Michael Moore charmed me. Or something like that. Over the course of a half-hour interview, he was sweet, calm and intelligent. He seemed weary. He was self-critical. He seemed sensitive. He wanted me to like his film.

Public relations people should take note -- especially the flacks who might someday find Moore and a camera crew at their front desks. He was almost perfect. He ducked my jabs. He deflected entire lines of questioning. His sad-sack weariness made me even feel slightly sorry for him.

When I look back at the transcript of the interview it's hard to see what happened. Part of the problem was that I was kind of nervous. I'm not exactly the Christopher Hitchens type; I don't usually go out looking for a fight, journalistic or otherwise. Frankly, I'm not dogmatic enough to stick to a party line. I get swayed. I get influenced. I want to believe people.

It's a liability, I know. I never even got to use my secret weapon.

The transcript of the interview follows. My questions are in bold and Moore's answers are in roman type. My thoughts, a post-production voice-over of sorts, are in italics. The transcript has been edited for clarity and length -- like almost every transcript you read in Salon. The questions and answers appear in the order in which they were asked.

A standard tack in every interview is to start out with the easy questions. You're supposed to win your subject's trust so that he's less likely to be threatened by the tough ones that come later. ("What a nice day, eh, Reverend? So how long is it now that you've been fucking pigs?") I probably started a bit fast.

Have you been watching the news?

No, what's up?

There's just been another shooting in Maryland -- that sniper. It's a teenager this time.

Do they believe it's the same guy?

Yes.

Where was this one?

At a school in Maryland.

At a school? Outside a school? What was the race of the child?

I don't know, actually. The details are still coming. I brought it up now because this case was all over the news this weekend. It just seems like, of the different fear stories that we see on TV, it's one of the main ones: the no-reason, random shooting. Did you identify different sorts of gun violence stories in your reporting? This is sort of an inarticulate question, but ...

No, I know what you mean. Yeah. Ultimately, I came to the conclusion that it really isn't the guns. It's the larger society and culture that we've created, an ethic in American society that says every man for himself, pull yourself up by your bootstraps, let's punish the poor for being poor. Other countries, other societies are: "If you get sick, we should help you. If you lose your job, we should help you." When you create a society like that, you're automatically going to have less violence -- if everyone has the sense that they're all responsible for everyone else.

OK, this is what's happening. One, I'm distracted. I don't really want to ask Moore about gun violence in the media, and I know next to nothing about the sniper case -- it just happened a few hours ago. Remember, what I really want to do is bust him. So I'm not even thinking through my questions yet. Moore, for his part, makes a perfectly gracious -- and professional -- response. First, he assures me that he understands my babbling. Then, he goes right on message. He's into his film immediately. He also saves me from my own bad question. I go into something a little more complex ...

You seem concerned with systems. Part of your point is that gun violence doesn't come from one of these little causes, but a whole system. The thing is, systems are easy to criticize but difficult to change.

This one especially.

Right. So how do you start peeling back those layers? Each person, each different interest, wants to identify its own cause and go after that particular angle. But in your film, those interests would often get pilloried. How do you change an entire system without taking all these little steps?

Now, notice Moore's control here. First, he compliments my question. All journalists want to be told they're asking good questions. Of course, what journalists should want are answers to our questions -- and Moore doesn't really provide one. But check out the dazzling rhetoric, the easy command of facts, the use of the Pledge of Allegiance -- not once, not twice, but three times. And you know he dropped his voice and shook his head for it too. I have to admit, he's pretty good.

That is a good question. I don't know if it can change. It may be too late for us. We may be too far down that road of forgetting what the mandate is, in terms of being a society that is there for everyone, and justice for all. "And justice for all," that's what we have our kids say every day. "And justice for all."

Well, where is the justice for all when you've got 40 million living in poverty? When you've got 50 million people with no healthcare whatsoever? When you've got another 30 to 40 million who cannot read or write? What's the justice there? It's nothing but injustice there. We will never survive as a society if we don't solve those problems.

Now here's where Moore pretty much cuts me off at the knees. I ask him for a more concrete answer, and what he comes back with is this amazingly self-critical speech. I don't realize it, but he beats me here by doing to himself exactly what I want to do -- before I even get a chance.

So you're saying that it's unsolvable.

I'm hoping that it isn't. I'm not as optimistic as I used to be. I look at myself, you know. It's like, I was very active in the [Ralph] Nader campaign in 2000. And I thought then, "Geez, why don't we take four years and really build a real independent movement in this country." Because clearly, the majority are on our side on all the issues. If you look at the polls, the majority want full healthcare, the majority want to go after polluters, the majority want gun control. We're really in the majority. We're in the mainstream. So why can't we organize it? It's not like we have to go convince people that there should be gun control or stronger pollution laws or whatever. People are already with us.

So anyway, I'm saying all this because I'm just wondering why I didn't help to organize any kind of movement or party or something in the past couple of years. If I'm not doing it, others aren't doing it. I feel that I'm contributing, sort of, to the defeat. I hate to say that, because I don't want it to go down the drain.

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