It’s Monday, I’m cranky, it’s time for a pit thread.
So yesterday I and a pair of my associates were having a late supper at a casual-dining sort of place, and our conversation was meandering, as it is wont to do.
I believe I mentioned Fahrenheit 9/11’s winning of the Palm D’Or in Cannes and how that didn’t really bother me, but the fact the film was classified as a documentary did.
My associates were quite in agreement as to the generally dishonest character of Moore’s filmmaking - as I put it, he ‘assembles grains of truth into a mosaic of fiction.’
I’m of the opinion that he basically makes these pictures simply to be inflammatory so as to line his own pockets while everyone, both pro and con sides of the issue the film claims to address, rushes out to see them.
So why doesn’t someone make a documentary about how he operates? One of my associates counter-suggested a mockumentary, just taking Moore’s own quotes out of context from interviews and assembling them in a blatantly fake fashion to lampoon the man’s own technique, but I’d be more keen on an actual documentary.
So, anyone interested in the idea? Both my associates regarded it as a capital idea, going so far as to suggest sources of filmmaking equipment, but we’d never be able to follow it through all the way.
If it helps, I can offer a title : “A Little Moore to the Left”. See? It’s all clever and witty just like his.
For the record? I’m a left-leaning moderate by nearly all measures.
Well, lots of people SAY he’s making stuff up, but I have yet to see anyone prove it. Not once. Don’t you think all these people would be suing for slander and misrepresentation if they thought they could win? Them’s deep pockets for folks to be dipping into. I just want someone to discredit him if in fact he is as big a bullshitter as everyone says he is.
By the way…I’m waaaay left but strive to be fair. Bring on the proof that he’s a liar.
I am rather partial to http://www.bowlingfortruth.com/, and there was another debunker site mentioned in a recent anti-Moore thread. The issue isn’t him making things up, mostly, it’s out of context quotes, creative chronology rearrangement, and staged or partially staged scenes… which I guess is like making stuff up.
One of my associates recalled a “documentary” of Moore’s about manufacturing in Michigan, or some such, where Moore made a big deal about not being able to get in to see executives when he showed up unannounced with a camera crew in tow. I don’t need a website to tell me that that’s a tactic designed to make the company look uncaring when in fact no company is going to let a scruffy-looking loudmouth with a camera crew come up and talk to the CEO with no notice.
I got the same thing out of that stuff that GorillaMan did. Not very compelling.
As for “Michael Moore Hates America”; I don’t think that “interviewing people who live the American Dream” proves anything, since for every person who does there are 5 or 10 who don’t, not to mention that some people who “live the American Dream” do it off the backs of other people, some who are Americans and some who aren’t.
And that title is just inflammatory and juvenile. Just because I point out the flaws in something, doesn’t mean I hate it.
Editing is a funny word. One can edit for time, to cut something down to its most essential nature. One can edit for coherency, to put scenes in such an order as to make the most sense. One can also edit for disinformation … fashioning a picture of a ‘truth’ that’s really no such thing. According to the above-referenced website, Charlton Heston is painted as an uncaring malicious villain of a man who makes speeches extolling the virtues of gun ownership shortly after gun-based tragedies in the same community… even as one who glorifies gun ownership in that situation… which isn’t the case. There’s also the staged scene with Heston and Moore … Moore takes out some picture of a little girl, pleading with Heston to turn and look on her face, the face of a girl killed by a gun, as Heston coldly walks away… the website suggests that… as the scene is shown from two alternating angles, one just showing Moore holding the picture, the other showing Moore’s back and Heston’s back… that Moore did not in fact bring out the picture in Heston’s presence at all. Interestingly, the site also suggests if both cameras had been shooting that scene at the same time as shown, then one of them would’ve been in the field of view of the other.
What, Roger & Me? I highly recommend picking that title up next time you’re in a rental store. It’s not that Moore tried once to interview Roger Smith, CEO of GM. It’s that he tried about a thousand times. It’s one of my conservative friend’s favorite movies of all time.
Ah, thank you. My friend couldn’t remember the title.
That does improve matters a little that he tried many times… I haven’t seen it, I was going of my friend’s recollection. Still, if I were CEO of a major corporation, and some random wanted an interview, I wouldn’t necessarily be inclined to grant it.
Then again, after reading some of the things on Moore on Bowling for Truth, I wouldn’t be surprised if he showed up unannounced every single time. I’ll have to consider getting it from Netflix though.
This is a link to the Heston-Picture-Debunking thing. It’s pretty clear to me the second cameraman would have had to be invisible to get both angles in the same take.
He didn’t go to an NRA meeting held near Columbine short after the shootings and proudly hold up a gun saying that 'they’ll get it when they pry it from his cold dead hands!"
He didn’t do that?
I could have sworn he did that. I could have sworn I saw on many news outlets that he did that.
I wonder if they had to pry the guns for Eric and Dylan’s cold dead hands?
Actually, the website mentioned clarifies this issue.
The evidence of this is that the “cold dead hands” line and the Colorado rally footage clearly show Heston wearing two different suits. Though Moore’s film doesn’t explicitly say the “cold dead hands” line was in Colorado, the film very clearly gives that impression.
I think what you remember seeing was similar to the tactic Moore uses–showing Heston in general NRA president mode (“cold dead hands”) before talking specifically about the Colorado rally, even though the rally itself and the clip used weren’t directly related.
Well, the image in Bowling for Columbine that is used in that context wasn’t uttered in Columbine, or right after the tragedy, according to this. Under the heading ‘timeline trickiness’.
Years back Might magazine did an article where they tried to visit Moore’s offices and get an interview with him sans appointment. It was pretty entertaining and wasn’t very flattering. See if you can dig it up.
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