Commie tripe laid on too thick for even Toronto's red Star !!! (May 20, 2007)
Canadian media needle Sicko - Moore's health-care film gets rough reception
Posted on 06/22/2007 8:21:05 AM PDT by GMMAC
Michael Moore gets a taste of his own medicine
Bill Brownstein, The Montreal Gazette
Published: Friday, June 22, 2007
Toronto documentarians Debbie Melnyk and Rick Caine had sought to send a celluloid love letter to their hero, Michael Moore. But the creator of such mega-hit docs as Roger & Me, Bowling for Columbine and Fahrenheit 9/11 refused to talk to them. He should have talked. Melnyk and Caine ended up making the cinematic equivalent of hate mail, Manufacturing Dissent (opening today at Cinema du Parc).
Already committed to making a movie about Moore, Melnyk and Caine resorted to interviewing friends, former friends and colleagues. What they emerged with is a portrait of a man who, they claim, has never let the facts get in the way of a good screen story. A man, who, despite the jolly, salt-of-the-earth image, is something of a bully and not real nice to many fellow humans, particularly to those who don't agree with him. A man, according to a friend, who puts the "Mac" in Machiavelli.
This is not the first time Moore has come under attack for fudging facts and displaying boorish behaviour. He has been targeted in numerous newspaper and magazine stories, books and several documentaries. And, in turn, Moore has refuted the charges and tried to turn the tables on his accusers, generally voices from the right, his ideological polar opposites.
But when the charges come from self-confessed liberals like Melnyk and Caine, it has to be disconcerting for Moore, especially since his latest film, Sicko, an indictment of U.S. health care, is set for release next week.
More disconcerting for Moore is that Melnyk and Caine - makers of Citizen (Conrad) Black and The Frank Truth - are also quite adept at the documentary game and have produced a riveting, disturbing litany of seeming untruths by Moore, corroborated by seemingly expert witnesses.
The most explosive of the charges levelled by Melnyk and Caine is that Moore actually did interview Roger Smith, then-chairman of General Motors Corp. and the apparently elusive focus of Moore's hard-hitting debut doc Roger & Me, but that he opted to leave that footage on the cutting-room floor. Which, in effect, negates the central theme of the flick, that Smith refused to talk to Moore about GM plant closings in Flint, Mich., the filmmaker's hometown.
After a recent screening of Sicko, Moore told the Associated Press anybody who says he held back footage of Smith "is a (expletive) liar." He went on to say he had spoken to Smith on another matter before filming began on Roger & Me.
Melnyk and Caine assert otherwise. Expect this Ping-Pong game to continue for years to come. Bottom line, though, is that folks will flock to both Manufacturing Dissent and Sicko.
Love him or loathe him, Moore is a showman. He is the most successful documentarian of this or any epoch. He is also the most resounding cinematic voice ever to have emerged from the left. So, even if he is found to have fiddled with the facts, his fans - members of the choir to whom Moore sings - will surely forgive him his trespasses, as long as he continues to bash Bush and the boys. So it goes in the ever-polarized U.S.
Yet this is not to detract from efforts of Melnyk and Caine, who have clearly done their homework.
And Melnyk, who appears on camera, proves to be quite a capable showperson, too.
Their doc begins with Moore's 2003 Oscar-winning acceptance speech for Bowling for Columbine: "We like non-fiction and we live in fictitious times ..."
Irony abounds as the man who blasts the "fictitious U.S. election results" that elected a "fictitious president" is perhaps guilty of making fictitious docs.
Melnyk and Caine then pursue the director for an interview as he promotes Fahrenheit 9/11 in 2004 and disses the soon-to-be-re-elected Dubya to throngs of adoring college students during Moore's Slacker Uprising Tour that took him through 20 states. But in spite of Moore's apparent love for Canada and Canadians, he keeps the filmmaking tandem at bay. And they, in turn, start digging up "untruthiness" about the man they had once so adored.
The question that begs to be asked, though, is: What if Moore had talked to Melnyk and Caine?
Curious minds - this one, anyway - want to know whether their doc might have taken a different turn and possibly become a gushing ode to a teddy-bear.
"We ended up down a path Michael created for us by not answering our questions," Melnyk says in a phone interview. "If he had allowed us to film him, it would have been a lot more jokey. But we still would have included the criticism of his films."
Caine, Melnyk's partner on and off screen, doesn't mince words: "On a certain level, this is just Media Management 101. Be nice to the press and they're going to be nice to you. If you're a shit to them, there's a chance they could turn on you. Had he kind of co-opted us, we probably would have done a much more favourable bio. It would have been so much easier making a film that celebrates Michael."
They are equally candid about taking the same personality-driven approach to their doc as Moore does. "We have been admirers of his work," Caine says. "We recognize both the benefits and limitations of this style of filmmaking. We're genuflecting at the same altar here."
They also caught a preview of Moore's Sicko. "We snuck into a screening," Melnyk confesses.
"But doing our film has actually ruined watching a Michael Moore movie for me. I'm constantly analyzing his facts now."
bbrownst@thegazette.canwest.com
© The Gazette (Montreal) 2007
Commie tripe laid on too thick for even Toronto's red Star !!! (May 20, 2007)
Canadian media needle Sicko - Moore's health-care film gets rough reception
Sounds like the DNC platform.
Wow! Obviously this urinal-ist thinks all docuemntaries are about politics?
As much a liberal as Mike "The Large" Moore, Ken Burns tops my list of documentarians in this "epoch".
J. Cousteau, too. That (recently deceased) French cinematographer that worked for NatGeo puts together better stuff than MM.
“So, even if he is found to have fiddled with the facts,”
The last time someone “fiddled” the way Lumpy Reifenstahl does, a major city in Italy was burning.
Seriously true. Burns entertains, enlightens. The Civil War is, to me, quite frankly the finest of the genre.
He got a taste of his own medicine, and it didn’t taste good.
The liberal author seems to have a hard time deciding which side to take in this liberal vs liberal story.
Baseball
Jazz
All examples of the pionnacle of the genre.
BUMP!
Well gee whiz! You actually are starting to care about facts in documentaries! How cute and novel for a liberal to do such a thing!
I don’t think he even noticed. Liberals don’t usually understand when they ought to be embarrassed by their bad behaviour.
Liberals never let the facts get in the way of their opinions.
All superb. I own the DVD of the Civil War - worth the $100 I paid for it. Never got to see Jazz, unfortunately, but I absolutely LOVED Baseball.
Do you know if Burns is working on anything else. I love how he can interest you in subjects that you would otherwise dismiss as “knowing enough” about them.
Huh??????
He’s doing a WW2 piece. There was some hubbub recently that he was short shrifting Mexican American soldiers.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/keyword?k=kenburns
Lies pay very well, except in the end.
So, let me get this straight, if Moore was nice to them, they would in turn be nice to Moore?
How about the truth no matter what?
Wall Street analysts and bankers, and corporate executives have been burned for this kind of behavior. You publish nice things about us and we’ll do IPOs and deals with you.
I’m glad Moore is being exposed for what he is (a big fat liar, with an emphasis on big, fat, and liar), but these “docommentarians” look like clowns too.
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