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Wednesday, Nov 25, 2009
Michael Moore's new film "Bowling for Columbine" is a heavy-handed, semicoherent diatribe about gun violence. But when I showed up to confront him about it, he charmed me senseless and beat me at my own game.
Oct 10, 2002 | I wanted to bust him. I wanted to go in there and tell Michael Moore that I think he's heavy-handed, that he's reckless with the facts, that he doesn't know anything about the Columbine killings. I even had a secret weapon.
That was my agenda. And contrary to what I learned in my crappy journalism school, I didn't really care if I was breaking some sort of rule about hallowed objectivity: Journalists, film critics, readers -- everyone has an agenda. Just like Michael Moore.
He's made a career out of it. His first film, "Roger & Me," targeted General Motors for bankrupting his hometown, Flint, Mich. Moore's television shows, "TV Nation" on NBC and "The Awful Truth" on Bravo, went after rich people and corporations. His bestselling books cover similar territory; "Stupid White Men" is particularly critical of George W. Bush.
His new film, "Bowling for Columbine," has all kinds of agendas. The central question is why so many Americans die from guns every year -- far more than in any other country. Of course this is a Michael Moore film, so there are a lot of distractions. It starts off with kitschy toy gun commercials and ends with an attack on National Rifle Association president Charlton Heston. In between, we meet the Michigan Militia, look back at the Columbine incident and go backstage with Marilyn Manson. There is also a surreal cartoon history of the United States narrated by a talking bullet. And, at an even lower moment, a three-minute montage of every single foreign-policy debacle of the last 50 years, played to the tune of "What a Wonderful World."
"I see skies of blue and clouds of white ..."
Napalm in Vietnam.
"The bright blessed day, the dark sacred night ..."
Mass graves in Chile, or El Salvador, or Kosovo.
You can almost hear the anvil falling from the sky.
There are many lessons in the film, which mostly add up to the idea that guns are not inherently bad (something of a step forward for the left, I would argue), but that a conspiracy of news media and big business creates a culture of fear that in turn feeds more violence. And the government is complicit for not providing a social safety net. There are a lot of smaller points. One of them is that we should be more Canadian: Our northern neighbors have about the same amount of guns per capita and only a fraction of the gun violence.
But look, I wasn't feeling very Canadian after seeing the film. I was feeling American. Combative. I decided that I wanted to make a fool of Michael Moore. Actually, what I really wanted to do is exactly what Moore does to everybody else: I wanted to let him make a fool of himself.
I wanted to tell him that he's bad for the left, or what's left of the left. That his obnoxious pranks humiliate some and alienate others. That, to paraphrase Elvis, I could use a little less talk, a little more action.
[Confidential to Michael: My editors, including David Talbot, with whom you apparently had some sort of rift a few years ago, didn't know a thing about my agenda -- they didn't even know that I'd hooked up an interview. And no, neither GM nor Nike nor Borders put me up to it either. It was just me.]
To do unto Moore, what I really should have done was get a video camera, ride the subway to his apartment on the cushy Upper West Side of Manhattan and tried to open his front door. Anyone who knows Moore's television shows and movies would recognize the gag: In "Bowling for Columbine" Moore follows a star map to Heston's gate; in another scene, he checks front doors in a Toronto neighborhood to find out if it's true that Canucks don't bother to lock them. (They don't.)
Ideally, I would find Moore's door locked, and I would ring the doorbell and he would open the door in his underwear and a stained T-shirt, because that would be the easiest cliché -- kind of the equivalent of the gun nut who wears a "Fuck Everybody" hat in "Bowling." To help the scene play out, Moore would be tired from watching talk shows late into the night, or working on his Web site or terrorizing his employees or something. And I would ask him a question in my nicest sotto voce.
"You know, Michael," I would say, deadpan, "would you like to apologize to the left for making us all look like crazed conspiracy theorists? And did you really plagiarize some silly list you found on the Internet? And what do you want to say to the people who will inevitably find all kinds of errors in 'Bowling for Columbine' -- because they always find errors in your work."
And he would be groggy until he figured out what was going on, and then I would back up and let him freak out.
I don't have a video camera. And also, well, to put it as gently as possible, I really didn't care. Not that much. My problem with Moore is a bit slighter than any of that suggests. Honestly, more than anything, I just don't like his aesthetic. I don't like his style. I don't like his everyguy posturing. I wish he knew when to stop. I wish he was smarter. Ultimately, I don't think the political left needs its own Rush Limbaugh.
So instead of charging in headfirst, I scheduled my interview just like all the other reporters from magazines and newspapers. Moore is getting a lot of press for this film, in part because it did well at Cannes (of course French people are going to like it: It makes fun of Americans). Our interview took place at the Regency Hotel, which is one of those incredibly fancy places on Park Avenue -- the fanciest street in all of New York. There was a red BMW and two limos stationed out front when I got there, the kind of detail that I scribbled in my notebook with my poison pen. It was all going to play out. I would find Moore. I would ask him hard questions. He would get more and more frustrated. And he would make a fool out of himself. That was what was going to happen.
Except that it didn't.
