h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I agree that Michael Moore is funny. I don't agree with all of his opinions but I still laugh. But I do take offense to his winning the Oscar for Best Documentary and with this article for referring to it as one. Michael Moore never lets the facts stand in the way of a good story. As long as you can accept that, he is quite entertaining. But when people take his works, especially Bowling, as entirely factual, they are being very mislead. Even the title is misleading. The two boys responsible for the Colombine massacre did NOT go bowling that morning. They skipped class. And this is one of the least attempts to mislead the audience. I won't enumerate all of the many other falacies and inaccuracies Moore presents to his audience here. For that see this article from the National Review. http://www.nationalreview.com/kopel/kopel040403.asp
Or better yet go to this website to find others.
http://www.revoketheoscar.com/
Now I'm not saying that Moore is a bad guy, nor am I saying his movies, tv shows and books are without merit. I do honestly think he is very entertaining, just not very educational.

I agree. I watched Bowling for Columbine and enjoyed it. But the movie itself was not a documentary. Moore manipulated his film to make his audience believe events happened in a certain inaccurate sequence. He does bring up some very interesting points in Bowling though, and regardless of his inaccuracy, they should be given serious thought.

One of my favourite films of all time is Cry Freedom. This was criticised as spending too much time on Donald Woods and not enough on Steve Biko - clearly these people had missed the point. This was not the Steve Biko story, it was Donald Woods'

So with Bowling. I don't think it's a documentary about Columbine, but I do think it is a documentary about the American culture of violence and fear which leads to violence. Of course it was humorous, of course it was polemical in style and satirical in nature - that's what Michael Moore is best at. But it also answered, for me, some long-standing questions about American culture.

Again, I recomend reading that article I listed above. The movie was misleading throughout. Especially about the gun culture. I'm not saying that it's entirely false or undeserved, just misleading and should therefore be considered more of a work of fiction, or a "mockumentary".

Apparently the Academy thought that it not only qualified as a documentary, but it was the best one made that year. He might be accused of distorting the facts, but after watching his previous movies, tv show, reading his books, it's clearly meant to be a documentary, not meant to be like Spinal Tap as the National Review claimed. (Maybe the National Review was being satirical?)

When Moore does a satire, it's even more over-the-top. None of the verisimilitude of Spinal Tap or other Christopher Guest faux documentaries. See Canadian Bacon.

No, I agree. The NR article was being a bit satirical with the Mockumentary lable. Propaganda might be closer to the truth.

Interested parties might also click around http://www.bowlingforcolumbine.com for more info. For example on the website's FAQ I found this: "At least five witnesses, including their teacher, told the police that they saw one or both boys [the Columbine killers] that morning at the bowling alley for their first hour class. Some school and law enforcement officials later maintained that the two boys skipped that class that morning yet no other witness has come forward to say they saw Eric and Dylan anywhere else that morning."

Suddenly it's not a matter of whether Michael Moore lied or distorted facts. It's a much more understandable dispute between different witnesses who remember different things. Maybe Moore's witnesses were lying or remembering incorrectly, but it doesn't prove he was distorting the truth.

I agree that Moore is a propagandist. I agree with most of his points, but I was disgusted by some of his posturing after the Heston interview (placing a photo of a murdered girl against the wall of Heston's home), or the ridiculous guerilla-interview attempt with Dick Clark. It's ludricous to make any connection between Dick Clark's restaurant paying minimum wage and the daughter of one of his employees getting killed. Clark was right to refuse an interview, because nothing he could have said would have dissuaded Moore from trying to make him look bad. I also agree that clips were edited in a misleading way, to make it seem like Heston said really inflamatory things at the NRA meeting in Denver.

However, I haven't heard any of these criticisms turn up anything substantially untrue. I mean, he says there's an airplane from the Vietnam war with a plaque under it. He summarizes what the plaque says, because it would make a fairly long and detailed quote. Critics claim this is a "lie" because he's not quoting the thing in full. That's not lying, it's paraphrasing.

I'll concede he's a propagandist. I don't believe he's a liar.

The point about Dick Clark was not that the daughter of one of his employees was killed, but that the son of one of his employees shot a little girl because he was staying with his uncle, which gave him access to the gun he used. He was with his uncle because his mother could no longer take care of him. She was put into a new welfare program that caused her to travel about 70 miles a day to work...in Dick Clark's restaurant as well as a fudge factory. She couldn't care for her son under these conditions. It was more a comment on the welfare reform and it's affects on actual families. Perhaps it's true that nothing Dick Clark could have said would have made him look better, but Michael Moore was looking for his comments on the welfare reform in the city and it's affects on Clark's own employees. Interviewing him was not that unfounded.

an interesting link i found citing bowling for columbine as a non-documentary, with some very good points backing it's position up is this: http://www.hardylaw.net/Truth_About_Bowling.html

It's a good point about welfare "reform" and how it may have led to a mother foisting her son on an irresponsible relative with guns lying around his house. If Moore had explained things up to that point, about the 70 mile bus trip to two jobs, and then moved on to another point, I'd have no problem with that part. But his only purpose for soliciting "comments" from Dick Clark was to grill him, the same kind of hatchet-job he did on Charlton Heston. The only real purpose for grilling Dick Clark was to get an emotional response from viewers, and it made me embarassed to watch it, even though I agreed with the point he was trying to get across.

I wonder if Ken Burns' Civil War series would hold up to the same scrutiny as these critics picking apart quotations line by line and claiming they're all misleading. If you quote a line from Stonewall Jackson's diary and then a related line from his correspondence, are you deliberately deceiving people or are you trying to edit a presentation that will look and sound pleasing to viewers? If they fail to verbally indicate ellipses where they skipped a sentence or two, is that deliberately misleading?

As Guy suggests, to get fixated on the minutiae of what is presented in 'Columbine' is to miss the point. It's not a film about whether or not the Columbine killers went bowling that morning, although the idea of them doing such an innocent thing that morning is certainly a powerful and haunting image. It's a film about the United States' relationship with guns, and it vividly explains why we foreigners - and dissident Americans like Moore - find that relationship amazing and horrifying. The very idea of the National Rifle Association - a powerful, influential organisation dedicated to keeping lethal weapons readily available to most adults in the society it inhabits - seems astounding to me, and probably to most Europeans.

Personally, I have no problems with either the Heston or the Clark interviews. Sure, leaving that photo outside Heston's house was emotive, but then so is the NRA's rhetoric. Clark, presumably, is happy to accept the profits that derive from his company's ungenerous pay structure. Given that, I think Moore had every right to ask him to discuss that pay policy's impact on those who must live on what it provides. (And Clark had every right to refuse the interview.)

I called the Guide Entry 'Michael Moore - Multi-Media *Polemicist*' for a reason. Sure, Moore's work is there to present a particular, left-liberal perspective. But supporting a point of view and highlighting *facts* that support that point of view is not the same thing as telling lies. Given the huge power of the right in the global media, and in the American media in particular, I think it's very healthy that someone like Moore is there to present a different perspective, and to be so entertaining as he does so.

Documentaries, by their very nature, have an editorial slant. The filmmaker decides which elements to include to make their point, just as the news editors do. Complaining because a documentary is one-sided is a bit like complaining that a movie doesn't use real people instead of actors. It's what distinguishes documentaries from real life, which of course doesn't have an editorial slant, only the opinion of the observer.

Reading between the lines, it seems that Neocons don't like Michael Moore very much. This is Not A Surprise - he doesn't think much of them either. But all the things in the Wonderful World section, for example, are documented facts. Uncomfortable ones at that.

Okay... Just one more time. I started this convo not because I don't like Michael Moore. Far from it. I do for the most part. I do NOT believe he deserved an Oscar for "Best Documentary". Bowling for Colombine was NOT a documentary. It was a diatribe. There's nothing wrong with that. It's very entertaining. And yes you can agree with his viewpoint. But do NOT think that it's a documentary. And yes I understand that most true documentaries have an editorial opinion and quite possibly are made to fit an agenda. They at least attempt to portray factual information. Michael Moore didn't. He wanted to portray himself rubbing a lot of people the wrong way. And that is FUNNY! But it's not a documentary. And if it was, it wasn't the Best of the year. By the way the Academy normally votes, Prisoner of Paradise should have one. Either that or Daughter from Danang. My personal pick for Best Docu' would have been spellbound. Which one would I have most likely gone to see in the theatre? Bowling! But I still say it is not a documentary. It just looks like one. But since it won this year, I'll be looking for Jackass to win next year.

Moore produced more facts to back up his opinions as expressed on Columbine than Dubya produced to justify attacking Iraq, and rather fewer of Moore's later turned out to be lies and distortions. It was a documentary film. Nobody expects a documentary film to be entirely objective, especially one made by a close associate of Ralph Nader; if you disagree with Moore's analysis you can check his sources and make up your own mind, because he names his sources.

If we're going to start requiring objectivity all over the place there's going to have to be a rebranding exercise at Fox Propaganda

'fraid I have to disagree with you Count. I have just watched the film again and read the links which you have provided and whilst I appreciate what you are saying I think there can be no doubt that BFC is a documentary.

It is a glossy, one sided one. Designed quite specifically to evoke a specific reaction that does not mean though that it is not a documentary. Having analysed the film on the basis of the criticism in those articles a worst I think that you could perhaps accuse it of being a "Docu-lite" where detailed factual info and analysis was down to a minimum but it is still there... even if it is presented in such a way as to bias the viewer toward one side of the argument.

I would challenge you to point me in th direction of ANY documentary about a political subject that does not do this... everyone I have ever seen (that is quite a few... I am pretty anal about politics) engages in this it is normal behavior.

"It is a glossy, one sided one. Designed quite specifically to evoke a specific reaction that does not mean though that it is not a documentary." Hmmm. Seems to me after reading the above mentioned articles that BFC is every bit as much a documentary as Lili Reifenstall's (SP?) "Triumph of the Will", a Nazi propaganda film produced prior to WWII. I would love to watch the two films backto back, I'm betting that many of Lili's techniques are aped by Michael Moore. BFC is not a documentary any more than party political broadcasts are. It is a hatchet job, that's all.

Heh, hee... I decided to do a BFC on you to demonstrate. I hope you won't take offense I will use the words (*your* words) and only your words. In the spirit of BFC I'm hiding the edits, there will be no leading or trailing commas to show where the splices are! Plus, I'll have my commentary go over all.

DEMONSTRATION BEGINS, BELIEVE NOTHING BELOW!!

Ferrettbadger: "I challenge you."

Me: "Steady on, I mean you no harm"

Ferrettbadger: "I am pretty anal, it is normal behavior."

Me: "Holy cow, I'm out of here!"

Ferrettbadger: "there can be no doubt that BFC engages in this"

Me: Well, I'll take your word for it, ok?

Me: [To Camera] People, people, for the love of God, how long will we permit the evil ferrets and badgers to live close to us, [dramatic music] close to our homes, close to [voice rises to anguished scream] OUR CHILDREN??

Maolmuire: the above is so far removed from Mr Moore's style that I suspect you haven't actually seen 'Bowling For Columbine'. One of your previous postings seemed to suggest that you'd based your opinion largely, if not entirely, on the two hostile articles linked to above.

So here's another article for you to read: Mike's own fact-by-fact, point-by-point repudiation of the complaints made against 'Columbine': http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/wackoattacko/ .

Maolmuire i think that that is a pretty disingenuos point you make. Firstly on the count that I do not believe what you are saying represents Moore's style at all, and secondly on the basis that I do not get your point entirely.

So are you saying that any documentary that editorialises (and I will make the point again name one political documentary that doesn't) is tantamount to Nazi propaganda?

Moore's film mayby one sided but please indicate where exactly he has lied, used false statistics or cut different parts of a conversation together to make it look like someone said something other than they did?

I am guessing I might have to wait a while...

You won't have to wait long at all... check here:

http://www.hardylaw.net/Bowlingtranscript.html

It shows quite clearly the sort of distortions that Moore uses throughout the film. You really don't see the similarity between my own little BFC above and Moore's film? Really?

And yes, I have seen the film, and I've seen some (not all, it's hard to get hold of) of 'Triumph of the Will' too. The similarity is quite obvious.

You say: "name one political documentary that doesn't [editorialise]"

Well, that seems to be part of your problem with this. There are no 'political' documentaries, there are only documentaries full stop. Either you tell the full truth as best you can or else you are engaged in propaganda. You cannot be an honest person by telling the truth when it's convenient. You are an honest person when you tell *only* the truth. Either you make a documentary or a propaganda film. Before you start you make your choice. Michael Moore made his. And when you consider that he portrays himself as a crusader for the 'small' person who doesn't otherwise have a voice then his distortion takes on another facet, one which I find particularly odious.

To take my point a little (well ok more than a little) further, it would be quite easy to take Churchill's prewar speeches, 'Moorify' them and demonstrate that *he* caused WWII and that poor Hitler was the victim of someone who used to make quite beligerant anti-Nazi speeches in the commons. Taken out of context it is quite easy to make anyone appear a buffoon or a tyrant. Look at what I did with your quite innocent reply above. This is precisely what Moore does, and if sarcasm is the lowest form of wit then Moore's films are the lowest form of documentary.