Capitalizing on Capitalism

An interview with director, Michael Moore

When I first heard I was getting face time with the infamous non-fiction filmmaker, Michael Moore, I wasn’t really sure what to expect. Whether you watch his movies or not, you likely have an opinion about him and his politics and opinions about him tend to be extreme. His detractors don’t give him a fair shake and even his supporters can tell you a thing or two they don’t like about him. Is he really the champion of the people he purports to be or is he riding their miserable coattails all the way to the bank? After having spoken with him though, I can tell you plainly that Moore doesn’t care about what anyone thinks of him. Moore only cares about one thing – America – and what people think of her.

The reason I know this is not because Moore couldn’t stop gushing about America but rather because he couldn’t stop apologizing for it when we spoke. “We Americans, let me tell you, and you can believe me if you want to, we are really good people,” he tells me after he discovers I’m Canadian. I assure him that I like Americans just fine, that some of my best friends are Americans. Perhaps I wasn’t convincing enough because he goes on. “We have a good heart; we come up with a lot of great ideas. Somehow lately though, we have gone into a dark place and ignorance is our wall we can’t climb out of.” I’m used to Moore wagging his finger at behaviour he deems bad on camera but hearing the disappointment in his country direct from his mouth was disconcerting.

In CAPITALISM: A LOVE STORY, Moore’s latest controversial feature, he directs his lens at a facet of the American foundation that has been crumbling at the base as of late – the economy. Following the economic crisis or collapse or catastrophe, depending on what media inspired catch phrase you are partial to, Moore decided to explore the system that was falling apart in an effort to see if it is truly worth saving. “I want people to get angry enough to become active citizens and try to get this country back into the hands of the people and not the corporations,” Moore says of what he hopes people take away from the film. His initial aspirations make way for doubt though soon enough. “I don’t know if that’s going to happen or if it is even possible,” he continues. “It may be too late.”

Moore has been at this for a long time. His first feature, Roger & Me, was released in 1988 and he has been churning out films about gun control, health care and abuse of governmental authority ever since. It may not be possible to quantify exactly how much impact that has had but it is fair to say that, as a non-fiction filmmaker, he has had a greater influence on the general public than any other before him. “I have the privilege of making non-fiction films and reaching an audience of people who don’t go to non-fiction films.” Despite his disappointment in some aspects of his influence, he is certainly proud of how wide his reach is. “Studio surveys have shown that seven times out of ten, a person coming out of my movie is seeing a documentary in a theatre for the very fist time.”

I don’t know what’s more disturbing about that statistic – that so few people see documentaries in the theatre or that Michael Moore actually reads studio surveys.

At the time of our interview, Moore has no other project on deck. As he sits in front of me, looking like he should be drinking a beer in the backyard instead of promoting an internationally distributed film, I wonder if his exploits are starting to discourage him more than he realizes. Even as he begins spitting out random trivia bits about how 11% of Americans polled in a recent survey couldn’t find America on the map, I’m not swayed. Even as he follows these stats by saying, “This is what I’m dealing with. Sadly, this is what the world is dealing with,” I refuse to give up on him. One just needs to turn to one of the last things Moore says in Capitalism to remember his resolve. “I refuse to live in a country like this and I’m not leaving.”

Capitalize on that, Mr. Moore.

For Black Sheep's original review of CAPITALISM: A LOVE STORY, just click the title.

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CAPITALISM: A LOVE STORY

Written and Directed by Michael Moore


Michael Moore: I did find one guy on Wall Street who wasn’t a film critic.

“Documentary” filmmaker, Michael Moore, has a knack for making movies about timely subjects. One could argue that he makes the movies he does when he does because he wants to affect change, therefore making him a hero. One could also argue though that he picks a topic he knows will hit all the right buttons to get people talking and to get them into the theaters. He wears his “Man of the Masses” hat and puts average Americans up on the screen to prove his points and then gets his following to come see them, led gallantly by himself, of course. Using the people to make money off the people is essentially everything he denounces in CAPITALISM: A LOVE STORY but Moore can’t see past his ego to see that.


It’s easy to be a hater when it comes to Moore. I don’t want to be one but when each of his movies is seemingly more about him at times than anything else (did you know he wanted to be a priest when he was a kid?), it is almost impossible not to criticize or question his intentions. Like his previous works, CAPITALISM is pieced together like a university term paper. Moore knows the point he wants to make and he finds a bunch of examples to prove that point while conveniently discarding any facts that might make his argument actually well rounded. He throws in random archival footage taken out of context to make fun of the bad guys and keeps the yuks coming with his own smug narration. When the situation is as bad as these crippling economic times though, Moore’s sarcasm is hardly necessary and barely welcome.


CAPITALISM does tell some frightening tales. Moore’s examples are extremes but it is the extremes that are threatening the demise of capitalism after all. In Pennsylvania, for instance, a corporate owned juvenile detention center was opened to take the burden off the government and the taxpayer but eventually did far worse to the community. The company bought off judges and kids were incarcerated for minor offences with lengthy, lucrative stays. If that’s not bad enough for you, there are also companies out there taking life insurance policies out on their employees without their knowledge. When the employee dies, not to suggest that companies are killing their employees or anything, the already rich company collects and the surviving family struggles with funeral costs. Perhaps if Moore would allow more of these atrocities to speak for themselves, his voice would be better heard.


You know Moore’s ego is somewhat out of control when he claims that he warned us about this collapse over twenty years ago when he put out his first film, ROGER AND ME. How could we not have heeded his cautionary counsel? If we had, perhaps all of this economic calamity could have been avoided. Herein lies the trouble with CAPITALISM: A LOVE STORY; sarcasm begets more of the same, not change. And while it is amusing from a popular culture standpoint to see Moore being refused entry to the General Motors headquarters in Detroit yet again, it only really serves as confirmation that Moore matters more to Moore than anything he supposedly stands for.

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