10/06/2009

Filmmaker with a heart

Michael Moore

Did you know that Michael Moore at the age of 18 became the youngest person elected for a public office in the United States? That happened a few months after a new law allowing the 18 year olds to vote and be elected came into effect. Moore, still in high school, run for a school board. His campaign was about firing a school principal. When he got elected he became the boss of his school director! Amazing, isn’t it?

It took 20 signatures to put him on the ballot. That’s why he says: “it takes very little to produce something significant in politics. So little is need to produce a lot.”

Another amazing thing: there is a web site put up against Michael Moore. The owners of this site had a health problem and no health insurance. Moore unanimously sent them 12 thousand dollars and only disclosed it much later, just before the premiere of “Sicko”. The idea was “we should threat them the way they don’t treat us.”

The above info is taken from the (great) Creative Screenwriting podcast series.

2 comments:

  1. Wow!

    An inspiring person indeed. I loved his Bowling for Columbine. A real good piece of reportery.

    But then I fing Fahrenheit 9/11 to be very bad, and very one sided. He manipulates the viewer with his thesis, smartly avoiding finding other answers or reasons why people acted like they did (for ex. the scene with G. Bush reading to the kids in a kindergarten, and getting the news of the terrorist attacks, and the commentary of Moore is ironic and in bad taste).
    How do you Paweł, like Moore's works, as a director?

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  2. I appreciate that he single-handedly elevated the first person investigative documentary to such a powerful form. “Roger and me” started a new documentary genre. Many of his next films were equally influential. I like his passion and relentlessness as a storyteller. Technically, he knows how not to bore people. True, in doing so sometimes he goes overboard and gets annoying mean and manipulative. (The scene with Charlton Heston in “Bowling for Concubine” is appalling.) Yet, the fact that he is able to bring onto the screen difficult subjects in such a powerful way more than compensates his obvious blunders. I think he is a great director.

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