Michael Moore films: Fact or fiction?
Michael Moore films: Fact or fiction?
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SexiVixxEN
58 days ago
No documentary filmmaker in history has been more successful than Michael Moore, and no other has been quite as divisive. He has won many of cinema's highest honors, and he's been lambasted and parodied in movies and on TV.
Twenty years after his first film, "Roger & Me," he continues to be a target for criticism from the right and sometimes even the left. Though in true Michael Moore-style, nearly every time criticism has been directed at the facts he presents in his movies, he has a response to back up his position. With his latest film, "Capitalism: A Love Story," arriving in theaters nationwide, here are five of the top controversies from Moore's movies, along with how he responded to each charge leveled against him.
Roger & Me (1989)
Moore's first and most personal film looked at how the closing of General Motors factories drastically affected the economy in his hometown of Flint, Michigan. Moore's camera followed him as he attempted to question GM CEO Roger Smith about why the plants were closed.
CONTROVERSY:
In their film "Manufacturing Dissent," filmmakers Rick Caine and Debbie Melnyk show that Moore met with Smith at a 1987 shareholder's meeting. They state that Moore withheld this interview from his movie to make Smith look more unreachable than he actually was.
RESPONSE:
Moore acknowledged that he had a "good five minutes of back-and forth" with Smith about a GM tax abatement, but that it was before he began working on "Roger & Me." Moore said, "If I'd gotten an interview with him, why wouldn't I put it in the film?" and added that if he had suppressed an interview with Smith, GM would have surely publicized that in an effort to discredit him.
Bowling for Columbine (2002)
Moore won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature for his examination of gun violence in America. With a focus on the Columbine massacre, Moore -- who has a lifetime membership to the NRA -- questioned why the number of incidences of gun violence is so much higher in the US than in any other country.
CONTROVERSY:
Early in the movie, Moore goes to a bank in Michigan that advertises they give away a free gun for opening a CD. In "Michael Moore Hates America," another documentary about his films, director Michael Wilson claims that Moore manipulated the bank workers into giving him the gun directly, when the weapons weren't normally kept on-site or given out on the day.
RESPONSE:
Moore insists that what was shown in the movie was exactly what happened with no coercion. He states that he did call ahead to ask permission to bring in cameras, but cites that news reports before him had documented the same process. The bank does have a Federal Firearms license to conduct background checks and does keep a vault holding at least 500 firearms.
Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004)
Released during the summer of George W. Bush's re-election campaign, Moore's film blasted his administration over the 2000 election in Florida, the response to the 9/11 attacks, and the justification for the war in Iraq. It earned $120 million domestically, making it the highest-grossing documentary of all time.
CONTROVERSY:
The film provoked a flurry of articles and opinion pieces both lambasting and supporting Moore and his statements in the film. Moore was also sued by Peter Damon, an injured Iraq War veteran who gave an interview to NBC News while at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center that Moore included in his movie.
RESPONSE:
Damon's $85 million defamation suit did go before a federal judge, but Moore's attorney argued that Damon was quoted verbatim and his statements were not taken out of context. The suit was dismissed, and an appeals court held up the ruling in Moore's favor. Moore said in response, "I did not defame this soldier and would not... My prayers are with him and with all soldiers who have suffered from this war."
Sicko (2007)
Two years before the current debate on health care in America, Moore was already examining the country's for-profit insurance industry and comparing it to other nations' government-run programs. Towards the end of the film, Moore takes three 9/11 workers who were unable to afford health insurance on a boat to Guantanamo Bay to see if he can get them care there. When he's turned away, they land in Cuba and actually do get to see doctors in a Havana hospital.
CONTROVERSY:
Much was made of the Cuban trip and the claims Moore made about the country's health care system. Critics accused him of falsely claiming Cuba had a higher life expectancy and lower infant mortality rate than the U.S. The Treasury Department even investigated him to see if he had violated the travel embargo with Cuba.
RESPONSE:
Moore posted a United Nations report on his website that found the average life expectancy in the U.S. to be 77.5 years, while in Cuba it is 77.6 years. Another U.N. survey reported the infant mortality rate in Cuba to be 6.2 per thousand, while rate in the U.S. is 6.8 per thousand. Moore also claimed the Cuba trip was legal because "journalistic endeavors" are permitted under the embargo.
Capitalism: A Love Story (2009)
Moore intended to make a follow-up to "Fahrenheit 9/11," but with the onset of the global financial crisis, he instead turned his cameras towards Wall Street. Echoing "Roger & Me," Moore returns to Flint, MI to see the remnants of the auto factories there, and attempts to make a "citizen's arrest" of the head honchos of the financial institutions that received government bailouts.
CONTROVERSY:
Even before the movie debuted, the Associated Press ran a fact check article about the movie. It states that three months after Moore went to the headquarters of Goldman Sachs the firm did return $68 billion in bailout money they received. Also, Moore rails against Democratic Senator Chris Dodd for receiving "V.I.P." loans from Countrywide Financial Corp., even though a Senate Ethics panel cleared Dodd of any wrong-doing.
RESPONSE:
Moore contends that "not even 10 percent of the $700 billion has been returned," though the AP reports only $425 billion was actually distributed. Plus, he says he didn't include the Ethics panel's conclusion on the Dodd matter because he hopes that the Justice Department will continue to investigate "not just to Senator Dodd, but to all those in both the Clinton and Bush administrations that benefited from this."
"Capitalism: A Love Story" opened in limited release last weekend, where it had the highest per-screen average of any movie this year. Starting today, it expands to theaters across the nation.
Twenty years after his first film, "Roger & Me," he continues to be a target for criticism from the right and sometimes even the left. Though in true Michael Moore-style, nearly every time criticism has been directed at the facts he presents in his movies, he has a response to back up his position. With his latest film, "Capitalism: A Love Story," arriving in theaters nationwide, here are five of the top controversies from Moore's movies, along with how he responded to each charge leveled against him.
Roger & Me (1989)
Moore's first and most personal film looked at how the closing of General Motors factories drastically affected the economy in his hometown of Flint, Michigan. Moore's camera followed him as he attempted to question GM CEO Roger Smith about why the plants were closed.
CONTROVERSY:
In their film "Manufacturing Dissent," filmmakers Rick Caine and Debbie Melnyk show that Moore met with Smith at a 1987 shareholder's meeting. They state that Moore withheld this interview from his movie to make Smith look more unreachable than he actually was.
RESPONSE:
Moore acknowledged that he had a "good five minutes of back-and forth" with Smith about a GM tax abatement, but that it was before he began working on "Roger & Me." Moore said, "If I'd gotten an interview with him, why wouldn't I put it in the film?" and added that if he had suppressed an interview with Smith, GM would have surely publicized that in an effort to discredit him.
Bowling for Columbine (2002)
Moore won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature for his examination of gun violence in America. With a focus on the Columbine massacre, Moore -- who has a lifetime membership to the NRA -- questioned why the number of incidences of gun violence is so much higher in the US than in any other country.
CONTROVERSY:
Early in the movie, Moore goes to a bank in Michigan that advertises they give away a free gun for opening a CD. In "Michael Moore Hates America," another documentary about his films, director Michael Wilson claims that Moore manipulated the bank workers into giving him the gun directly, when the weapons weren't normally kept on-site or given out on the day.
RESPONSE:
Moore insists that what was shown in the movie was exactly what happened with no coercion. He states that he did call ahead to ask permission to bring in cameras, but cites that news reports before him had documented the same process. The bank does have a Federal Firearms license to conduct background checks and does keep a vault holding at least 500 firearms.
Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004)
Released during the summer of George W. Bush's re-election campaign, Moore's film blasted his administration over the 2000 election in Florida, the response to the 9/11 attacks, and the justification for the war in Iraq. It earned $120 million domestically, making it the highest-grossing documentary of all time.
CONTROVERSY:
The film provoked a flurry of articles and opinion pieces both lambasting and supporting Moore and his statements in the film. Moore was also sued by Peter Damon, an injured Iraq War veteran who gave an interview to NBC News while at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center that Moore included in his movie.
RESPONSE:
Damon's $85 million defamation suit did go before a federal judge, but Moore's attorney argued that Damon was quoted verbatim and his statements were not taken out of context. The suit was dismissed, and an appeals court held up the ruling in Moore's favor. Moore said in response, "I did not defame this soldier and would not... My prayers are with him and with all soldiers who have suffered from this war."
Sicko (2007)
Two years before the current debate on health care in America, Moore was already examining the country's for-profit insurance industry and comparing it to other nations' government-run programs. Towards the end of the film, Moore takes three 9/11 workers who were unable to afford health insurance on a boat to Guantanamo Bay to see if he can get them care there. When he's turned away, they land in Cuba and actually do get to see doctors in a Havana hospital.
CONTROVERSY:
Much was made of the Cuban trip and the claims Moore made about the country's health care system. Critics accused him of falsely claiming Cuba had a higher life expectancy and lower infant mortality rate than the U.S. The Treasury Department even investigated him to see if he had violated the travel embargo with Cuba.
RESPONSE:
Moore posted a United Nations report on his website that found the average life expectancy in the U.S. to be 77.5 years, while in Cuba it is 77.6 years. Another U.N. survey reported the infant mortality rate in Cuba to be 6.2 per thousand, while rate in the U.S. is 6.8 per thousand. Moore also claimed the Cuba trip was legal because "journalistic endeavors" are permitted under the embargo.
Capitalism: A Love Story (2009)
Moore intended to make a follow-up to "Fahrenheit 9/11," but with the onset of the global financial crisis, he instead turned his cameras towards Wall Street. Echoing "Roger & Me," Moore returns to Flint, MI to see the remnants of the auto factories there, and attempts to make a "citizen's arrest" of the head honchos of the financial institutions that received government bailouts.
CONTROVERSY:
Even before the movie debuted, the Associated Press ran a fact check article about the movie. It states that three months after Moore went to the headquarters of Goldman Sachs the firm did return $68 billion in bailout money they received. Also, Moore rails against Democratic Senator Chris Dodd for receiving "V.I.P." loans from Countrywide Financial Corp., even though a Senate Ethics panel cleared Dodd of any wrong-doing.
RESPONSE:
Moore contends that "not even 10 percent of the $700 billion has been returned," though the AP reports only $425 billion was actually distributed. Plus, he says he didn't include the Ethics panel's conclusion on the Dodd matter because he hopes that the Justice Department will continue to investigate "not just to Senator Dodd, but to all those in both the Clinton and Bush administrations that benefited from this."
"Capitalism: A Love Story" opened in limited release last weekend, where it had the highest per-screen average of any movie this year. Starting today, it expands to theaters across the nation.
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