11/04/2002 Entry:
"Bowling For Columbine - Michael Moore (2002)"

Recently Michael Moore was interviewed by Bill O'Reilly on The O'Reilly Factor. I didn't see the interview but I read a transcript which was reported widely by a variety of online sources. In the interview, O'Reilly poses a series of articulate straightforward questions to Moore, who then proceeds to turn them into jokes without ever answering a single one. This just cemented A feeling I had always had about Moore - that he was more entertainer than political commentator. A liberal Rush Limbaugh if you will. I am an avowed liberal, I even voted for Nader, but the last thing we need is our own Rush Limbaugh. It's bad enough that we have our own Ann Coulter (Ted Rall.) Then, sometime later, I saw later I saw Moore on Charlie Rose, where he gave straightforward thoughtful articulate answers to all the questions that were posed to him (this interview was actually conducted by on the show.) He obviously has very storng political opinions, and he is obviously using his films, TV shows and books to express them. So whats the deal. Does Moore only take people seriously if he respects or agrees with them? Is he only able to handle the underhand pitch as opposed to the fast ball? Is he entertainer or commentator? I'm sure he would argue that he is attempting to be both, but in his new film Bowling For Columbine he succeeds at neither.

Bowling For Columbine attempts to get at the heart of why Americans kill each other more than anyone else in the world. The film is roughly divided into two parts. In the first, Moore examines how violence in industry and through the government affects the nation's attitudes. In the second, he explores how the American media's coverage of and attitude towards violence ("if it bleeds it leads") creates a culture of fear. This is all capped with the classic Michael Moore drop-in interview, this time jumping on Charlton Heston. Please note that I saw this film about a month ago, and there may be points where I talk about things happening in one section of the film when they may have happened in another. My sense of the film's timeline has dulled a little bit.

The first half of the film is by far the weakest, partly due to the fact that its contentions do not ring true. For instance, it is pointed out more than once that the Columbine murders took place on the same date that the US dropped its largest number of bombs on Kosovo. This point is lost when you realize that the majority of Americans probably had only the vaguest idea we were bombing a place called Kosovo in the first place (obviously since 911 American consciousness of foreign policy has increased to a large extent.) However it is also in the first part that Moore indulges in his worst impulses, throwing out the cheap jokes and slapping down easy targets right and left. He makes fun of hicks in a Michigan bar, takes swipes at the Michigan militia, and generally dilutes what little point he was trying to make in the first place.

This tendency is taken to the extreme in what is by far the worst section of the film, wherein Moore flashes from scene to scene of American failed foreign policy (accompanied by the most shamelessly half-baked text descriptions of said conflicts) all backed by the tune of Louis Armstrong's "What A Wonderful World." This bit closes with a plance crashing into the World Trade Center, the use of which I find frankly offensive. I don't care what he's trying to say, nobody needs to see that footage again for the next few years. He had already put up the message, "3,000 people killed in..." which drove the point home quite well enough thank you. The whole scene also reeks of this attitude that we are to blame when a terrorist kills 3,000 of our citizens, an opinion which I despise. One really has to question Moore's intention in using the 9/11 footage. What is the reasoning behind including it? My suspicion is that Moore would have no answer besides "why not?" Even worse, he could have been intentionally trying to use the worst disaster of modern times to simply provoke an emotional response, putting him into the same class as the news media which he attacks so pointedly later on.

Another noteworthy scene in the first half of the film involves Moore interviewing Marilyn Manson, since after Columbine many people had pointed to Manson and his music as being an instigating factor. Much has been made of the fact that Manson is the most intelligent and coherent voice in the film, and this is true. Consider, though, that Manson also gets the longest uninterrupted speech of anyone in the film. Its easy to make a redneck or a Lockheed Martin shill or a militia member look stupid when you chop up their interview into sound bites. We are never given the chance to see as complete a characterization of anyone else in the film as we are of Marilyn Manson (except perhaps Heston at the end, but I'm getting to that.) Moore claimed in a Q&A session following the screening I attended, that he wants his film to reach the widest possible audience, that he doesn't want to be simply preaching to his typical adoring audience. But by treating his subjects so cheaply when they don't agree with the point he's trying to make, he completely sabotages this effort.

The second half of the film is much more rewarding, although still not without its problems. Immediately following the 9/11 footage, Moore jumps to security camera footage of Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold stalking the halls of Columbine High and carrying out their attacks on the school. Watching these kids methodically carry out their mission is quite chilling, although coming right on the heels of the WTC footage it's a bit much to bear at once. I initially questioned Moore's use of the Columbine footage, but in retrospect I don't mind it as much. It's stuff thats never really been seen before, and it really brings home the meticulous and intentional nature of the attacks. This launches into the second section in which Moore focuses on the media and their part in America's culture of violence.

Much of the reason this part of the film was so much more rewarding to me, is that I could relate to its points and arguments so much more, mostly because Moore makes them so much more coherently. When Moore points out that violence in America is actually down by so much percent, but coverage of that violence is up by 600 percent, it makes a much more effective point than the Kosovo talk I mentioned above. He also starts more pointedly examining why America is so much more violent than other countries, with most of his comparisons coming to Canada. Whenever someone comes up with a reason for America's culture of violence (we have so many guns) he comes up with a counter from Canada (they have as many as we do and don't kill each other as much.) Generally, these arguments are very effective, although at least twice he takes one argument (violence in America is caused by our level of poverty) and responds to it with an unrelated fact from Canada (their unemployment is even higher than ours.) Their unemployment is higher, but their number of poor is vastly lower because they provide so much more welfare than we do. Of course, he DOES use this point later when it more suits his purposes. This is the kind of thing that mars sequences which are otherwise very well done.

Another truly inspired bit during this section involved Moore using a news video about Africanized killer bees to make a point about race in America. This was the only comedy portion that I truly laughed at from my heart. As the reporters rant about Africanized (violent) killer bees versus their European (peaceful) cousins, Moore's points about white flight in the city hit home far better than any interview could have. This is a sharp contrast to an earlier animated segment about the history of gun use in America, which attempts to go for comedy but instead rings hollow and false because so many of its assumptions are leaps and generalizations.

At some point here he also takes a side trip to Flint after learning of a small girl being killed by a handgun shooting there. It is here where he really takes the media to task, covering the ghouls waiting outside the funeral home going after the interviews they need for the evening news. These scenes, where Moore is attacking the American news media, are by far the most effective in the entire film. Moore follows the news media's obsession with violence and exposes its shamelessness at every turn. During this sequence Moore also goes on a little sidetrip to discuss welfare reform, following the girl's mother as she make her way to and from her low-paying job an hour and a half away. This is also a very well done section, kind of like a mini version of Barbara EHrenreich's Nickel And Dimed, marred only by Moore's pointless jumping of Dick Clark at the end (the woman works for a Dick Clark restaurant.)

The final major segment of the film before Heston involves Moore visiting two of the Columbine victims and interviewing them. They come across as very intelligent thoughtful kids. At some point Moore brings them to a K-Mart to return the bullets still embedded in their body. This goes through a series of encounters before finally ending with a K-Mart executive coming out and announcing that they will be phasing out the sales of handgun ammunition in K-Mart stores within the next 90 days, a promise which to the best of my knowledge they made good on. This is the first time I've ever seen a corporation give in to Moore's browbeating. Many people have made comments about the way Moore used these kids to acheive his own goals, but he revealed in his Q&A that the initial visits to K-Mart to return the bullets were the kids' idea. Once he's gone down that path at their urging, who can blame him for taking it to its conclusion? Obviously this schtick isn't as effective now after we've seen Moore do it for the last 13 years, but it really is amazing to see some effective change come from it for the first time, and the kids are obviously quite pleased to have been a part of making a corporation change their behavior in terms of gun sales and support.

In his Q&A Moore said that the Heston interview was the hardest part of the film to do. They had attempted to interview Heston for over two years and his agents and lawyers had always sent him packing (who can blame them, really.) Finally, at the urging of his crew, Moore bought a map to the star's homes after they wrapped a shoot in LA and found Heston's house. They drove up to it, and from then on what you see in the film is what happened. Moore handles this interview quite well. He poses questions to Heston sincerely and non-antagonistically (although his prefacing of the interview with the fact of his NRA membership makes it seem like he's setting Heston up for a shot below the belt.) I really felt no sympathy for Heston during this time. Sure, you can say that Moore blindsided him, but for a man in Heston's position to not have ready-made answers for the questions that Moore poses is just idiocy. If Heston, the leader of the NRA, can't come up with an answer for why we have so much gun violence in America other than a vague reference to "ethnic problems" then he deserves whatever hammering he gets. As the interview goes on and he realizes what he's gotten himself into he walks out, and it really is an amazing scene as he wanders off to the recesses of his house ignoring Moore's persistent questioning. I really thought Moore handled this well, until he pulled out a photo of the shooting victim from Flint and held it high above his head in one of the most horrendous attention-grabbing scenes I can ever recall. As he propped the photo against Heston's wall and left, the applause in the Music Box welled from every corner but I was just filled with disgust at such a self-indulgent ploy. Moore had already made his point amazingly well, and then he goes on to ruin it.

Writing this piece has been difficult for many reasons. I wanted to give myself some time to consider the largely conflicting feelings I had in the weeks following the screening, but time also dulled some of my memories. There was almost nothing in the film I didn't have a comment about, and many things are left out. For instance, Chris Rock is shown in a standup comedy club delivering a totally righteous bit about gun violence detailing how we should make guns cheap but make the bullets cost $5,000 each. "Man, that guy must have been really bad, they spent like a hundred grand killing him." This was awesome. There was also an insightful interview with South Park's Matt Stone, again giving Stone much more time to talk freely and openly. Towards the end of the film, Moore interviews someone at a gun store whose had reads "Fuck Everybody." The interview itself is nothing special, but at that moment I felt that Moore had found someone whose hat said more on the topic at hand than his last two hours of raving had.

The question I kept asking myself after seeing this film was, what were Moore's intentions? Why did he make this film the way he did? Is he trying to make a thoughtful political statement? This is obviously not the case, because I know he is capable of making rational well-thought out arguments and there is nothing rational or well-thought out about Bowling For Columbine. Is he making a comedy? If so, its not very funny (although it has funny moments.) If he intends this film to be strictly comedy, then I wold say that using the 9/11 and Columbine footage is one of the most offensive things I've ever seen. Anyways, it is obviously meant to not be solely a comedy. I have heard Moore make statements to the effect that he just wanted to throw a bunch of stuff out there for people to think about. However his filmmaking technique gives the proceedings such an obvious liberal bent that to say he was just trying to engender discussion is laughable. Many people have recommended this movie by saying something along the lines of, "the movie isn't perfect but it is asking questions that nobody else is asking, and it is worth seeing just to get people talking about why we are such a violent society." While I sympathize with this attitude (and fell into it myself right after I saw the film) I now think that Moore has done this important subject so little justice that the film is in large part a failure in every way except strictly as entertainment. Certainly Moore is entertaining, and if you turn your brain off and let this glide right over you, it goes down nice and smooth and you laugh at the right places and cry at the right places and walk out of the theatre with your proper amount of righteous indignation (unless you're a Republican, in which case you walk out hating the left even more than you already did. Of course, if you were a Republican, you likely never would have set foot in the screening in the first place.) Michael Moore has taken an issue that is vitally important to American society and reduced it to the documentary equivalent of Jurassic Park. While I still recommend the film to everyone to see, largely because the good parts are so good and I still believe that this topic needs to be discussed, I am just itching for the day when Moore makes a truly intelligent thoughtful film about a topic, rather than as Mike D'Angelo so aptly put it, "the latest wacky episode of It's the Michael Moore Show (with your host, Michael Moore!)" The subject deserves so much more than that.

I will also point to Jeremy Heilman's review at MovieMartyr.com. While I don't feel as strongly about the film as he did (I don't think,) he puts forths his points much more succinctly than I can since I'm too lazy to edit.

Replies: 2 comments

your review makes a lot of thoughtful and interesting observations about the movie and made me think a little deeper about it. i agree with a lot of what you said, especially the part about how the first half of the movie is pretty weak. there was no real point to the bits on the militia and the two clowns in the bar. some of that stuff provided a few laughs, but it didn't really drive home any important points. it seemed like moore started to focus a little after the manson interview, when he picked up on manson's comments about our culture of fear and consumption. he kind of used that as a theme from that point on. i understand your criticism of the section on american foreign policy ending with the plane flying into the wtc. that seems to be the one section of the film that even its most enthusiastic supporters take issue with. just to give another perspective, i want to say that i didn't find the scene offensive. it wasn't like a revelation or anything. it was more like preaching to the converted since i'm of the opinion that, while it wasn't our fault as a nation and a people that 9/11 happened, our foreign policy did have something to do with 9/11. i'm glad moore put in there because i don't like the way our country has been reacting to voices of dissent since 9/11. any negative comments about our leadership or past foreign policy mistakes are perceived as anti-american and even sympathetic to the terrorists. i've heard of professors being censured, reporters and radio djs fired, just for speaking out. this is ridiculous because in times as dangerous as they are with lives at stake, it's even more important for every opinion to be heard...even if you don't like what's being said. reflecting on why moore put it in there, i came up with no answers. although, i'd like to think that he might be trying to reach someone in the audience who's on the fence about things or maybe isn't knowledgable about history. after seeing that, maybe they'll investigate and try and learn about things our government has done over the years. but i don't know. he probably wasn't thinking that. other than that, i think i'm with you on a lot of your other criticisms. in particular, you were right on with your take on the dick clark ambush and the thing with the girl's picture after the heston interview. even with the problems, i've still been strongly recommending the movie to people. despite moore's occasional grandstanding and the lack of focus during the first half, it's a pretty powerful film that people should see. hopefully, it'll open people's eyes to some things and make them think about some of the issues raised. Posted by chris @ 11/07/2002 01:09 PM CST

Thank you for the comments. Obviously people should be speaking their minds, and you are quite right about the fact that this film's message is an important one. I just think that Moore fails this message in large part, which is really what all those words up there were getting at. I'm certainly not particularly pleased with the way voices of dissent are being treated these days either. This is particularly true of the mainstream news media, where time and time again criticism of the current administration is being quashed FROM WITHIN THEIR OWN RANKS. As a former news journalist, this kind of behavior makes me nauseous. At the Q&A session I attended, I actually attempted to ask Moore about his use of the Columbine and 9/11 footage, but was not able to. I keep hoping that with all the coverage the film has been getting someone will call him on it, but as yet I haven't seen it. Posted by gdd @ 11/07/2002 09:22 PM CST