Poor, poor Michael Moore. The millionaire Oscar winner, whose Sicko opens June 29th, has already been saddled with the twin burdens of bailing The Weinstein Company out of their flop hole and saving a commercially sagging genre, neither of which will be an easy task considering the fact that Sicko is already available online. Then, this weekend, a reporter asked Moore to comment on an independent documentary critiquing his filmmaking methods. Moore responded by calling the makers of that film "f-ing liar[s]", and went on to accuse them of spreading misinformation about "a fictional character that's been created with the name of Michael Moore."
The documentary in question is called Manufacturing Dissent, and it was one of the most talked-about films heading into the SXSW Film Festival this past March. The film aims to unmask Michael Moore as an unethical documentarian, a Capitalist hypocrite and, perhaps most egregious in the minds of the filmmakers, a not-very-nice guy. Dissent was dramatically billed as an attack on the Left (or, at least, on one of the American Left's most visible icons) from the Left. Directors Debbie Melnyk and Rick Caine, self-professed 'liberals", start out as fans of Moore, but end up painting an unflattering portrait of the filmmaker after failing to secure access to his inner circle. The picture ends up vaguely alluding to some interesting academic questions about the nature of truth-telling on film, but is ultimately unable to accuse Moore of anything other than being a really, really good propagandist.
Dissent sparked a bit of controversy at SXSW, but not for the intended reasons. At the time, filmmaker AJ Schnack (who attended SXSW 2007 with his documentary Kurt Cobain: About a Son) pulled together a lengthy blog post summarizing some of the discussion surrounding the film. He spoke for a lot of us who saw (and were disappointed by) the film when he called BS on the filmmakers supposed mid-production shift in slant. "How in the world can anyone who is making documentaries, particularly documentaries on somewhat political or tabloidy subjects, not be aware of all the arguments against Michael Moore?" Schnack wrote. (Schnack was summarily accused by a colleague of "bad form" for questioning a fellow filmmaker.)
I was reminded of Schnack's argument against Dissent when reading about Moore's screed against Melnyk and Caine. On the one hand, Michael Moore is not known for his restraint, and it's implausible that he would be so oblivious to an attack on his character and livelihood that he'd wait three months after the source of the attack was profiled in the NY Times to respond. This outburst was clearly timed to coincide with the release of Sicko--Moore actually gains credibility with a segment of his core audience by defining himself as the ultimate truth-teller surrounded by vicious liars.
On the other hand, maybe Moore took so long to respond to Dissent because it's just so not a legitimate threat. A muddled mix of personal travelogue and pseudo-investigative expose, Dissent turns on the meek, overly-earnest Melnyk's inability to get Moore to consent to a lengthy on-camera interview. Why would someone of his stature assign credibility to the complaints of a disgruntled fan?
On the OTHER hand, by responding so vehemently to questions about Manufacturing Dissent, does Moore maybe protest too much?
I don't know. I've never been a fan of Moore's methods, but I'm fascinated by his ability to mainstreamize (no, that's probably not a real word) niche debates. I'm going to see Sicko on Thursday, and I'll report back post haste. In the meantime, watch the Sicko trailer above, and talk about your love/hate for Michael Moore on the Spout Documentary board.
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