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FILM COMMENT
Online Exclusive
MICHAEL MOORE INTERVIEWED
A SELECTION OF EXCLUSIVE OUTTAKES FROM THE INTERVIEW WITH MICHAEL MOORE IN OUR JULY/AUGUST ISSUE.
By Gavin Smith
READ KENT JONES'S ARTICLE ON FAHRENHEIT 911
Bush Bashing
Publically, the mantra for Harvey and Bob and Lion's Gate, everybody working on the film, has been, "This is not a partisan film." And they've working overtime to try and get that anti-Bush or Bush-bashing moniker taken off the film. And I've tried to tell them I've been through this before with Stupid White Men. Harper Collins didn't want to put it out right after 9/11 and I said, "No, I think it's okay." They said, "No, you can't. We can't say this about the President!"
There was this poll on the Fox News Channel in the summer of 2001, before 9/11 - and this is Fox, so this made it even more interesting. They found that 60 percent of the public was still upset over the 2000 election and what transpired. And while everybody kept saying, "We've got to move on, we've got to move on," people had moved on in the sense that they accepted that this is the way it is. But I don't think the intensity of their feelings had changed. I have felt for some time that Bush was not as popular as the polls may have assumed that he was and that the enormous approval ratings he was receiving was because we were attacked - and anytime any group of humans are attacked, they rally behind their chief, their leader, no matter who he is - it's just a normal human response. And that's what I saw taking place. It wasn't about Bush, per se - they just wanted to be protected. And this is the guy in charge and he's got to do his job and protect them.
Michael Moore is coming to town
We had a situation where we were going to go over to Iraq because we got a letter from one of the soldiers who told us they weren't being given flak jackets. The Army was getting them, but the National Guard wasn't getting them. So, we thought, let's go over and take some flak jackets. So we bought a bunch of them and we e-mailed the soldier back and told him we were coming over. And he tells the other guys in his unit, "Michael Moore is coming with flak jackets." Word gets to his Commanding Officer that I'm coming. Within three days, they had their flak jackets from the Army. And he wrote his wife and she went on NPR and told the story about how just the threat of Michael Moore coming over was enough to get all these guys their flak jackets. We didn't even have to go over there.
The Man from Flint
I read this piece in the Observer a couple weeks ago attacking me. Their class analysis is that because I've done well now and live on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, somehow that means that I'm not from the working class. And they don't understand what that means, being from the working class. It's not about what you're earning now, or what you're buying now. It's about how you're wired. And, yes, there are people who forget where they're from when they're doing well and they close the door behind them so that no one else can get through. I have never had that feeling, and I don't know if it's the way I was raised, but as I have incrementally done better financially, I feel only more of a burden and responsibility. It's just my own internal pressure. I sat there in the Eighties and I struggled with everyone else. I was on unemployment three different times, some $90 a week. I never earned more than $15,000 a year, even when working. But I liked my life and it was all good and I wasn't starving, clearly·. I just saw too many lives destroyed by the decisions General Motors made at a time they were posting record profits, profits that were made by those people who worked in those factories, and it was like, "See you later, thanks for helping us become the world's largest corporation. Fuck off." And I will carry that with me to my dying day, That will never leave me. This movie can do $100 million at the box-office, my next book can sell 10 million copies - and it will never leave me. In fact the more the people respond to it, the more I'm convinced I have to stay on that track.
For a while after Roger & Me, I thought, "okay, we don't always have to go to Flint to do things, we should go elsewhere and do this and that." And something would happen that would just pull me back. For Bowling for Columbine, I made these big print-outs that said, "There will be absolutely no Flint scenes in this movie." I was starting to feel embarrassed by it. It's like, "is this all he can do? Make movies that have some relationship to Flint?" And then, we're in the middle of making the movie and a six-year-old shoots a six-year-old. My wife said, "I'm going to get a crew and go back there tonight. You can decide if you want to use it or not." So she went. And then she came back, the footage was very powerful and compelling and we sat there with the editors. And someone said to me, "No one criticized Steinbeck for always writing about the Central Valley of California." Maybe they did, but we don't look back and read all those books and go, "Can't he ever give it up with all those farm workers and growers."
I decided to give myself a break and basically came to the conclusion that this is who I am, this is where I'm from, and these things are from the Heart, and I will tell their story over and over again. When I'm standing in Lila's kitchen in Fahrenheit 9/11, I'm at ease, and she's at ease. To the people in Flint, I'm not a movie star, not a celebrity. I lived there for far too long, until I was 35 or 36 years old - they know me as just this guy.
Lila Lipscomb Goes to Washington
She told us she was going to the White House. So our cameras are with her, she's starting to find her way around that park. One of my rules is that we don't take them, we don't tell them, we just capture what is. Even though we may know where the White House is, she just wanted to walk over and find it. And in the longer version, I had all her various encounters with Homeland Security. It's very hard to get near the White House right now. Lots of fences and stuff. So she's in Lafayette Park, she's walking by that woman, who's been in Lafayette Park for the last 10 years, who says Bush is a terrorist, and then that other woman, a tourist, comes into the frame and says, "No he's not, this is all fake, this is all staged." And it was a very interesting word to use. It kind of fit with the whole thing with the making-up of Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld at the beginning of the movie, in terms of what is real here.
Jean-Luc Godard
I felt bad that he made a comment about a movie he hadn't seen. I think he has the right to make those perverse, weird comments. Always admired him. The only way people in Flint were able to see his films is because I brought them there. I ran my own little art house every weekend, on Friday and Saturday nights for close to 10 years. I showed everything by Godard, Fassbinder, Truffaut and Bergman.
So what's your favorite Godard film?
Sympathy for the Devil [laughs]. For me, Breathless was his best film, probably because it was maybe his most accessible.
Neil Young's "Rockin' in the Free World"
At the end of the film Bush says "Fool me once, shame on· me. I won't get fooled again." Clearly that moment demands that we hear Roger Daltrey scream, "Won't get fooled again!" That's how I had it cut. Pete Townsend blocked it, would not allow the song to be used. Word came to us that he is not a fan of Michael Moore's and in fact supports the war and supports Tony Blair and doesn't want the song used in any way that would make Blair look bad. Harvey personally made an appeal to him to reconsider. And he wouldn't. At that point, we're about a week away from going to Cannes. So, I remembered while I was driving in Michigan "Rockin' in the Free World" came on the radio and I thought this would be a cool song to have in the movie. So we said, "Let's see how this works," and it worked perfectly. Called up Neil Young and he said, "Whatever you need. Absolutely. It's yours." Once we started playing it in the movie, we quickly forgot about The Who. In fact, after Cannes, we got a call from their manager who said they might be willing to reconsider. And I said, "No, uh uh. That's bad karma. This is Neil Young's moment." People leave the theaters, that's what I want them hearing. In fact I don't want them hearing a song that has the line, "Meet the new boss, same as the old boss." Because the new boss I sincerely hope won't be the same as the old boss. I don't want that song. It gave me a chance to have a line at the end too, cause you can't go right into "Rockin' in the Free World." So I get to say "For once I agree with Bush·we won't get fooled again."
© 2004 by The Film Society of Lincoln Center
