Buh . . . but . . . I thought Michael Moore didn't care about profits!

brit, You nailed it. Easy enough to hate Michael Moore. But when it comes to business practices, when it's between Michael Moore and the Weinsteins, the only question is, how didn't anyone see this coming? The Weinsteins as bastards and when it comes to a buck, they don't give it up easily.

 

Disagree with about Moore producing films that spark national discussions. His M.O. is to wait for topics that have already become controversial and then make films with cherry-picked facts that take the populist point of view. Issues like 9/11 and health care were long in the public discussion before Michael Moore figured out how to profit from them. The object? To personally profit from those issues by cherry picking facts and outright distorting them to get people into a lather. Hopefully, with Capitalism: A Love Story, which bombed after he saw the financial meltdown as an area to try, the rest he is giving his act will become a permanent rest.

 

Roger and Me does not fit the bill I described, but Michael Moore was an unknown filmmaker then.

Since then, there is nothing ahistorical or nonsensical about what I said, as you so eloquently put it.

You just conceded it, in fact.

When Fahrenheit was released, the war in Iraq was indeed not something we needed Michael Moore to stir a national debate over. And it's hardly like there weren't people against the war, or that the tide wasn't already turning in terms of sentiment -- or that it wasn't going to without Michael Moore's half truths and outright falsehoods (which always struck me as odd, because if he wanted to make a film critical of the Bush administration he could have done it pretty straight. Instead he had to push it into wtf territory).

When Sicko came out, it likewise didn't do much to stir any debate that hadn't existed for years. Health care was in the news, not on some backburner, because the cost was sky rocketing. Which is why it was such a plum topic for a guy who makes skewed populist films about those kinds of issues. Sound horns, find a lot of boogymen, and edit it the right way, and people eat the bullshit up. It's not like Obama relied on Michael Moore to make it his issue, either. Michael Moore wasn't ahead of the curve. He follows the curve. He just picked something that was on people's radars, sensationalized it and capitalized on it for his profit.

It's a formula that works, because if he chose issues and played them straight and honestly, it wouldn't do the controversy that gets people out. So he goes all Rush Limbaugh or Keith Olberman -- except with films -- because he knows that the more controversial he plays it (even if it isn't really true), the more of a reaction he's going to get.

And none of this addresses Michael Moore as a person. What I wrote about his treatment of writers -- and the staff, actually -- on TV Nation is true, and from what I understand indicative of the man.

You might want to reconsider who is being ahistorical. The guy capitalizes on populist causes, stirs the pot and tries to profit from them. It's who he is.