Moore’s new movie… version 2.0
I know I said in the comments to the previous post I would have this up a couple of days ago - I apologize for the delay. WotLK has me a bit under it’s spell… ;)
Remember the announcements a few months ago about Moore’s new film, the sequel to Fahrenheit 9/11? You know, the one he’s been shooting for a good couple of months? Well… he’s still shooting it… it just isn’t a sequel to Fahrenheit 9/11 anymore. Anyone else confused? Cinematical seems to be as well:
By now we all know that Michael Moore doesn’t make documentaries like our grandfathers did. He’s a master of polemics, using his films to rail against corporations, guns, governments, insurance companies, and whatever else riles up his David vs. Goliath sensibility. When his most recent project was announced in May, it was described as a sequel to Fahrenheit 9/11 that would “tackle what’s going on in the world and America’s place in it,” as pointed out by The Hollywood Reporter. Now, however, THR says the film will focus on “the global financial crisis and the U.S. economy.”
Moore is still “feverishly shooting” and it’s hoped the film will be ready for release next spring. At first blush, though, it sounds like he decided to make the mid-project adjustment in reaction to (or in anticipation of) the Democrats’ victory. Without Bush to bash, and without the Republican Party in control of Congress, how much mileage could he get out of criticizing U.S. foreign policy with a new President steering a (presumably) different course?
So.... let me see if I have this right. Moore has COMPLETELY changed the topic of his film. It was going to be a polemic that railed against US foreign policy, and now it’s going to be an study of our economic crisis. These are two completely and totally different topics… and yet Moore isn’t stopping his filming or scraping his footage. Somehow he’s going to make all the footage he’s shot about foreign policy now work for and focus on the economy.
.... ummmm...... anyone else confused about how he could possibly pull that one off without coming to both projects with very similar theses, preconceptions and foregone conclusions? Me either. I think Cinematical states the problem quite well:
Unlike many documentary filmmakers, Moore appears to start with a conclusion on his projects and then search for footage to back it up. Documentarians often say they don’t really ‘find’ their film, or discover the story, until they’re knee-deep in editing, but it doesn’t sound like Moore works that way. Which doesn’t mean his films lack meaning or substance or entertainment value, just that they’re more like personal essays than traditional docs.
According to THR, Moore is now saying that the project is less a sequel to Fahrenheit 9/11 and more of a bookend to Roger & Me. What more could he say, though, about corporations and big business than he already has? When he endorsed Barack Obama in April, he wrote: “Corporate America is not going to give up their hold on our government just because we say so.” Maybe he wants to hold their feet to the fire until they burst into flame.
If all Moore does is bitch about the economy and complain about corporations, I don’t think it’ll be a very welcome message.
Well said.
I open to the floor to you fine ladies and gentlemen. Thoughts? Comments? Opinions? What do you think about this sudden and drastic turn in Moore’s agenda?
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Well, this isn’t the first time something like this has happened. I recall when Sicko was announced, Moore planned a “Run, Lola, Run"-type approach in which he lobbied four or five HMOs to provide coverage for dying people they had denied - the idea being that Moore and company would help save four or five lives in the course of their film. Also, I think I remember him saying that he was going to focus more on the 45 million people without health insurance, but instead, Sicko focused mostly on those WITH health insurance who were denied for various reasons. Considering the convoluted shooting strategy, I think Sicko holds of fairly well as a piece of narrative documentary filmmaking (putting ideology aside).
This, of course, is an even more drastic change of topic, and it would be hard for me to really pass judgement on Moore’s approach considering that still very little information is available. Perhaps it might resemble Bowling for Columbine, which was very tangential, covering just about every conceivable angle on gun violence within its two-hour running time. I think this new film will take a similarly broad approach.
I know you didn’t ask, but here’s a big concern I have with Moore: he is no longer a satirist. Granted, I’m not claiming he was ever in the league of Jonathan Swift, but with Roger & Me and his early TV shows, I really think Moore tried to go after any topic he deemed worthy of attack - mostly Republicans, but even some Democrats. These days, Moore has become so unquestioning in his support of the Democrats that his value as a satirist is essentially worthless. I can understand it from his perspective: he sees the Republican party, in its current form, as dangerous, and he doesn’t want to say anything against the Dems to screw up Obama’s chances of winning. But now that Obama’s in, I hope he will at least try to view him objectively (and yes, I realize that “objectively” for Moore is not “objective” to most others, but, y’know, relatively speaking).