I interviewed Michael Moore in an unusual setting, considering his political views -- the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in San Francisco, one of the finest, most expensive places to stay in town. I assume that this was the film company's doing in setting up the press junket and not Moore's. The hotel's faux old-world opulence contrasted with Moore's down-to-earth manner, progressive message and casual mode of dress: call the odd juxtaposition postmodern irony, the essence of Moore's humor.
His latest work is both funny and somber and weaves together subjects ranging from gun control and the National Rifle Association (NRA), poverty and the defense industry, and of course, school shootings -- specifically, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold's shooting rampage at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, on April 20, 1999, that cost the lives of 12 students and a teacher. But that shocking day, says Moore, "didn't end up being the centerpiece because I don't really think the issue is Columbine. That's not why I made it." Indeed, the film asks a broader, more difficult and vexing question: Why are Americans killing each other at a rate that far outstrips other countries?
"I really wanted to say something much larger about how people are manipulated," Moore explains, "how the society is manipulated by politicians and corporations into being in a constant state of panic and fear, and how, once you get the population whipped up like that, conservative regimes can get just about anything they want out of the people without firing a shot."
It's a message that's evidently struck a nerve. Besides scoring rave reviews and a Special Jury Prize at Cannes, Bowling for Columbine looks like it may well break box office records for a documentary film set 13 years ago by his hilarious skewering of General Motors and big business in general, Roger and Me. That ground-breaking indie was followed by the television series TV Nation and The Awful Truth, both of which took Moore's confrontational approach to interviewing his adversaries to new heights.
At times, Moore has taken a few punches for what some perceive as an overly simplified, overly populist reading of the world. Even in her favorable review in the San Francisco Bay Guardian, Susan Gerhard calls Moore's outlook "a Chomsky-inflected worldview." And yet, by tackling questions "so sticky in a time so angry in a country so thought-controlled," Moore is clearly offering the sort of food for thought millions are starving for.
Immediately after 9/11, his publisher, HarperCollins, balked at releasing his no-holds-barred indictment of the Bush administration, Stupid White Men. Weeks later, though, HarperCollins relented and Stupid White Men, now in its 31st printing, has spent seven months on the New York Times bestseller list.
In Bowling for Columbine, Michael Moore is more than a little worried about the future.
What lies at the root of American-against-American violence? Because it's definitely an issue with a lot of ambiguity -- so much so, in fact, that a two hour film really isn't even enough to really address a lot of the deeper issues. I think you do a really admirable job of bringing all of those in, but you ask a lot more questions, obviously, than it's really even possible to answer. What do you think are some of the causes?
I think the root cause is that we as Americans were founded in fear and greed. We had two different sets of Europeans who came here. One set ran here in fear of being religiously persecuted. The other, the Southern Europeans, came here motivated purely by greed to see what the riches were, the wealth that was here, natural resources, whatever, the gold, steal it and take it back. And then the Northern Europeans joined in on that, too. Once the Pilgrims started settling, the British and Dutch realized that there was quite a bit of bounty here. And the French.
So I think we got our start in kind of a really ugly way, and we haven't really changed since then, except we've learned how to combine the two a lot better: using fear to create the wealth for the few and to create these distractions so that people will support the government in whatever the government wants them to do.
I'm much more concerned about these state-sponsored acts of violence against the poor, both at home and around the world, than I am about these individual acts of violence. Because as animals we will always have this tendency to behave or misbehave in this way. That probably isn't going to change about our nature. But what's really sick about the American psyche is that we have figured out how to do it collectively toward each other.
If you're put through all the machinations of what it really means to be poor in this country, what you've got to go through just to get some measly food stamps or to see a doctor or whatever -- if you've ever been there, it runs you down; it really runs you down and puts you in a bad space.
We control so much of the world's wealth at this point that we don't see any necessity in having to take care of anybody who isn't participating in that wealth, including our own people.
I do not believe in the "good German" -- [German accent] "I only drove the train. I didn't kill anybody." I don't believe that K-Mart has the right to say, "We only put the bullets on the shelf. We didn't kill the kids at Columbine." I believe that we all have a collective responsibility for our actions. When Bush drops those bombs on Iraq, I believe those are my bombs. I pay my taxes -- I'm not a tax resistor -- so I help pay for that bomb. I personally feel responsible for the people that those bombs will kill. That's being done in my name with my tax dollars. I will not sit back and go, "I didn't vote for him. I had nothing to do with that." I do have something to do with that. I'm an American -- I pay my taxes, it's being done in my name.
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