Interview with Debbie Melynk, director of Manufacturing Dissent

I’ve just finished watching a wonderful and lengthy interview with Debbie Melnyk, the director and one of the producers of Manufacturing Dissent. It’s an incredibility insightful piece that discusses both Melnyk’s views on Moore’s techniques as well as delving into her own views on film making. In the interview Melnyk truly hammers home the point that in a documentary it is important to accurately and fairly represent all sides of an issue, something she rightly points out that Michael Moore does not do. She also discusses at length the need to present all subjects fairly and to never misrepresent what they say or how they have said it; again, something at which Moore frequently fails. I personally was quite impressed with how Melynk, a former Moore fan, was able to shed such clear light on why Moore’s techniques discourage people thinking and researching issues for themselves and how that can be intellectually unhealthy. Personally, I truly hope Manufacturing Dissent will encourage people to re-examine both Moore and his films so that his fans might come to a similar conclusion as Ms. Melnyk - that blindly following a pied piper without question can be a bad and dangerous thing.

Here is the interview with Debbie Melnyk, broken into two parts: