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Michael Moore could be the kiss of death for Barack Obama, after pledging his support for the Democratic nominee on his website today. Going back over the last few elections, you may recall that Moore endorsed Nader in 2000 and John Kerry in 2004. Neither of those guys became President.

In fact, Moore only seemed to be lowering his liberal standards four years ago in shockingly urging Nader to call it quits. So, aligning himself with a candidate, one whom he may very well want to lampoon in a future documentary, could be a kiss of death for himself, too.

But he just couldn’t stay quiet any longer:

I haven’t spoken publicly ’til now as to who I would vote for, primarily for two reasons: 1) Who cares?; and 2) I (and most people I know) don’t give a rat’s ass whose name is on the ballot in November, as long as there’s a picture of JFK and FDR riding a donkey at the top of the ballot, and the word “Democratic” next to the candidate’s name.

He should have stopped at #1, because that’s all the reason he needed. Plus, his second reason goes even further than his 2004 Kerry endorsement in displaying his political laziness of late. Sure, his taking a side between Democrats elevates him from that couch of couldn’t care less, but it seems a little late for someone who makes a living as something of political figure. Especially since his final straw with Hillary appears to be hypocritical.

Under discussion:

Where in the World is Osama bin Laden?  (2007)

At the P.O.V. Blog, Tom Roston ponders an emerging trend of Hollywood distributors test screening documentaries, and subjecting non-fiction films to the same focus group motivated pre-release tweaks that used to be the province of big budget comedies and wannabe franchises. He notes that the version of Morgan Spurlock’s Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden? that opened on Friday is quite different from the version that premiered at Sundance:

Spurlock actually relied significantly on test audiences after the movie was shown at Sundance. I wrote a story for the Los Angeles Times in which I reported this fact, including how Spurlock removed a jokey, in-your-face animated sequence (which must have cost a ton of money) and changed a pivotal closing song, from the goofy “Why Can’t We Be Friends?” to the more thoughtful, “(What’s So Funny ‘Bout) Peace, Love and Understanding.” Both elements from the earlier cut of the film rang so wrong to me — they made a film that was supposedly about bridging differences between the Muslim and western worlds feel like a farce. But, thankfully, they were removed, and the film’s integrity, I think, restored.

Roston says he’s “becoming convinced that it’s not inherently a bad thing” for a filmmaker and/or a distributor to seek input from the audience in the final stages of editing. But we’re obviously talking about a very specific kind of non-fiction film that can be molded based on comment card suggestion––Spurlock’s performance art approach to reportage would seem to lend itself to the commercial testing process in a way that a lower-concept filmmaker’s work may not––and it’s also clearly a sign that certain distributors are placing high enough performance expectations on certain documentaries to make such pre-release market research seem worthwhile.

But is it? Osama made about $140k on about 100 screens; it might have been a wider opening than was wise, but that’s still a discouragingly low per-screen average. The film’s under-performance also might not have looked as bad had it not happened on the same weekend that the abysmally reviewed Expelled began what looks like a record-breaking run, but there’s no question that the film is far from a runaway hit. In the case of Spurlock’s film, testing might have made for a better movie, but there’s no indication that it made for a more profitable one.

Under discussion:

Iron Man  (2008)

My favorite part of David Carr’s NYT profile of Robert Downey Jr (and, judging by the way he foreshadows it in the story’s second paragraph, maybe Carr’s favorite, too):

[Downey’s] romance with mood-altering chemicals didn’t end after he got out of prison. By 2003 he was an uninsurable serial relapser famous for being pulled out of hotels or other people’s homes in an addled, disheveled state. As a movie star with a lot of pals, he lived a life beyond consequence until he finally wore out the endless mercies of the entertainment business. After he was fired from his spot on Ally McBeal, the bottom finally came, at a Burger King of all places.

On or around Independence Day in 2003, he stopped at a Burger King on the Pacific Coast Highway and threw all his drugs in the ocean. And while he was sitting there chewing on a burger, he decided he was done. This being America, five years later you can walk into that Burger King, and if you order a Kids Meal you can get your own Robert Downey Jr. action figure, wrapped up in gadget ware. (And what does Tony Stark want when he escapes his kidnappers? A good old American cheeseburger — from Burger King, natch.)

Isn’t it funny how it all comes together? Downey’s recovery, his personal victory over almost-certain death. His character’s victory over almost-certain death within his big Hollywood comeback movie. The marketing of said big Hollywood comeback movie. It all revolves around Burger King, and specifically, the Burger King cheeseburger as touchstone of both near-death experience and synergistic lunch. “Is this a great country or what?” Carr asks––smirkingly, maybe, but not totally disingenuously. Surely, nowhere else in the world could an actor’s biography be modified to better showcase a studio’s corporate sponsor.