Tuesday, April 7, 1998
Defender of the downsized brings his campaign to film
FILM: Moore attacks corporate cruelty, complacency with
humor
By Cheryl Klein
Daily Bruin Senior Staff
A jovial if road-weary Michael Moore strolls into the Bel Age
Hotel’s Chopin room, clad in a cable knit sweater and signature
baseball cap. The first thing everyone wants to know is: has he
played any good tricks on his film publicist yet?
They are alluding to one of the lighter motifs in Moore’s new
documentary, "The Big One," which opens Friday. As the camera crew
follows him around the country on his "Downsize This!" book tour,
Moore grapples with a series of Random House PR folks who play
baby-sitter to his impish rebel. Some are annoyed, some are
good-natured, one becomes a partner in crime. Moore enlists a
security guard to harass yet another.
Now the filmmaker laughs, "No, no tricks. Not even on April
Fool’s Day … Oh! That reminds me of something!"
And with that Moore disappears, leaving an amused cluster of
journalists to ponder what pranks he might be pulling in the next
room.
Over half an hour passes before he returns. He offers no
immediate explanation, but by now the public has endeared itself to
Moore’s spontaneity. There’s something both hilarious and cathartic
about watching the average-Joe-plus-camera try to prod his way into
corporate office after corporate office. It’s what made 1989’s
"Roger and Me" the highest grossing non-musical documentary of all
time.
The same technique permeates "The Big One," which is basically a
road movie with a keen sense of irony and a political conscience.
In various midwest cities (he skips the metropolises in favor of
towns like Centralia, Illinois), Moore chats honestly with the
locals and poses the hard questions to CEOs like Nike’s Phil Knight
– when they’ll talk to him, of course.
He’s been accused of oversimplifying the issue of corporate
downsizing, but makes no apologies.
"I don’t believe in giving a fair shake," Moore says. "This is
my opinion. I actually stand for something. Kind of rare these
days, isn’t it? A nation of wafflers. … If they have a different
point of view, they can make their own film."
Part of Moore’s success stems from the fact that he isn’t afraid
of getting thrown out of a building or two (hey, he’ll just turn it
around and make the security guard look like the asshole), and he
isn’t afraid to bite the hand that supposedly feeds him.
Though Moore is often considered synonymous with liberalism, he
is critical of the Democratic party, which he believes perpetuates
the status quo just as much as the political right.
"We need a political party. We need laws passed. We need to be
part of the process and we don’t have representation," Moore
implores. "People don’t vote because there’s no one on the ballot
who represents their needs."
Some resign themselves to voting with single-cause third parties
as more of a statement than an actual influence.
"We don’t need poser parties. I voted for (Ralph) Nader last
year, but it was kind of like, what’s the point? I want to win! I
don’t like feeling like I’m a victim or like I’m in this minority
and somehow that makes me cool. Like I’m smarter than the rest of
the population because I refuse to go along."
Moore, who never went to college but ran for – and was elected
to – Flint, Michigan’s school board while still in high school,
also blames America’s education system for teaching what he calls
the "three C’s": consistency, complacency and conformity.
"By the time you’re out of school, they’ve sucked you into the
system so bad, to the point where you don’t rock the boat, don’t
question authority," Moore says, "The other thing school teaches is
that failure is wrong. Failure is good. It’s actually how you
learn. The first five years of our lives we learn a foreign
language. How’d we do that? How, without school? We did it through
trial and error."
Moore can complain because he’s doing something. "I really just
made ‘Roger and Me’ because I was pissed off," he confesses. Yet he
refuses to be alone in his crusade.
"I’m a citizen of the country. And citizenship should imply
activist," Moore says. "I don’t want to be separated. If (the
public) gets put off that I’m some kind of political activist
leading a revolution, then it’s like, everybody else can just sit
around and watch TV. I wanna watch some TV. I don’t want that on my
shoulders.
"If they applaud, they’re not applauding me, they’re applauding
the message," Moore continues. "Not ‘Michael Moore – ooohh.’ don’t
think I’m rockin’ anybody’s world."
So don’t worry that Moore will ever take himself too seriously.
Someone wants to know whether he considers himself an activist or a
filmmaker.
Moore pauses. "I consider myself overweight."
He also sings Hole songs ("Well I went to school … in
Olymp-i-aaah") and ponders just how much airbrushing went into "The
Big One’s" promo poster. In the film he detects a computerized
manicure on his book jacket cover.
"I gotta say, the suit does trim me down a bit. They had to buy
me the suit," Moore says, scrutinizing "The Big One’s promo
picture. "They’ve done something to my fingers … this index
finger has got a bit of a problem and if you look over here there’s
a bit of skin disease going on. If anything they’ve made it worse,"
he laughs.
The whole fame thing – the tours, the makeovers, the Hollywood
machine that is now escorting him on a film tour that makes "The
Big One’s" book tour look like small potatoes – is still a little
weird for the Flint native.
"It’s kind of funny. I wish I could film it all," Moore says.
"The film industry is pretty obnoxious."
As Moore hashes out a comedy pilot for CBS, prepares new
episodes of his newly revived newsmagzine program "TV Nation" and
sends his daughter to a private school, everyone seems to be
looking for signs that the rogue documentarian is selling out.
But they’ll have to look pretty hard. Moore visits Flint every
six weeks and donates one third of his income to charitable
organizations in his hometown and elsewhere. Half of "The Big
One’s" profits are going to these groups, which include other
independent filmmakers.
Oh, and the half-hour absence?
"I’m on this tour and this is like my 22nd city and I don’t know
where I am half the time and I certainly don’t know what day of the
week it is. And you reminded me that it is the day after April
Fool’s, which is my mom’s birthday. She’s 77 today," Moore
explains. "So I was out there begging every florist in Flint on the
phone. Finally I found somebody who was on her way to church and I
told her I’ve got a special line – there will be some brownie
points."
Hardly a sinister use of connections.
FILM: "The Big One" opens Friday.Miramax Films
Nike CEO Phil Knight (l.) with director Michael Moore in "The
Big One."