the lawsuit, it would be very interesting to see how they far it goes, if they rule that a film's tone can imply an attempt to slander.

As for the site, I haven't actually read it much of it, it did seem a little fanatical (except the About Us section). Which ever side of Bowling for Columbine anyone is on, it's all a little ridiculous. Moore's a little crazy, Heston's a little crazy. I probably sound like I'm changing my mind on what I said, but I'm a little crazy, I flop back and forth between liberal and conservative views daily. Some days I feel hardcore liberal, others I feel compelled to defend conservatives, but I always feel dirty afterwards.
Title: michael moore: oscars, truths, and fictitions
Post by: Jeremy Blackman on October 30, 2003, 02:44:07 PM
Quote from: Gamblor the ManwhoreMoore's a little crazy, Heston's a little crazy.

That says it all. You have to be crazy on a crazy battlefield.
Title: michael moore: oscars, truths, and fictitions
Post by: godardian on October 30, 2003, 04:04:52 PM
Quote from: Gamblor the Manwhore
Quote from: classical gas
Quote from: NEON MERCURY..
.as an American he is an embarrasment.....

why do you think that?  just curious...i think it's the opposite.  He's maybe more American than anyone.  does anyone like Bill Maher, btw??

I love Bill Maher, except for his infatuation with PETA. They actually recommended eating roadkill as a proper way to eat meat. (I can get the link if you want it)

I'm glad Nichols is suing Moore. Not that I like this guy or anything (or think he isn't anything other than the craziest idiot out there) but what Nichols alleges sure seems right to me. Maybe they could revoke Moore's oscar because of this (please!). www.bowlingfortruth.com

Funny, I think Bill Maher's PETA association is the most interesting thing about him. I tentatively like him... he's way too smug and self-impressed at times, though, in a way Michael Moore just can't compete with. And his show is way overrated for what it is. The concept makes for very intriguing television maybe 1/3 of the time. The rest of the time, it's just know-nothings and attention-grabbers loudly screaming for the most airtime, which I can't watch.

I like Al Franken and Joe Conason better than either of those two.
Title: michael moore: oscars, truths, and fictitions
Post by: Jeremy Blackman on October 30, 2003, 04:41:59 PM
I agree with the criticisms of Bill Maher (except I think PETA is picked on too much). I would gladly defend his controversial comments (that supposedly got his show cancelled)... but his personality is grating. His outspoken-ness may be similar to Moore's, but their personalities are opposites.
Title: michael moore: oscars, truths, and fictitions
Post by: godardian on October 30, 2003, 04:47:26 PM
Quote from: Jeremy BlackmanI think PETA is picked on too much.

Absolutely. I mean, I do disagree with some of their priorities, but I think the main reason people don't like them is that they perform the valuable service of pointing out some pretty gross hypocrisies in the way we humans go about things.
Title: michael moore: oscars, truths, and fictitions
Post by: classical gas on November 01, 2003, 12:21:24 AM
hmm...i'm actually unaware of Maher's views on PETA, or i just can't recall...could someone explain please.....
Title: michael moore: oscars, truths, and fictitions
Post by: Pedro on April 28, 2004, 09:17:22 PM
what happened with farenheit 9/11
Title: michael moore: oscars, truths, and fictitions
Post by: MacGuffin on April 28, 2004, 09:19:21 PM
Quote from: Pedrowhat happened with farenheit 9/11

http://xixax.com/viewtopic.php?t=980&start=60
Title: michael moore: oscars, truths, and fictitions
Post by: Stefen on April 28, 2004, 09:19:43 PM
Yeha im wondering the same thing. He was supposed to have it out by the election so he still has time. But does anyone have any details?

Edit: nevermind.
Title: michael moore: oscars, truths, and fictitions
Post by: Mavis on April 28, 2004, 09:23:44 PM
fahrenheit 9/11. i read that book. it was good. i heard he's adapting it so that its more political now with war stuff. i hope it still stays true to the novel or else critics or going to HATE it, imo.
Title: michael moore: oscars, truths, and fictitions
Post by: MacGuffin on January 31, 2005, 04:48:02 PM
BYU Student Makes Documentary on Moore

A former Brigham Young University film student has maxed out his credit cards to make a $10,000 documentary about "Fahrenheit 9/11" director Michael Moore's controversial visit to Utah Valley State College.

"This Divided State" premieres Thursday at UVSC's Ragan Theater. Steven Greenstreet, who cut the 102-minute production from 66 hours of interview and event footage, said he's trying to find a distributor.

He's entering the documentary in a dozen film festivals and plans are in the works with the Center for American Progress to fund a national college tour, the 25-year-old filmmaker said.

Greenstreet had been working on a documentary about political divisions when he heard in September that Moore was planning to come to UVSC.

"I immediately just grabbed my camera and ran to the school and filmed the whole day," he said. "The halls were packed with students ... it was just a huge crush of political debate and an overwhelming sense of activity and electricity."

Moore arrived Oct. 20, applauding student leaders who took heat for inviting him and paying the $40,000 speaker fee with student money. Nine days earlier the college had invited Sean Hannity, a conservative Fox News commentator, to balance Moore's criticism of President Bush and the war in Iraq.

As with the visit, Greenstreet's film is stirring some emotions.

Kay Anderson, a real estate broker who offered student leaders $25,000 to rescind Moore's invitation, has written a letter to Greenstreet's lawyer asking that his interviews not appear in the film.

"We were cautious about who we granted interviews to," Anderson said. "We didn't want to end up in a Michael Moore-type documentary."

Said Greenstreet: "Without the personal interview that I did with him, he doesn't get a chance to explain his motivation. I think my main purpose for doing the interview was to humanize him and show him as just another member of the community who wants to do what's right."
Title: michael moore: oscars, truths, and fictitions
Post by: Ravi on February 02, 2005, 08:58:22 PM
The Mormons are taking over the film industry!
Title: michael moore: oscars, truths, and fictitions
Post by: SiliasRuby on February 02, 2005, 10:14:08 PM
Quote from: RaviThe Mormons are taking over the film industry!
Yeah, The writers and director of Napoleon Dynamite are Mormon and I guess now this guy.
Title: michael moore: oscars, truths, and fictitions
Post by: pete on February 02, 2005, 11:53:27 PM
mormons vs. scientologists.
Title: Re: michael moore: oscars, truths, and fictitions
Post by: Gold Trumpet on August 02, 2009, 05:04:28 AM
I found this in the conservative Detroit paper (at least they have a good sports section).

Michael Moore's ready to bust loose from documentaries
Tom Long / Detroit News Film Critic
Traverse City -- Michael Moore, by far the most successful documentary filmmaker of all time, is thinking of getting out of the business of making documentaries.


Not right away. He's got the sure-to-be-controversial "Capitalism: A Love Story" due in theaters Oct. 2. But after that?

"While I've been making this film I've been thinking that maybe this will be my last documentary," says the Flint native, who filmed and starred in such hits as "Sicko," "Bowling for Columbine" and "Fahrenheit 9/11." "Or maybe for a while."

Those three films make up half of the top six documentaries ever made, according to boxofficemojo.com. "Fahrenheit 9/11" is handily the highest earning documentary ever, with a domestic take of $119 million.

But now Moore's looking to branch out as a director.

"I have been working on two screenplays over the last couple of years," he says. "One's a comedy, one's a mystery, and I really want to do this."

Moore, 55, is sitting in the driver's seat of a dark green van, parked behind the Old Opera House here on Friday afternoon. He's both frazzled and buzzed.

He's just come from a public panel discussion with the Michigan Film Office Advisory Council, a cheerleading affair for the Michigan Film Incentives law and for the growth of the local film industry.

The discussion was part of the Traverse City Film Festival, celebrating its fifth year, which Moore created and which seems to grow exponentially each summer.

His wife, Kathy, is on the phone. He has to meet her for lunch and arrange some movie tickets for her folks.

Oh, and he has to deliver his first cut of "Capitalism: A Love Story" to the studio later that night.

If the movie does turn out to be his last documentary, some fans are sure to be disappointed.

"It would leave us with a big loss if he stopped making documentary films," says Ruth Daniels, vice president for marketing for Detroit-area Emagine theaters, who remembers showing Moore's films dating back to 1989's "Roger & Me."

"His documentaries do make quite a bit of money and he's paved the way for documentary movies to become mainstream," she says. "It will leave a void."

For now, though, Moore is caught up in the enthusiasm of the festival, which ends Sunday.

"This has been the best festival yet, certainly the smoothest run, the largest crowds," Moore says.

At the panel discussion, Moore said the festival had 37 percent more sponsors this year and advance ticket sales were up 25 percent, despite Michigan's economic woes.

Over the past five years, Moore said, the festival has sold a quarter-million movie tickets, and while he's happy the crowds keep coming, he's intent on keeping commercialism to a minimum.

"My goal is to keep it as a festival for movie lovers. The fact that you can park your car and walk to all the venues, it has a real communal feel here," Moore says. "You don't want this to be Park City (home to Utah's far more crowded and industry-oriented Sundance Film Festival)."

Unlike many cultural events, the festival seems to be wholly embraced by the town it's in. Many of the moviegoers are local and more than 1,000 people volunteer at the festival.

Moore is working full time in northern Michigan now, although his perspective certainly hasn't mellowed. In "Capitalism," the director -- who has explored America's health care system, its propensity for gun violence and its journey to war in Iraq -- is taking on nothing less than the American economic system.

"I thought, why don't I just go for it and go right to the source of the problem -- an economic system that is unfair, it's unjust and it's not democratic. And now we've learned it doesn't work," he says.

"This issue informs all my other movies. I started thinking if I can only make one more movie -- I started thinking this of course during the Bush years -- what would that movie be? And this is the movie."

From his first film, 1989's "Roger & Me," in which Moore roasted General Motors, his sense of humor and strong point of view have outraged many critics while drawing huge audiences.

Moore says "objectivity is a nonsensical concept that's really been misused" and that his approach to documentaries is to make sure they're good, informative, entertaining movies first.

"The term documentary got pigeonholed a long time ago, and 20 years ago when I made 'Roger & Me,' I guess my hope was to bust loose through that strict structure and perception of what a documentary should be and allow it to be everything any other work of nonfiction can be," he says. "A nonfiction book can be a book of both fact and opinion, it can be just fact, it can be just opinion."

"Humor is OK in a documentary. Before me, I was told it had to be castor oil. No, you're making a movie; you're making a piece of entertainment. You're asking someone to leave the house on a Friday night to go to a movie."

But time's a-wasting and Moore has to dash off into his busy day. To pick up his wife. Pick up his in-laws. Grab some lunch. And then go finish what may be the last documentary he ever makes.