Have you seen the film, "Bowling for Columbine?" I haven't. Here is a partial review from the Guardian.
[ Bowling for Colombine]
Michael Moore
US comedian and documentary-maker Michael
Moore explains his thinking on gun control, American
foreign policy, and making movies to eat popcorn to
film.guardian.co.uk
Andrew Collins
Monday November 11, 2002
Andrew Collins: Thanks for coming,
and if you haven't seen Bowling For
Columbine, I'm sure you know already,
it's Michael's look at American gun
laws, and from there, he expands it into
a film about America's foreign policy
and race. It's been wrongly described as
a scattershot or scattergun approach by
journalists too keen to use a gun
metaphor in their review. If you've seen
it, you'll know it isn't. I think it's more
like a sniper who picks his target and hits the target.
Michael, yesterday when I saw the film in the West End, you
got a standing ovation. Now, have you been getting a lot of
standing ovations for this film?
Michael Moore: Ah, yeah. The first time we screened it at the
Cannes film festival in May, the standing ovation went for close
to 15 minutes. It was absolutely embarrassing. And what do you
do during that time? I'm trying to cut it off after two minutes and
the festival director came over and whispered in my ear, "You
are to stand there and take it." So I just stood there and the
response in the United States and Canada has been equally
enthusiastic. I've shown my stuff here before but I've never had a
standing ovation for my work - I just assumed that people didn't
do that. I just figured something was wrong with the audience
last night - or they were just Americans and Canadians.
AC: I think it's possible that they were clapping you and
standing for you, and maybe clapping for what the film says. I
think at this time, there's a feeling generally that America is bad
over here. Everybody feels, outside of America, that America is
running the world. And people kind of feel heartened that you
exist and to have you here. Do you feel as separate from other
Americans as we would imagine or are there loads of people out
there like you?
MM: I think I'm in the majority of Americans. I believe that I am
in the mainstream of middle America. This may come as a
surprise to many people here but the majority of people did not
vote for George Bush - he lost the election; he got the fewest
number of votes. In the last year, just with my book that's been
out in the United States, at a time when you've been told that
we're all lining up behind Bush, united we stand and all this
other crap since September 11, the largest selling non-fiction
book since September 11 last year has been something called
Stupid White Men starring George W Bush. So I think that this -
the book, the film - has resonated with millions of people who
otherwise don't have a voice, and don't own media and so you
don't see them. You're not supposed to see me, I mean
someone like me is not supposed to be on television or making
films or writing books. So it's just an odd accident that I
escaped and somehow I flew in under the radar and came up on
the other side. My work is visible but I believe that...
We just finished this book tour: 47 cities across the country and
an average of 2,000-3,000 people a night showed up. Not in
college towns but in Tampa, Florida; Olympia, Washington;
Portland, Oregon - they had to shut down an interstate freeway;
they had to turn away about 5,000 people who couldn't get in to
the 5,000-seat auditorium. This is not covered in the news
though. I never once saw a television network at any of these 47
cities and so I knew that word wasn't getting out to all these
people. So you go to all these places and everybody feels alone,
thinking that they're the only ones who feel this way. I think
probably sitting here you think the whole country's gone mad at
this point and we're a menace to the rest of the world. And the
second part of that is correct. But that's honestly how I see
myself. You know, this morning I got a phone call - they called
from the United States to tell me that they'd had another record
breaking weekend with the film: 200 cities across the country, a
documentary has never done business like this. They can't
understand it: they tried to get me to change the title... who's
going to see something called Bowling For Columbine? Then,
when they find out what it's about: guns, school shootings or
whatever, they won't go to it. Then, they hear from France that
it's a movie to hate America by, then they really won't go and
see it. And it turns out that all the predictions were wrong. And I
knew that they'd be wrong because I feel like I have a sense of
where people are in the country.
AC: Word of mouth is your best weapon, isn't it, because when
the book came out, you weren't seen on a whole lot of TV shows
to promote it, were you?
MM: No, I was not allowed on any network television shows in
America. Over 90% of the newspapers did not review my book."
film.guardian.co.uk |
