Corporate America has been supplying film scripts at a furious pace.
Enron blows up, and we get “Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room.”
McDonald’s turns Americans into walking grease receptacles, and we get Morgan Spurlock’s “Super Size Me.”
Managed care doesn’t manage to care for everyone’s health – that’s the movie Michael Moore is working on now.
And this fall brings the feature film “Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price.”
As the world’s largest company with more than $285 billion in sales and $10 billion in annual profits, Wal-Mart is a big enough star for the silver screen. And there’s plenty of drama as critics routinely accuse the retailer of everything: underpaying workers, discriminating against women, squeezing suppliers, tapping overseas sweatshops, skirting child-labor laws, union busting, neglecting the environment, employing vendors with illegal workers, extracting unneeded tax subsidies, destroying small businesses.
“The people running Wal-Mart are only committed to squeezing every nickel out of every human being on the face of the earth,” said film producer and director Robert Greenwald, 61. “I believe they are really hurting America.”
Greenwald has produced more than 50 made-for-TV movies. My favorite was “The Burning Bed,” from 1984, starring Farrah Fawcett as an abused housewife.
Greenwald also did “The Crooked E: The Unshredded Truth About Enron,” which aired on CBS in 2003. And he recently produced the feature film “Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch’s War on Journalism,” exposing right-wing biases at Fox News.
Wal-Mart officials don’t expect a fair shake from Greenwald.
“This is a publicity stunt,” said Wal-Mart spokeswoman Tara Stewart. “It’s funded by the unions, and it’s to further their own narrow self-interests.”
“Typical Wal-Mart distortions,” Greenwald countered. He said his funding does not come from unions but from a grassroots effort. That effort includes the Petroleum Marketers Association of America, a trade group of gas-station and convenience-store operators feeling pinched by Wal-Mart. It also comes from National Education Association and the American Independent Business Alliance.
Greenwald’s website, , will give a DVD to anyone who donates $30 or more to help fund the film. It invites people to host screenings when the film is released this fall. And it invites Wal-Mart employees to tell their horror stories, though Greenwald said many are too busy fearing for their jobs.
“If (Wal-Mart officials) want a fair movie, I would like them to issue a statement that no Wal-Mart employee will be fired for cooperating with this film,” he said.
I was sure to run that remark by Stewart, the Wal-Mart spokeswoman.
“It is not a practice of ours to promote opportunities to be included in books or films or projects to our associates,” she said. “Because they are focused on our taking care of customers and providing everyday low prices.”
For the record, though, Wal-Mart associates are free to seek their fame in Greenwald’s film. “There will be no retribution if they participate,” Stewart said.
Greenwald said he started thinking about Wal-Mart during a visit to the doctor. He recites oft-repeated claims that Wal-Mart doesn’t provide sufficient health-care insurance and therefore encourages employees to seek public aid.
“We are getting stories from different people, from different parts of the country, who are being encouraged to get government aid because Wal-Mart doesn’t pay them enough,” he said.
“We do not encourage our associates to apply for public assistance,” Stewart said. “That’s just not true.”
Greenwald is not the first to fathom Wal-Mart’s darkness. Last year, the Los Angeles Times won a Pulitzer for a series on Wal-Mart, and PBS’s “Frontline” produced “Is Wal-Mart Good for America?”
People increasingly shop there anyway.
Greenwald hopes a film will open their eyes because the practices of the world’s largest company affect everybody.
“Wal-Mart holds so many possibilities because they are so large,” Greenwald said. “If they decided to change, they could have a wonderful impact on the United States.”
Sounds like a Hollywood ending to me.
Al Lewis’ column appears Sunday, Tuesday and Friday. Respond to Al at , 303-820-1967, or alewis@denverpost.com.
