Michael Moore

Michael Francis Moore (born April 23, 1954) is an American filmmaker, author and left-wing activist. His works frequently address the topics of globalization and capitalism.

Moore won the 2002 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature for ''Bowling for Columbine'', which examined the causes of the Columbine High School massacre and the overall gun culture of the United States. He also directed and produced '' Fahrenheit 9/11'', a critical look at the presidency of George W. Bush and the War on Terror, which earned $119,194,771 to become the highest-grossing documentary at the American box office of all time. The film also won the Palme d'Or at the 2004 Cannes film festival, and was subject to intense controversy. His documentary ''Sicko'', which examines health care in the United States, is one of the top ten highest-grossing documentaries . In September 2008, he released his first free movie on the internet, '' Slacker Uprising'', which documented his personal quest to encourage more Americans to vote in presidential elections. He has also written and starred in the TV shows ''TV Nation'', a satirical news-magazine television series, and ''The Awful Truth'', a satirical show. In 2018, he released his latest film, ''Fahrenheit 11/9'', a documentary about the 2016 United States presidential election and the subsequent presidency of Donald Trump. He was executive producer of ''Planet of the Humans'' (2019), a documentary about the environmental movement.

Moore's works criticize topics such as globalization, large corporations, assault weapon ownership, Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Donald Trump, the Iraq War, the American health care system and capitalism overall. In 2005, ''Time'' named Moore one of the world's 100 most influential people. Critics have labeled Moore himself as a propagandist, and his films as propaganda.

Early life

Michael Francis Moore was born outside Flint, Michigan, and raised in Davison by parents Helene Veronica (''née'' Wall) (1921–2002), a secretary, and Francis Richard "Frank" Moore, (1921–2014) an automotive assembly-line worker. At that time, the city of Flint was home to many General Motors factories, where his parents and grandfather worked. His uncle LaVerne was one of the founders of the United Automobile Workers labor union and participated in the Flint sit-down strike.

Moore was brought up in a traditional Catholic home, and has Irish, and smaller amounts of Scottish and English, ancestry.Stated on ''Finding Your Roots'', February 26, 2019 Some of his ancestors were Quakers. He attended parochial St. John's Elementary School for primary school and later attended St. Paul's Seminary in Saginaw, Michigan, for a year. He then attended Davison High School, where he was active in both drama and debate, graduating in 1972. As a member of the Boy Scouts of America, he achieved the rank of Eagle Scout. At the age of 18, he was elected to the Davison school board. At the time he was the youngest person elected to office in the U.S., as the minimum age to hold public office had just been lowered to 18.

Career

Journalism

Moore dropped out of the University of Michigan–Flint following his first year of school (where he wrote for the student newspaper '' The Michigan Times''). At 22 he founded the alternative weekly magazine ''The Flint Voice'', which soon changed its name to ''The Michigan Voice'' as it expanded to cover the entire state. Popstar Harry Chapin is credited with being the reason the magazine was able to start by performing benefit concerts and donating the money to Moore. Moore crept backstage after a concert to Chapin's dressing room and convinced him to do a concert and give the money to him. Chapin subsequently did a concert in Flint every year.
In 1986, when Moore became the editor of ''Mother Jones'', a liberal political magazine, ''The Michigan Voice'' was shut down by the investors and he moved to California.

After four months at ''Mother Jones'', Moore was fired. Matt Labash of ''The Weekly Standard'' reported this was for refusing to print an article by Paul Berman that was critical of the Sandinista human rights record in Nicaragua. Moore refused to run the article, believing it to be inaccurate. "The article was flatly wrong and the worst kind of patronizing bullshit. You would scarcely know from it that the United States had been at war with Nicaragua for the last five years."

Moore believes that ''Mother Jones'' fired him because of the publisher's refusal to allow him to cover a story on the GM plant closings in his hometown of Flint, Michigan. He responded by putting laid-off GM worker Ben Hamper (who was also writing for the same magazine at the time) on the magazine's cover, leading to his termination. Moore sued for wrongful dismissal, and settled out of court for $58,000, providing him with seed money for his first film, ''Roger & Me''.

Directing, producing and screenwriting

''Roger & Me''

The 1989 film ''Roger & Me'' was Moore's first documentary about what happened to Flint, Michigan, after General Motors closed its factories and opened new ones in Mexico where the workers were paid lower wages. The "Roger" is Roger B. Smith, former CEO and President of General Motors. Harlan Jacobson, editor of ''Film Comment'' magazine, said that Moore muddled the chronology in ''Roger & Me'' to make it seem that events that took place before G.M.'s layoffs were a consequence of them. Critic Roger Ebert defended Moore's handling of the timeline as an artistic and stylistic choice that had less to do with his credibility as a filmmaker and more to do with the flexibility of film as a medium to express a satiric viewpoint.

''Pets or Meat: The Return to Flint''

Moore made a follow-up 23-minute documentary film, '' Pets or Meat: The Return to Flint'', that aired on PBS in 1992. It is based on ''Roger & Me''. The film's title refers to Rhonda Britton, a Flint, Michigan resident featured in both the 1989 and 1992 films, who sells rabbits as either pets or meat.

''Canadian Bacon''

Moore's 1995 satirical film ''Canadian Bacon'' features a fictional U.S. president (played by Alan Alda) engineering a fake war with Canada in order to boost his popularity. The film is also one of the last featuring Canadian actor John Candy. Some commentators in the media felt the film was influenced by the Stanley Kubrick film ''Dr. Strangelove.''

''The Big One''

Moore's 1997 film '' The Big One'' documents the tour publicizing Moore's book '' Downsize This! Random Threats from an Unarmed American,'' in which he criticizes mass layoffs despite record corporate profits. Among others, he targets Nike for outsourcing shoe production to Indonesia.

''Bowling for Columbine''

His documentary ''Bowling for Columbine'', released in 2002, probes the culture of guns and violence in the United States, taking as a starting point the Columbine High School massacre of 1999. ''Bowling for Columbine'' won the Anniversary Prize at the 2002 Cannes Film Festival and France's César Award as the Best Foreign Film. In the United States, it won the 2002 Academy Award for Documentary Feature. It also enjoyed great commercial and critical success for a film of its type, and has since gone on to be considered one of the greatest documentary films of all-time. At the time of ''Columbine''s release, it was the highest-grossing mainstream-released documentary (a record now held by Moore's '' Fahrenheit 9/11'').

''Fahrenheit 9/11''

Moore's film, '' Fahrenheit 9/11'', released in 2004, examines America in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, particularly the record of the George W. Bush Administration and alleged links between the families of George W. Bush and Osama bin Laden. ''Fahrenheit'' was awarded the ''Palme d'Or'', the top honor at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival; it was the first documentary film to win the prize since 1956. Moore later announced that ''Fahrenheit 9/11'' would not be in consideration for the 2005 Academy Award for Documentary Feature, but instead for the Academy Award for Best Picture. He stated he wanted the movie to be seen by a few million more people via television broadcast prior to Election Day. According to Moore, "Academy rules forbid the airing of a documentary on television within nine months of its theatrical release", and since the November 2 election was fewer than nine months after the film's release, it would have been disqualified for the Documentary Oscar. Regardless, ''Fahrenheit'' did not receive an Oscar nomination for Best Picture. The title of the film alludes to the classic book ''Fahrenheit 451'' about a future totalitarian state in which books are banned; according to the book, paper begins to burn at . The pre-release subtitle of the film confirms the allusion: "The temperature at which freedom burns."

As of August 2012, ''Fahrenheit 9/11'' is the highest-grossing documentary of all time, taking in over US$200 million worldwide, including United States box office revenue of almost US$120 million. In February 2011, Moore sued producers Bob and Harvey Weinstein for US$2.7 million in unpaid profits from the film, claiming they used "Hollywood accounting tricks" to avoid paying him the money. In February 2012, Moore and the Weinsteins informed the court that they had settled their dispute.

''Sicko''

Moore directed the 2007 film, ''Sicko'', about the American health care system, focusing particularly on the managed-care and pharmaceutical industries. At least four major pharmaceutical companies—Pfizer, Eli Lilly, AstraZeneca, and GlaxoSmithKline—ordered their employees not to grant any interviews or assist Moore. According to Moore in a letter on his website, "roads that often surprise us and lead us to new ideas—and challenge us to reconsider the ones we began with have caused some minor delays." The film premiered at the Cannes Film Festival on May 19, 2007, receiving a lengthy standing ovation, and was released in the U.S. and Canada on June 29, 2007. The film is currently ranked the twelfth highest grossing documentary of all time and received an Academy Award nomination for Best Documentary Feature.

''Captain Mike Across America'' and ''Slacker Uprising''

Moore takes a look at the politics of college students in what he calls "Bush Administration America" with '' Captain Mike Across America'', which was shot during Moore's 62-city college campus tour in the months leading up to the 2004 presidential election. The film debuted at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 7, 2007. It was later re-edited by Moore into ''Slacker Uprising'' and released for free on the internet on September 23, 2008.

''Capitalism: A Love Story''

Released on September 23, 2009, '' Capitalism: A Love Story'' looks at the financial crisis of 2007–2008 and the U.S. economy during the transition between the outgoing Bush Administration and the incoming Obama Administration. Addressing a press conference at its release, Moore said, "Democracy is not a spectator sport, it's a participatory event. If we don't participate in it, it ceases to be a democracy. So Obama will rise or fall based not so much on what he does but on what we do to support him."

''Where to Invade Next''

''Where to Invade Next'' examines the benefits of progressive social policies in various countries. The film had its premiere at the 2015 Toronto International Film Festival. Godfrey Cheshire, writing for Roger Ebert.com, wrote that "Moore's surprising and extraordinarily winning ''Where to Invade Next'' will almost surely cast his detractors at Fox News and similar sinkholes into consternation".

''Michael Moore in TrumpLand''

In '' Michael Moore in TrumpLand'', Moore talks about the 2016 Presidential Election Campaigns. It is a solo performance showing Moore on stage speaking to a seated audience. The film consists of Moore's opinions of the candidates and highlights the Democratic National Candidate Hillary Clinton's strengths and also features a lengthy section on how the Republican National Candidate Donald Trump could win. It was filmed in Wilmington, Ohio, at the Murphy Theatre over the course of two nights in October 2016. The film premiered just eleven days after it was shot at the IFC Center in New York City.

''Fahrenheit 11/9''

In May 2017, it was announced that Moore had reunited with Harvey Weinstein to direct his new film about Donald Trump, titled ''Fahrenheit 11/9'', which was released in approximately 1,500 theaters in the United States and Canada on September 21, 2018. Sexual assault allegations against Weinstein prompted Moore to revoke the plan to work with The Weinstein Company, which stalled production. The title refers to the day when Donald Trump officially became President-elect of the United States. In a column for ''Variety'' responding to the film's low opening weekend, "How Michael Moore Lost His Audience", sympathetic film critic Owen Gleiberman wrote "He's like an aging rock star putting out albums that simply don't mean as much to those who were, and are, his core fans". According to Glenn Greenwald, "what he’s trying is of unparalleled importance: not to take the cheap route of exclusively denouncing Trump but to take the more complicated, challenging, and productive route of understanding who and what created the climate in which Trump could thrive."

''Planet of the Humans''

Michael Moore was executive producer of the documentary, ''Planet of the Humans'', which was directed by Jeff Gibbs and released on July 31, 2019. The film makes the argument that since the first Earth Day, the condition of the planet has worsened, and questions whether mainstream approaches adopted by industry to mitigate climate change entail environmental impacts whose costs are comparable to or even possibly outweigh the benefits. The film received criticism from a number of climate change experts and activists who disputed its claims and the accuracy of figures cited in the film and suggested that the film could play into the hands of the fossil fuel industry.

Michael Moore, Jeff Gibbs, and co-producer Ozzie Zehner responded to the critics on an episode of '' Rising''.

Writing

Moore has written and co-written eight non-fiction books, mostly on similar subject matter to his documentaries. ''Stupid White Men'' (2001) is ostensibly a critique of American domestic and foreign policy but, by Moore's own admission, is also "a book of political humor". '' Dude, Where's My Country?'' (2003), is an examination of the Bush family’s relationships with Saudi royalty, the Bin Laden family, and the energy industry, and a call-to-action for liberals in the 2004 election. Several of his works have made bestseller lists.

Acting

Moore has dabbled in acting, following a supporting role in ''Lucky Numbers'' (2000) playing the cousin of Lisa Kudrow's character, who agrees to be part of the scheme concocted by John Travolta's character. He also had a cameo in his ''Canadian Bacon'' as an anti-Canada activist. In 2004, he did a cameo, as a news journalist, in '' The Fever'', starring Vanessa Redgrave in the lead.

Television

Between 1994 and 1995, he directed and hosted the BBC
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