There is a cut to the protestors between Heston saying From my cold dead hands and the audience reaction at that rally and the rally 10 days after Columbine.
Moore’s say" Just 10 days after etc. " then we see CH again with a different suit standing on a different stage with a different background behind him welcoming people by saying “good morning thank you all for coming” It’s fucking screamingly obvious that they are two different incidents. I’ve just confirmed this by looking at the section again starts 35:09 into my copy of the movie maybe you should check it out.
As a pack of lies, or as “grains of truth woven into a mosaic of fiction”?
Do you suspect that his footage of wounded americans, abusive americans, and a flippant president on the verge of announcing war are LIES, or do you just not want to see them because they support Moore’s claim that this is an unjust war entered into without much thought?
And, I don’t think you’ve learned anything about Bowling for Columbine. I think you’ve formulated beliefs about Bowling for Columbine based on the opinions of a net kook.
Ohhh… okay. I see why we’re verging on the vicinity of rabid here. And not responding to the other points.
If it makes you feel any better, I probably will see it in it’s entirety at some point. I just have more entertaining works of fiction ahead of it in my Netflix queue.
I’ve formulated beliefs based on clips and stills from the movie itself when contrasted against the plethora of evidence presented on the website of a net kook that the clips and stills were sometimes staged, and often arranged to form a mistaken impression. OGre, for instance, thought the cartoon was from the creators of South Park… which seems to me the very impression the film wanted you to accept … based on the summary of the structure of the film on the website.
I have not seen that structure myserlf… but no one here’s telling me that the website has it wrong, they’re just making vague accusations that the guy is a kook.
For the record, I do think the war in Iraq was an unjust war, and a mistake. I think George W is flippant, because he’s essentially a frat-boy who never grew up. But I’m disinclined to watch Fahrenheit 9/11 … because if my accumulated knowledge of Bowling is any indication, Moore won’t relate any interesting facts in the documentary. He’ll conjure emotional outrage with shocking images so he can sell more DVDs, misquote statistics, and have a grand old time doing it.
I’m not the one talking about something I haven’t actually seen in context and in full. I’m using my own points you’re using someone else’s.
Why should anyone take you serious. See the film come back and people may take you and “your” points seriously.
I’ve never said Moore is perfect BTW I’ve said he can stretch the truth and comes across as embarrassing on occasion.
Based on something I haven’t seen I will not see something else but continue to hold my belief that I can criticise both. WTF?
I asked this same question here before and even mentioned that it should be called “Michael and Me.” Ring the door at his multi-million dollar NYC mansion from where he is chauffered around in a limousine and ask him why he outsources his website to Canada, won’t go on stage at speeches until he is provided with Evian water (no other water will do), abuses the staff at event venues, and complains about how much he get’s paid for speeches. He is the most abominable hypocrite I’ve ever seen.
Ah, at least we’re grappling with the important issues. It’s not really about the message, it’s about the goddamned messenger with his bad news and his making us think. DOUBLEPLUSUNGOOD!
See? I quoted your entire post. And I intend to address all of it, not just the parts with which I can make snarky but ultimately meaningless comments.
Actually, you are talking about things you haven’t seen in context and in full… because that’s what Moore’s shown you. I haven’t seen them in full, admittedly, but the website does indeed list the context - the context seems to be the biggest problem with many of the complaints, in fact. You are using your own points, as far as I know.
As for taking me seriously? Well, I am working from a source. It’s not the primary source, but it is a source with lots of documentation. Whether or not a particular poster takes me seriously doesn’t matter much.
It’s great that you think Moore can stretch the truth. That’s good. Would you like to start refuting some of the points presented on Bowling for Truth regarding the film, or merely ignore them?
As for your last statement … I’m criticizing Bowling for Columbine. Not Fahrenheit 9/11. This is the last time I’m going to point that out. I can’t trust Fahrenheit 9/11 because of the criticisms I have for Bowling. I’m not dissecting Fahrenheit 9/11. Clear enough?
If you ever watch the whole film, you might be surprised to see how distorted a picture “Bowling for Truth” paints.
For instance, the infamous Heston sequence. I cannot see how any viewer sophisticated enough to realize that Charlton Heston isn’t really a five-inch tall man who lives inside their TV could possibly mistake the two clips for being from the same speech. Is there any reason to believe that Moore intended the audience to believe that they were? Did he say they were from the same speech? No. There is nothing other than the claims of “Bowling for Truth” to support the idea that Moore intentionally edited the scene with the intent to trick people into thinking the clips were both from the same time and place. And frankly, I think an experienced filmmaker could have done a much better job of deceiving the audience if he’d wanted to. He could, for instance, have made an “artistic choice” to show the clips in black and white so the different clothing wouldn’t have been as obvious.
Similarly, had I not read through the “Bowling for Truth” site it never would have occured to me that anyone might think Moore intended us to believe that he had genuine video footage of the dog that shot its owner. When watching the movie, I didn’t think for a moment that it was anything other than staged footage meant only to give us something to look at while we heard the story. It is a movie, not a radio play, so they’ve got to put something up on the screen.
I also thought it was really funny how “Bowling for Truth” makes a big deal about how Harris and Klebold didn’t really go bowling the morning of the Columbine massacre, so Moore’s suggestion that one might as reasonably blame bowling for the tragedy as Marilyn Manson is a lie. But in the section on Marilyn Manson, it is explained why we should still hold Marilyn Manson to blame even though Harris and Klebold didn’t listen to his music! “Whether the kids liked him or not, arguments against the singer remain relevant.” Then shouldn’t the arguments against bowling remain relevant whether the kids went bowling or not? And it’s not like they never went bowling (although it does seem they never liked Marilyn Manson), they just skipped bowling class the morning of April 20. I also got a laugh from the part where he insults Manson’s grammar, because in the same paragraph he refers to Manson’s “self diluted ignorance”. (That’s far from the only language mistake I noticed in “Bowling for Truth”, and I wasn’t even looking for them.) Dude, before you start playing grammar cop on rock stars, you could proofread your own damn site!
Maybe someone should make a documentary about “Bowling for Truth”.
First, as to the mansion, the limo–so freakin’ what? I mean, it’d be great for a monumentally successful author and filmmaker to live in a Brownstone apartment, but it’s hardly reasonable to expect that.
“Outsourced to Canada”? What the hell, are webmasters in Canada working for three bucks a day or something?
He wants Evian water on stage? How much less significant can you get than that?
He abuses the staff at event venues? Cite for that, please–and of course we’ll be looking for a broad pattern of such abuse, not just one crackpot rightwing staffmember who’s decided to get his revenge on Moore by claiming abuse.
He complains how much he gets paid for speeches? Let’s see a cite on that if you want, but this really boils down, as near as I can tell, to complaining that he negotiates for speaker fees. What a godless frickin’ communist!
Really, if this is the most abominable hypocrite you’ve ever seen, you should get out of the house more. Or turn on your radio: maybe you can find a drug addict railing about how drug addicts oughtta be sent to prison.
As to the OP, I’d like to link you to Michael Moore’s website, where he pretty conclusively debunks bowlingfortruth. But his site seems to be down right now.
I did read his rebuttal to the sections of BfT that I found most compelling… or at least, the ones he bothered to rebut. He really didn’t convince me at all. In all fairness, though, it was sometime last year, so perhaps he’s added some more commentary.
…well, why should we listen to your arguements over something you haven’t seen? How the hell can you make this point:
…if you haven’t even seen the scene in context? If you’ve got the time to rant on a message board about Moore, you’ve got time to go watch the movie. And yeah, you’ve got to see the film before you can call him a liar… because you can’t accuse Moore of misleading edits and taking things out of context by watching “clips” on a website which are full of misleading edits and have events taken out of context…
I snipped the other sections because there, I think BfT was just being silly. I agree with you, on those. Having viewed the particular section referenced above, however, I think it’s decidedly more ambiguous. You say it would only fool the grossly unsophisticated, but I suspect that’s Moore’s target audience.
I suppose the most scientific way to resolve the query would be to take 100 persons who hadn’t seen the film or heard discussion of that section, let them watch it, and ask them “What is the first thing we hear Mr. Heston say at the Denver meeting?” - to see how many people form the mistaken impression that it is “From my cold, dead hands.”
You’re missing something rather fundamental to yojimbo’s post. It isn’t about if anyone has seen the full original footgae of the speeches, it about wether or not you can criticize the works of Michael Moore if you *haven’t actually seen them. *
You keep citing “Bowling for truth” as literal truth. it is ignorant to assume that bowling for truth is correct without having seen Bowling for Columbine yourself.
furthermore, any ar5guement you may actually make against BfC would be better if you knew what the hell you were talking about, first hand.
You are ignoring bowling for Columbine itself, and are in no real osition to question the arguements of anyone else.
Without actually having seen it.
but your criticisms are complete horse apples, seeing as you havent even seen the source material you are criticising, and are straightforwardly accepting bowling for truth as being accurate.
Does the fact that the guy running Bowling for Truth also runs gunowner.com not ring any bias bells with you?
Well, you don’t have to. However, the website describes the context of the scenes. Go look at the website. See what it says about the context of the scenes. If it’s misleading, incomplete, or wrong, tell me. Did the editor of BfT inappropriately crop or reframe the stills from the end of Moore’s interview with Heston? Tell me.
I don’t need to put an iceberg on a scale to know that there’s a lot of friggin ice under the water.
There’s an interesting he-said he-said developing with Fred Barnes. Michael Moore quoted a conversation with Barnes in his book Stupid White Men. Barnes is saying the conversation never took place.
*Even if such an experiment showed that the scene gave people a mistaken impression (and I do not believe that it would), this would not serve as proof that Moore intended to deceive. Perhaps he just overestimated the sophistication of his audience.