The Michael Moore shredding machine runs around the clock in America these days. The rumpled, bellowing filmmaker is constantly vilified by the right as a socialist buffoon and by the left as a bully whose unorthodox tactics hurt rather than help the cause.
Such condemnation is even fashionable now among movie critics, who question his factual credibility – though they should thank their stars for the wild entertainments of every Michael Moore documentary, no matter what they think of the politics.
The ideological wrangling tends to obscure the most intimate quality of Moore’s films, which unfailingly make audiences cry – often only moments after a belly laugh induced by a shocking statistic or a ludicrous claim by some corporate shill. Moore himself contributes to the miscalculation, as he is happy to stay at the bar all night debating partisan politics rather than play up the emotions of his work.
When asked, though, Moore will list the most effective tear-jerking moments in his films, from “Roger & Me” to “Bowling for Columbine” to this week’s “Sicko.” Maybe it’s true he confronts people in order to prove himself right, but he also confronts people, he says, to give them a second chance.
“Good people”
In a conversation about
“Sicko,” Moore effectively outlined his own manifesto:
“I do believe that every human being, from the Roger Smiths to the Charlton Hestons of this world, at their core are good people,” Moore said. (Smith was the elusive chairman of General Motors that Moore chased in “Roger & Me,” and Moore hounded an ailing Heston about his pro-gun lobbying in “Bowling for Columbine.”)
“They have a heart, and they have a conscience, and they know right from wrong,” Moore said. “Perhaps because of their circumstances, or greed, or desire for fame, they lost that along the way. But I believe if presented with the real-life situation, especially a situation that might be a result of the misery they’ve caused, there’s a chance they might come around.”
One of the most powerful such moments in any Moore film is when he takes two Columbine shooting victims from Littleton to Kmart corporate headquarters at the emotional climax of “Bowling for Columbine.” Moore had dogged Kmart the whole film for a “refund” for the bullets lodged in wheelchair-bound victim Richard Castaldo, since Columbine murderers Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris purchased some of their ammunition there.
“The real human part”
In the Kmart lobby, as Moore waits with Castaldo, a spokeswoman finally joins them in the lobby and announces the corporation will stop selling bullets altogether. No such epiphany happens in “Sicko,” which takes on the sordid world of health insurance, but it was the kind of moment Moore lives for.
“When the corporation was faced with the actual human being who had to suffer as a result of them, they really didn’t know what else to do,” Moore said. “I think back to that scene with those two kids, with Richard in the wheelchair; or the father there in Littleton who lost his son (Tom Mauser, father of Daniel Mauser); or the mother in Flint who lost her son in Iraq (in “Fahrenheit 9/11″). My films have consistently had that other side of me, that isn’t about Democrats or Republicans or politics. The real human part.”
With “Sicko,” Moore has been praised by some of those same skittish critics for keeping his most polemical self offscreen. Instead, he jokes with American expatriates in France about how great the health care system is there, and commiserates with an Aurora family whose parents must move in with them because of medical debts.
Moore found his stories for “Sicko” by posting a notice on the Internet; within a week, he received 25,000 tales of health horrors. In the film, he uses cringe-worthy examples to spotlight an American health and legal system that rewards for-profit insurance companies striving to deny medical care.
In the interview, Moore made a point of blaming the system, not the individual insurance companies, which are required by securities laws to “maximize profits” for shareholders or face legal action.
“They say the only way we can maximize profits is to deny care. Because of this Catch-22, it’s impossible to have a humane system that allows private health insurance companies to have a say in anything,” Moore said. “We won’t fix this problem until they are removed from this equation.”
Of course, Moore isn’t all heart in “Sicko,” because heart doesn’t bring the most publicity. You want polemics? He takes a flotilla of New York’s 9/11 rescue workers to seek better health care in Cuba – where it is illegal for most Americans to visit or spend any money. Asked if he has someone reliable to filter his ideas – someone to tell him that a Cuba stunt, for example, might turn off a potentially larger audience – Moore said he does.
“Starting with myself,” he said with a laugh, “because ultimately I’m the one who’s going to have to pay the price.”
Moore doesn’t lack for future documentary subjects. He has been asked to take on subjects from hedge funds to big oil.
“I would love to see somebody really take on the public education system,” he said. “We are creating a generation of idiots at this point. It’s dangerous, what we’ve allowed to happen to the public schools.”
Staff writer Michael Booth can be reached at 303-954-1686 or mbooth@denverpost.com.
