Michael Moore

American filmmaker Michael Moore (born 1954) introduced his confrontational style of documentary–making with the 1989 film Roger & Me. Moore's goal with the film, which chronicles the devastating effects of auto plant closures in Moore's hometown of Flint, Michigan, was to prove that documentaries can simultaneously inform and entertain. Moore spent the entire film attempting to interview General Motors Corporation president Roger Smith, and his antics often provoked laughter. Moore applied the same ethos to his subsequent films, generating controversy and major box office success with The Big One, Bowling for Columbine, and Farenheit 9/11. Bowling for Columbine earned Moore best documentary honors at the 2002 Academy Awards. Moore also wrote three books of political commentary: Downsize This!: Random Threats from an Unarmed American; Stupid White Men; and Dude, Where's My Country?.

Moore was born in 1954, in Davison, Michigan, a suburb of Flint, a working–class city. His father, Frank, worked on a General Motors (GM) automobile assembly line and his mother, Veronica, was a secretary. While Moore graduated from Davison High School, he attended Catholic schools until age 14 and enrolled in the seminary in Saginaw, Michigan, for a time. His interest in priesthood evolved from the same concern for social justice that his films reflected, Moore told People magazine in 2002. "I guess in my head I never left the seminary," he said. "I still have the belief that I should be doing something with my life that benefits society." Moore also revealed his political leanings at an early age. As an Eagle Scout, he won a merit badge for a slide show exposing corporate polluters, and in 1972, when 18–year–olds were first granted the right to vote, he successfully ran for the Davison County school board, becoming one of the youngest elected officials in the United States.

Took on General Motors

Following his high school graduation, Moore briefly attended the University of Michigan–Flint, but soon dropped out. He then founded a crisis–intervention hotline and began writing for an alternative newspaper, the Flint Voice. The paper later became the Michigan Voice, and Moore its editor, leading to a job in San Francisco as editor at the left–wing Mother Jones magazine. Moore remained at Mother Jones for only a few months, and later recalled in a 1998 interview in Tikkun that his publisher and staff had disagreed with Moore's proposed affirmative–action policy, which sought to bring more working–class writers to the publication. "I said that I actually thought that making class a priority addresses the root of the issues of feminism and race that we're all concerned about," he said. "That ultimately we have to see this as a society that's setup between the haves and the have–nots. Where the few that are the rich set up situations in which the races are at each other's throats. Where women are kept in a place where their labor can be used for less money. All of this comes back to the issue of class. And if we address class, then we'll take care of a lot of other problems." Moore added: "I lasted there about four months."

Moore briefly worked for consumer activist Ralph Nader, whom he later endorsed in the 2000 U.S. presidential election, and then returned to Flint, where auto–plant cut backs and closures amid a nationwide recession had crippled the economy. Soon after Moore's homecoming, GM, the city's largest employer, announced plans for additional layoffs. Using money from a wrongful termination lawsuit against Mother Jones as well as funds from the sale of his house and regular bingo games he organized, he began laying the groundwork for a film that would explore the effect of the layoffs. Consulting with respected documentarians Kevin Rafferty and Anne Bohlen, Moore received a crash course in filmmaking and set about attempting to secure an on–camera interview with GM CEO Smith in a manner that elicited both shock and laughter. The result was Roger & Me, a critically lauded film released in 1989 that established Moore's now–trademark confrontational and entertaining approach. "With Roger & Me, I made a conscious decision that I wanted to make a documentary that people who don't go to documentaries would watch, and I don't know if that had been done before," Moore told Entertainment Weekly in 2002. Moore told the magazine he believed his point would come across better if the film as a whole was compelling. "I think that if you make the art or the music or the film engaging, entertaining, the message comes through much stronger than if the message is primary and entertainment is secondary," he said. The formula worked: Warner Brothers bought the film, which Moore made for $250,000, for $3 million and it made $7 million at the box office. As part of his deal with Warner Brothers, the studio paid for new homes for four unemployed autoworkers featured in the film who had been evicted from their homes. Roger & Me also netted Moore a slew of awards, including Best of Show awards at the Telluride, NewYork, Chicago, Vancouver, and Toronto film festivals; and the National Society of Film Critics, the Los Angeles Society of Film Critics, and the New York Film Critics Circle awards for best documentary.

Moore next served as an interviewer in Rafferty's film Blood in the Face, a documentary about white power groups, and directed Pets or Meat: The Return to Flint, a short follow–up to Roger & Me. In 1991, Moore married his longtime girlfriend, Kathleen Glynn, a graphic designer who has produced several of Moore's films. In 1994, he directed a fictional feature film, Canadian Bacon, a satirical comedy about a president who stages a fake "Cold War" against Canada. The film's star, John Candy, died shortly after filming and the resulting contractual disputes prevented the film's widespread release. That year, Moore brought his renegade style to television with NBC's TV Nation, a show featuring many techniques Moore used in Roger & Me as it examined the high costs of the American healthcare system, the shipping of garbage to poor communities, and the exclusivity of gated subdivisions, among other topics. NBC dropped TV Nation after its first year, as did Fox after one season.

Published Books, Released Second Film

In 1996, Moore published Downsize This: Random Threats from an Unarmed American, a chronicle of various pranks aimed at corporations he deemed greedy and unethical. During his tour for the book, which became a surprise bestseller, Moore took a camera crew and visited numerous low–wage workers and their employers, most notably Phil Knight, chief executive of shoe manufacturer Nike Incorporated. The result was the film The Big One. Moore told Tikkun he believed his unassuming appearance—the heavy–set filmmaker typically sports jeans, a windbreaker, and a baseball cap—convinced corporate executives they could outsmart him. "I just don't look like the kind of filmmaker that's going to give them any trouble," he said. "And they operate with the assumption that I'm on the outside, because of my class, I don't have an uncle in the business who's going to help me through the door. I don't know an agent. I don't know anybody in Hollywood. So, without even thinking about it, they assume: whatever he shoots won't be shown because the system isn't set up to service him getting to the point where his film would actually be on the screen. So, they're completely relaxed."

Moore returned to television in 1999, with The Awful Truth, a TV Nation–styleshow that ran for two seasons on the cable network Bravo. His next book, Stupid White Men . . . And Other Sorry Excuses for the State of the Nation, a vehement criticism of President George W. Bush and his administration, was scheduled for publication in 2001. But after the September 11 terrorist attacks that year on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, Moore's publisher, Random House, asked Moore to alter several passages and threatened to drop the book when Moore refused. The book was ultimately published, however, after several librarians supported Moore through an e–mail campaign. It quickly became a bestseller.

Received Academy Award

Moore released his third full–length documentary, Bowling for Columbine, in 2002. The film, which examines gun violence in America against the backdrop of a 1999 school shooting in Littleton, Colorado, that left 15 people dead, became the first documentary in 46 years to be shown in competition at the Cannes Film Festival and earned that institution's Jury Award. In February of 2003, Moore received an Academy Award for Best Documentary for the film. He sharply criticized Bush, who had just launched a war in Iraq, in his acceptance speech, saying, as quoted in a 2004 issue of Time, "We live in fictitious times. We live in the time where we have fictitious election results that elect a fictitious president. We live in a time where we have a man sending us to war for fictitious reasons . . . Shame on you, Mr. Bush. Shame on you." Some audience members derided Moore's speech and the press widely criticized him. The most angry comments came from passers–by, however. "For the next couple of months I could not walk down the street without some form of serious abuse," Moore, who now lives in New York, told Entertainment Weekly in 2004. "Threats of physical violence, people wanting to fight me, right in my face. . . . People pulling over in their cars screaming. People spitting on the sidewalk. I finally stopped going out."

Moore's rebuttal came in his next film, his most successful to date. Farenheit 9/11 criticizes Bush's responses to the terrorist attacks, especially his decision to launch a war in Iraq. The film received a 20–minute standing ovation at the Cannes Film Festival, where it also became the first documentary to win the festival's top prize, the Palm D'or. The prospect of a major theatrical release appeared questionable for a time, after the Walt Disney Company refused to let the film's distributor, Miramax, release the film. Ultimately, Miramax heads Bob and Harvey Weinstein were permitted to purchase the film from Disney, and they in turn sold it to IFC Entertainment and Lion's Gate Entertainment. The film made almost $22 million the weekend it was released, topping the previous box–office record for a documentary set by Bowling for Columbine. Moore made no secret of hoping his film inspired Americans to vote Bush out of office. He pushed for a summer release of the film and an October release of the DVD to reach as many viewers as possible before the November 2004 U.S. presidential election. "I hope that people go see this movie and I hope they throw [him] out of office," he told the New Statesman in 2004. "My mantra in the editing room has been: 'We've got to make a movie where, on the way out of the theater, the people ask the ushers if they have any torches.' "

Audiences and critics were divided on the film. Some thought Moore showed aspects of the government and war that the media ignore while others accused him of grandstanding and manipulating facts. To counter charges of fabrication or embellishment, Moore hired two former aides to U.S.President Bill Clinton and a fact–checker from the New Yorker magazine. While opinion was divided, the film reached a wide audience, despite its unabashed bias. "You would have expected Moore's movie to play well in the liberal big cities, and it is doing so," Richard Corliss wrote in a 2004 issue of Time. "But the film is also touching the heart of the heartland. In Bartlett, Tenn., a Memphis suburb, the rooms at Stage Road Cinema showing Farenheit 9/11 have been packed with viewers who clap, boo, laugh and cry nearly on cue. Even the dissenters are impressed." While Moore did not realize his ultimate aim—to prevent the re–election of Bush—he remained true to his ideals. "I come from a factory town," he told Time in 2004. "And you don't go to a gun fight with a slingshot."

Books

Newsmakers, Issue 3, Gale Research, 1990.

Periodicals

Entertainment Weekly, October 25, 2002; July 9, 2004.

New Statesman, July 19, 2004.

People, November 18, 2002.

Publishers Weekly, December 24, 2001.

Tikkun, November–December 1998.

Time, July 12, 2004.

Online

"Michael Moore," All Movie Guide,http://ww.allmovie.com (December 28, 2004).

Michael Moore 1954–, American documentary filmmaker, author, and sociopolitical activist, b. Flint, Mich. After working as an alternative print and radio journalist, he embarked on a career as a highly personal, populist, frequently polarizing, and increasingly controversial documentary filmmaker. Appalled by his native city's economic decline as a result of downsizing and closings by General Motors, he made Roger & Me (1989), a satirical journey in which he unsuccessfully tries to meet with GM's chairman. His next major work, Bowling for Columbine (2002; Academy Award), is a scathing look at America's gun culture. Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004), his most controversial and financially successful film to date, is an angry critique of the Bush administration's handling of post-9/11 events and Iraq. His next documentary, Sicko (2007), focused on the ways insurance companies deny appropriate care to subscribers, and Capitalism: A Love Story (2009) attacked the corporate dominance of American society and its effects on ordinary Americans. Moore also has produced television programs combining news and satire and written several provocative books, e.g., Downsize This! (1996), Stupid White Men (2001), and Dude, Where's My Country? (2003), as well as the autobiographical Here Comes Trouble (2011).

Bibliography: See K. Lawrence, ed., The World according to Michael Moore (2004).

Ayrton, Michael (1921–75). British painter, sculptor, stage designer, book illustrator, writer on art, and broadcaster. His career was often marred by ill health, but he travelled widely and had a long and varied list of works to his credit. He was an erudite, inventive, and highly individual artist, much of whose work revolved around his obsession with the myth of Daedalus and Icarus, which he treated as analogous to his own artistic endeavours. The most extreme expression of his obsession is the enormous maze of brick and stone (1968) he built for an American millionaire at Arkville in New York State, imitating the labyrinth Daedalus built for King Minos of Crete at Knossos. He wrote several books, including The Testament of Daedalus (1962), and illustrated many others. From 1944 to 1946 he was art critic of the Spectator (succeeding John Piper), in which position he was a leading spokesman for Neo-Romanticism, and at about the same time he became a regular radio broadcaster on art (he also appeared often in the BBC's Round Britain Quiz).