Warped Thoughts 06.04.04: A Different Take On Hollywood From A Place Without Smog

Posted by Cris Murphy on 06.04.2004

When Moore is less…

Welcome to my little corner of 411 Movies. What I’ll try to give to you in this column is a hodgepodge of news and commentary, my opinions on current and upcoming movies, and my take on what’s going on in Hollywood, both in TV and movies.

You’ll be able to catch my reviews on movies from time to time, and I’ll also review Sci-Fi movies of the odd and the unknown with my Sci-Fi Video Pick O’ the Week.


InstaPimps…by Ronco! ™
Before I get into my warped thoughts this week, let me pimp out my best friend and chess guru, Cory Laflin over in the Games section. Let’s just say he’s the passive aggressive enabler that led me to buying an Xbox against my better judgment. Excuse me while I play the copy of Buffy: Chaos Bleeds he lent me.

Mmmmmm. Eliza Dushku.

Give a click to the third member of the 411 Staff to live in Kansas and my Spyware Extermination Guru, Eric S., over in the Wrestling and Black sections. Glad you made it to Kansas. Sorry it’s in Emporia.

In the Movies section, check out Jacob Zeigler’s (the busiest writer in the Movies section) review of Jersey Girl. I’m not a big Kevin Smith fan (I loved his run on Green Arrow and Daredevil), although I always end up watching his films. I did like Dogma and Chasing Amy. I’ll have to give Jersey Girl a chance.

I always like Will Helm’s Misunderstood Masterpieces. This time, he covers the Adam West/Burt Ward Batman movie. Did I ever pop a woody for Julie Newmar’s Catwoman. Plus, as a kid, I always thought the best way to achieve world peace was to dehydrate the U.N., mix up the powders a little bit, then re-hydrate them.

To celebrate Memorial Day, Ryan Keefer looks at his Top 10 War Movies. Great list, except I’d put in Guns of Navarone somewhere.

And finally, George H. Siros breaks down a scene in X2 with his new column, Scene Anatomy 101. Reminds me of my heady, idealistic, slightly naïve days in film school, when I thought From Dusk Till Dawn and The Player were really cool films. Looking back, I realize that I really didn’t know jack shit then. Good column though.


Coming to a theatre near you…

I’ll put this section in every week to let you know my opinions on movies currently in your local theatre (and yes, I use the English version of “theatre”).

New this week:

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of the Ultimate Global Marketing Campaign- Harry Potter is one of the few films where I could care less about how good it is. Haven’t seen the first two. Won’t see this one. I have my philosophical reasons, but I’m not quite sure what they are.

Also in theatres:

Shrek 2 – Will battle Spider-Man 2 for top grossing film of the year. Antonio Banderas as Puss in Boots is casting genius.
Raising Helen – Ugh…and here I thought Kate Hudson was really cool being Goldie Hawn’s daughter and Penny Lane in Almost Famous. Then she has to marry Chris Robinson and do this flick.
Troy – The most homoerotic movie since Spartacus. It’s still ok. Just needed a little more boobage.
The Day After Tomorrow – Apply the Godzilla argument here. Why would anyone want to live in New York if it keeps getting destroyed by natural disasters and aliens/asteroids?
Soul Plane – A dog of a film, and I ain’t talking about Snoop-izzle. Is it me, or does every Tom Arnold film insult my intelligence.
Van Helsing – That whirring sound is Lon Cheney, Jr. spinning in his grave.
SuperSize Me – A documentary that reminds me of the philosophy of Albert Camus…an incredibly boring read that wastes my time explaining to me the obvious. I eat, therefore I grow out.


Fictional Non-Fiction

Now that I got the pleasantries and pimps out of the way, it’s time to really piss off people (and not by unintentional alliteration).

I’ve been a fan of Michael Moore ever since Roger & Me came out on video. Over a decade ago, it was a poignant look at corporate downsizing, those who are affected the most by it, and the gap between upper and lower class citizens. The scene with the women preparing rabbit meat still haunts me.

However, Moore has become more and more of a self-parody. He’s a narcissist who is what he rallies against. He is a rich white man earning millions off of exploiting poorer people. He’s become a propagandist instead of a filmmaker. He’s Leni Riefenstahl without the Nazis.

The main difference between the Michael Moore from Roger & Me, and the Michael Moore of Bowling for Columbine and Fahrenheit 9/11 is that his earlier works focused on the problems at hand. They were what documentaries are supposed to be…an unflinching look at life. The Michael Moore of today is much different. He’s started to believe in his own (probably created by himself) press.

I decided to take a look at Bowling for Columbine once again. I saw a totally different style of filmmaking than what you found in Roger & Me. In the later film, the problems of Flint, MI were the centerpiece of the story. In Bowling, Moore was the centerpiece. He blatantly engineered demonstrations and confrontations in order to get what he wanted. He became a self-styled “champion of the masses” instead of a filmmaker. He became his own star. His films quit being an unflinching eye, and became his narrow point-of-view, distorting anything that might detract from his position.

I knew of several criticism of Bowling and took them with a grain of salt. But when I saw the film again, I noticed a lot of tricks of the trade being employed, particularly the “audio edits”. An audio edit is when the editor cuts away from a talking head to something related to what’s being said. Then the editor cuts from the current portion of the interview to another piece of the interview. The purpose is to make it sound like the person speaking is actually saying what’s in the two cuts back-to-back in a purposeful and coherent manner. By cutting away to other visuals, you can’t see the shift in audio (e.g. change in camera angles, mouth position, head position in the frame, etc.) In other words, it looks and sounds seamless.

TV reporters and documentary filmmakers have been using this forever. Someone being interviewed rarely gives such precise, coherent statements unless it’s rehearsed. It’s a technique that lets reporters and filmmakers chop down rambling statements into more precise and powerful sound bites. Used properly, it’s a tool that cuts down the length of your piece, keeps the audience interested (you’d get bored hearing 20 minutes of “uh” and “well…”), without losing the integrity of what’s being said. Used by the wrong hands, you can actually change the meaning of what’s said.

After watching Bowling for Columbine, I realized just how much of an artist Michael Moore is at using audio edits. He has changed wording, added lines from different speeches into others, and a lot more…only to add a new level of depravity to what’s being said. It may be artistic, but it’s highly unethical. It’s a forgery used to get the emotional response he wants out of you…the emotional response he needs for you to go beyond the rational and see beyond the facts (which, in many cases, contradict what he’s trying to say).

In fact, Bowling states many times that other countries such as Canada, Germany, England, and Australia watch the same violent movies, play the same violent video games, and have the same amount of guns in the population. However, they have less gun violence. So, it must be a cultural thing. U.S. history has been violent. We’ve passed this violence down from generation to generation. If that’s the case, why is he picking on gun owners? If guns aren’t responsible, then why am I watching this?

How can someone like Michael Moore get away with the blatant distortion of facts and clever editing, win Academy Awards, and have such a loyal following? Easy. We don’t get to check his facts during the movie. Many of his source material don’t say where it comes from. We don’t know where any of these news reports are coming from. Are they from Flint, New York, or Colorado? Could they have been produced by Moore himself? We don’t know.

The biggest problem with all of this is that Moore is an extremely talented filmmaker. He knows his stuff. He knows how to write and produce a film that will tug at your heartstrings, and get you feeling sympathy for some, and hatred for others. As a film separated from its politics, Bowling for Columbine is fantastic. As a movie critic, I can find little fault with his artistry. It’s only after further scrutiny that his tale sounds hollow.

Moore knows how to work your emotions. It’s a skill shared by the best film directors in Hollywood. However, Steven Spielberg creates works of fiction. They are not real, no matter how realistic he wants it to look. Moore claims he’s capturing life as it is, when, in fact, different pieces of Bowling for Columbine were staged by him for the movie.

It’s fictional non-fiction. It’s not “based on a true story”. It’s passing an agenda off as fact. The lies hidden in 90% truth.


Afterthought:

What really hurt Moore in the credibility department is his recent ranting about Disney. Yes, Disney pulling the plug on Fahrenheit 9/11 against its contract with Miramax was wrong. I don’t approve of it. A movie should be distributed based on its merits, and not because it’s too controversial or political.

However, when the story first broke, Moore passed it on to the media as if this just happened, a blatant attempt by Disney to stop the film right before it debuted at Cannes. However, he changed his tune a little when news broke that Moore knew about Disney’s decision over a year ago. And it’s not the first time he’s warped the facts to suit his own ends.

At one point in Bowling, he shows a commercial that ran during the 1988 Presidential campaign about presidential candidate Michael Dukakis and Willie Horton. For those of you who don’t remember or are too young, Dukakis took a huge hit when a partisan ad hit national TV about a convict named Willie Horton, who was released on a weekend furlough program. Horton went on to rape and assault two people while on that furlough. The ad was paid for by a conservative group favoring Vice-President George Bush Sr., but not by the Bush campaign itself. Their ads only depicted Dukakis as lax on crime and never mention Horton’s name.

Moore spliced the two ads together to make it look like the Bush campaign created the Willie Horton ad, which it didn’t. Then he added a graphic to the ad saying Horton went on to kill 2 people while on furlough, which he didn’t. He was convicted earlier in his life of murdering 2 people, but not while he was on furlough. Moore made it look like this statement was part of the original ad, which it wasn’t. Reports came out later that said the ad in Bowling for Columbine was doctored and Moore didn’t even get his facts straight about what Horton did on furlough. Moore edited out the controversial Bush/Quayle announcement when the film was distributed on VHS. But, when it came time to create the DVD months later, Moore added his doctored version of the ad back in, and changed to graphic to read that Horton raped and assaulted 2 people while on furlough. Why the 2nd edit for the DVD? If he was wrong to doctor the ads enough to edit it out of the VHS release, why did he feel like it should be in the DVD?

And that’s not the only questions that have been raised about Moore. If he’s such the Champion of the Masses against big business and the media that turns a profit feeding fear into every American, then why does he shill himself out to one of the world’s largest media conglomerates for financial backing? Why is he going to a Disney company in the first place?

Because the little feud with Disney will make headlines and get free publicity for his new film. The story broke only a couple of weeks before Cannes, even though Moore knew about it over a year ago. It’s just enough time to make it national news and get it filtered over to France. He’ll get more coverage when a distributor picks up the film, and when the film comes out. He’s not really pissed off at Disney. He needed them to get the publicity.

When you examine a Michael Moore film beyond its artistic merit, you’ll find a filmmaker that has gone beyond exposing a part of America that it doesn’t want to see. At best, you’ll see a spin doctor more unethical than any presidential administration. At worst, you’ll see a propagandist who will use those he claims to protect for a few million dollars.