Whatever you think of Michael Moore, you have to admit, he gets people talking. Last night I checked out a screening of his new film, CAPITALISM: A LOVE STORY in Brentwood, near UCLA, and the entire car ride home was non-stop discussion. Some of it was about his method, some about the film, and some of it was about whether or not it would make any difference.
CAPITALISM is Moore’s usual fare. Shocking facts about abuses in the government. And Moore was very clear about the “fact” part of all of this. Before the film, he told the theater that after his earlier movie he’d offered ten thousand dollars to anyone who could prove him wrong. Apparently he still has the money. Throughout the film, I flipped back and forth between cheering him on for shedding light on the evils of the world and rolling my eyes at him for stupidly putting too much emphasis on religion. (He did address that in the Q&A after the screening, saying that he probably did hit that a little hard.)
Hearing that corporations were taking out life insurance policies on their workers made me sick. I’m hardly shocked, but still incredibly upset by what unscrupulous lenders did to so many home owners. Mike, I’m right there with you on health care, taxes on the rich, etc. But when you start with the Jesus thing…just don’t. You lost me completely.
Look, I agree with the guy on a lot of points. Most of them, actually. He’s kind of preaching to the choir with me. The system is a giant stinking mess and I’m glad someone is shedding light on it. But I have to disagree with some of his PETA-style methods. Lemme ‘splain. I’m a vegetarian. I’m an animal freak. I can’t even squash a bug. I had a bee infestation in my kitchen cabinet and I scooped them up one by one and put them outside…where they promptly flew around the house and right back in. PETA does great things for animal rights and their anti-fur ad is wonderful. (And not just for the naked people.) But their shock tactics usually end up making vegetarians look like idiots.
Moore tends to rant and accomplishes the very same thing. Yelling that you’re making a citizen’s arrest at the offices of AIG is funny. After the fifth time, it’s just stupid. You know you’re not going to be let in. You know no one is coming out to give a public apology. You look like a whining child.
Moore had this to say about capitalism, “I think that this economic system that we call capitalism is wrong, and I’m not looking at regulations… We’re in the 21st century, aren’t we smart enough to come up with a new economic system that just goes back to the old values of democracy and moral ethics that we were all raised with. And I’m not an economist, I don’t have a blueprint of what that means, but I hope that somebody will be stimulated into thinking about this, cause that’s the direction we need to go.”
I guess that’s the point. Whether you agree or disagree with his methods, the whole idea is to get people talking. After the film, the audience members seemed more interested in telling each other what their point of view was than hearing what Moore had to say. Good. Get fired up. Go out and smite the banks. You did what you set out to do, Mike. But in the future, change tactics a bit. You’ll reach more of us that way.