when generals are over, i will watch this...

dear friends,

since i have moved to america, i have been asked many times about whether michael moore's portrayal of canada in bowling for columbine was accurate. from now on, i think i might just skip the speech on how sault st. marie is not exactly representative and how many canadians do lock their doors and refer them to this film. it was behind the free-subscriber wall, so i have pasted it below.

and this is not about me being a recovering conservative. i actually do like the moore message too.
cam

ps- tomorrow you might even get an environmentalist-esque rant from me about fiji water (even though it is delicious).

Can't talk to him? Talk about him

A documentary by two Canadian filmmakers questions whether Michael Moore's methods cast a shadow on his message

JENNIE PUNTER

From Monday's Globe and Mail

AUSTIN, TEXAS —

Manufacturing Dissent, a revealing new documentary about popular filmmaker, left-wing social critic and celebrity Michael Moore, set tongues wagging this weekend in Austin, Tex., after its world premiere at the annual South By Southwest (SXSW) film festival. The film, which generated substantial pre-festival buzz, follows Moore on his promotional tour for the Palme d'Or winning film Fahrenheit 9/11 and his "Slacker Uprising" speaking tour before the 2004 U.S. presidential election. Along the way it chronicles his films, television work and controversial episodes in his career through archival footage and interviews with friends and former colleagues. But the film's major thrust is to raise questions about responsibility in documentary filmmaking by examining Moore's methods: Do his movies -- which have inspired legions of young documentarians and helped build a mainstream audience for non-fiction cinema -- reflect the reality of the people and events he films, or are scenes staged or heavily manipulated to serve his agenda? Does his message trump his methods?

Toronto-based co-directors Rick Caine and Debbie Melnyk were on hand Saturday night for the film's first public screening, which packed the vintage Paramount theatre, SXSW's flagship venue, and got a warm reception. After the lively post-film Q&A, the discussion spilled onto the street where everyone was still talking about the film and sharing their opinions of Michael Moore. "I used to have a Roger & Me poster in my bedroom," one viewer said, "I'll still see his films -- they're entertaining -- but I'll definitely question what I'm being shown."

It's no secret Moore is a polarizing force on the American political scene, but criticism of his work and views -- from TV pundits to bloggers, in books and documentaries with titles such as Michael Moore Hates America -- has largely come from the right end of the spectrum. Caine and Melnyk -- whose previous films include Junket Whores (1998), about the Hollywood marketing machine, and The Frank Truth (2001), about the satirical scandal magazine -- like Moore's films and support his ideological views.

They set out to make an admiring, straight-up observational biography about Moore as a switch in tone from their last film, Citizen Black (2004), about Conrad Black.

But during the filmmaking process, they hit a fork in the road. "We felt the direction of the documentary was changing because of what we were learning about his methods," said Caine, an Ohio-born journalist and cameraman. "We didn't want the film to be an attack, and there was a lot of hand-wringing about whether we should stop."

The turning point for the filmmakers came after an interview with social activist Jim Musselman, who worked with consumer advocate Ralph Nader for eight years and started a campaign to bring attention to GM president Roger Smith's indifference to plant closings in Flint, Mich., in the mid-1980s. He and Moore, who worked for Nader for a short time, were friends with a shared goal. Moore's debut feature Roger & Me (1989) looks at the effect of the closures on the community and follows his unsuccessful quest for an interview with Smith.

After watching An Unreasonable Man (2006), a documentary about Nader, Melnyk felt Musselman had more to say about Moore. "[Musselman] was very careful," she said about his agreeing to an interview. "He told us Michael interviewed Roger Smith before a shareholders meeting and again at the Waldorf Astoria [in New York] in January 1988 at a show of GM's latest products to its corporate shareholders. The part where they drag him out is in Roger and Me, but Moore also got a 15 minute interview with Smith -- which ended up on the cutting room floor."

"If he was willing to fudge the premise of that film, we wondered if there were similar examples," said Caine, adding, "We understand that documentary-making is like trying to shove 10 pounds into a five-pound can -- you're continually making value judgments. But I feel the less you mediate the material the more truthful it is, at least in the doc realm."

In Manufacturing Dissent, Caine and Melnyk admit to using one of Moore's tricks. They made fake press cards to gain access to Moore's appearance at Kent State University. "We hadn't needed cards to show [up to] that point," Melnyk said. "We felt pretty icky about doing that." The scene ends with the co-directors getting kicked out of the event, as Moore's sister shoves aside Caine's camera.

Throughout production, Caine and Melnyk continually tried to secure a sit-down interview with Moore with no success. They sent a letter to his lawyer, followed by a series of unreturned phone calls and e-mails. Occasionally, at various public appearances, they were able to get close to him with the camera and microphone (although not quite in the "ambush" style Moore popularized) but he would jovially find a way to skirt the request.

"I don't like documentaries," Moore says at one point in a clip from the press conference for Roger & Me at the Toronto International Film Festival. One wonders what he would think of Manufacturing Dissent.

Special to The Globe and Mail

Manufacturing Dissent has its Canadian premiere at the Toronto Hot Docs International Film Festival in April and will be broadcast on Bravo! at a later date.