Michael Moore‘s Final Cut

June 21, 2006

Next week, Michael Moore will announce the slate of movies for this summer’s Traverse City Film Festival, running July 31-August 6.
In the following interview, Moore offers his thoughts on how he chooses movies, the movie industry, and why Genie Aldrich, founder of last year’s anti-film festival, hasn’t made a comeback.

NE: Has it been difficult juggling the making of your movie on the broken health care system — “Sicko”— and organizing the Film Festival?
Moore: Yes, I’m not getting much sleep. I work on “Sicko” all day and then I work on the festival at night. But it’s for a short period of time, and it’s possible to do both. The movie will wrap up at the end of the year.

NE: When will it come out?
Moore: It will be released sometime next year. When I started shooting, I sent out a query to the public for personal experiences with the medical system and received 18,000 responses. It took a month to read them, myself and 10 other people. It sort of wrote the movie. This is going to be a dark comedy about the richest nation on earth where 45 million working people can’t afford to go to the doctor.

NE: Onto the Film Festival; how do
you select movies? What kind of criteria do
you use?
Moore: I’m looking for films that are first of all entertaining. And those films can be comedies, they can be dramas, you know, films about nothing, and films that are moving and about something. They can be fiction and nonfiction.
I’ve watched at least 250 films since last year. I try to watch them on a big screen -- on a movie screen. I’ve gone to five or six film festivals; I have gone to screenings that filmmakers have had, who want to show me their films, and I’ve caught them at art houses, like in New York, which show films that don’t make it to Traverse City.
A lot of the films that were made this year are about war. Not just the Iraq war, but war,
in general, has returned as a major theme in
the movies. Whether it’s wars we’re now involved in—Iraq and Afghanistan—or the wars in Bosnia, the Chechnyan War, and a whole crop of World War II films, mostly made by Europeans. War is on people’s minds all over the world.

NE: Why do you think that is?
Moore: I think there’s a general sense in the world right now that the world is unraveling. We witnessed some of the worst riots in years over a cartoon. When people are dying over a cartoon, the world looks like a pretty crazy place at the moment.
I think people are concerned and nervous and worried about it, and I think when that happens, filmmakers respond to that general mood around the world. So I’ve been seeing
a lot of that. Less and less comedies, and that’s too bad.

NE: How about romantic films?
Moore: Almost nonexistent. Isn’t that sad? Very few romantic and comedy films. So I’ve made that part of my mission, putting the
extra effort into finding comedies. Each night at the festival, there will be at least one outstanding comedy. Because it’s during
dark times that people need to laugh. Hollywood and filmmakers understood that in the 1930s during the Depression. Right now we’re missing our Marx brothers, our Will Rogers, people like that. And so, I guess, I want to advocate for more humor and satire by bringing films from our era that make people laugh. So I think that will be a strong part of the festival. And that will be unusual. When is the last time you had a good hearty laugh at the movies?
I’m committed to having a festival that shows films that are both entertaining and works of art. I don’t think the two are mutually exclusive. I’ve run across so many films that are great, it baffles me why they never make it to towns like Traverse City—not just Traverse City, but towns all across America.
And, I think that’s really sad, you know, because most of the time when you
leave the movies, you don’t leave with the feeling of, ‘Now that was a great way to spend two hours.’

NE: You’re right. Last night, I walked out of the “Da Vinci Code.” It was too cold in the theatre, I had already read the book, and the movie wasn’t that interesting.
Moore: Boy, and that was supposed to be the blockbuster for the summer. I saw two films last night, and I hope I can get both of these films, they were both so hilarious. Afterwards I thought, when was the last time I watched a film where I laughed that much. One was “Pittsburgh” with Jeff Goldblum and Illeana Douglas; it was a comedy for adults. It’s like a documentary; his girlfriend is from Canada, her visa was running out, and she needed a work visa, and the only place she could get a job was at a regional theatre doing the “Music Man” in Pittsburgh. So he decided to seal the deal and agreed to perform with her. So he leaves L.A. to do regional theatre, a guy who gets $4 million a film, and his manager begs him not to do this thing, something that’s a cut above a high school musical, but he does it out of love. It’s like the most loving thing to do. He goes on “Conan” and Conan moves him to number two on the show because he’s doing regional theatre, and his real career starts to crumble a bit.

NE: Tell me about the other movie you saw.
Moore: The other film is “Air Guitar Nation.” It follows these people who are on their way to the Air Guitar World championship. And they live and breathe air guitar and it follows the art and the Zen of air guitar. And you’re laughing the whole time. We were going to put it as a midnight show, a time slot that we’re starting this year, but I may show it at a regular time in the State. It’s just hilarious.

NE: Were you disappointed that some of the movies you premiered last year didn’t go anywhere commercially?
Moore: I wasn’t surprised at all; that was one of the main reasons I wanted to start the festival. I wanted to start exposing the public, outside of New York and Los Angeles, to good filmmaking in the hopes that something like this will spread and that Hollywood will pay attention and take it as an indicator of what middle America would truly like to see. If I had a long-range hope, it would be that five to ten years from now, these kind of films will get distributed.
And I’ve seen that process firsthand. “Roger and Me,” 16 years ago, it was the first documentary to play in cineplexes, in shopping malls, and yet, look how long it took before we actually started to see other documentaries playing in regular movie houses. Documentary is no longer a dirty word and you can see them at the multiplex. It took until a couple of years ago. I had to keep making these films in the hopes that the movie studios would get it. Then along came “Supersize Me,” the penguin movie, and people will now go to a movie theater to see nonfiction. We don’t have to fight that fight anymore.
I was surprised that “Mad Hot Ballroom” and “Grizzly Man” weren’t even nominated
for the Oscars. And I wasn’t the only documentary filmmaker that was stunned by that decision. On the other hand, the Enron film was nominated.
One year of showing great films in Traverse City will not overturn the pabulum presented by Hollywood. But if you love the movies, as we all do here, then you have to start somewhere. Why did you ask that question?

NE: I was a little surprised that “The Baxter” didn’t do better. I thought it was a really sweet, funny movie.
Moore: “The Baxter” — that’s because theater chains, when they program what to bring, their idea of the audience is a room full of 13- year-old boys. That’s the audience. Seventy percent of the movie-going audience is under the age of 25, so, yes, they’re always thinking about that. PG-13 is what they shoot for in Hollywood. It’s just racy enough and raunchy enough and bloody enough. And a preteen can get into it.
NE: Do you feel free to select any movie you want or are you sensitive about its politics?
Moore: Oh no, I don’t worry about that at all. I don’t ever think about that. Conservatives and people from the right, generally, on average, don’t make as many films as people whose politics are in the middle or on the liberal end of things. That’s a basic fact. I don’t know why it is. I wish conservatives would make more movies. One of the funniest movies I’ve seen this year was written by a Republican, “ThankYou for Smoking.” It has a very strong Republican, libertarian sensibility and it’s one of the funniest films of the year. It’s not good when either side loses their sense of humor. I think the left lost its humor, but they got it back thanks to the man in the White House fueling comedy every night of the week.
It’s not healthy that conservatives have lost their sense of humor, but they should try to get it back.
I wouldn’t make a decision on whether the director or writer was a liberal or conservative—if they’ve made a good movie, a funny movie, something that’s going to move people, it should be in the festival. I know people who won’t listen to Wagner because he was Hitler’s favorite composer. When you start to do that to art, it gets messy. You either enjoy the art for art’s sake, or you don’t.
You cannot give a movie a political litmus test. The thought never enters my mind. I think that’s true for most people on the left. One of the definitions of a liberal is that you have an open mind; its why the conservatives are so together; they don’t waste a lot of time on nuance, on, ‘Is what we’re doing the right thing?’
I am often asked, if this festival was in Flint or New York, would I bring in a different kind of movie, or do I say to myself: “Can Traverse City handle that?” I hear the people on our festival committee saying that. There’s a certain amount of worrying and hand wringing, especially people who’ve lived here a long time. I can understand that. In the past, if someone would try to do something different or edgy in Traverse City, the “culture police”—those who wish TC was still operating somewhere in the 1950s – would lay the boom down, but this area has changed—and changed for the better, I think. There is a collective open mind now in Traverse City and it is a very welcoming place to be, especially if you’re an artist or a creative person.
I think that would require a certain patronizing attitude on my part to say, “Here I’m the guy from Flint; Flint can handle it
and Traverse City can’t.” I don’t think it’s true. I was talking to the guy who brings in the equipment for the outdoor films, and one thing he’s noticed about the audience is that it’s a cut above what he usually finds in the Midwest. A little more aware, a little more cultured in the good sense, and I told him, even though this is a small town in Northern Michigan, it’s got three public radio stations, an internationally-known arts and music school nearby; you have many people from around the Midwest who have vacationed and moved here; and I don’t ever worry about whether people in Traverse City can handle it.
I think this year, we’ll bring films that might be a bit more edgy, more challenging, but I think that intelligent people like to be challenged. I think they like to take a look at art and life as it exists on the edges of our society. I don’t think people in Traverse City are afraid of that. In fact, I’m convinced they embrace it.

NE: What would you like to say about the State Theatre (the Film Festival has been trying to secure the State from Rotary Charities)?
Moore: The movies are going to be at the State this summer regardless of what happens. We’ve been assured of that. The fire department is okay with the lack of sprinklers, so we’re fine for this year.

NE: Why do you think the Traverse
Bay Freedom FilmFest hasn’t returned? (Last year, Genie Aldrich, a Suttons Bay resident, organized the Traverse Bay Freedom FilmFest, with the help of the far-right American Film Renaissance organization. It showed nine, mostly poorly-attended films.)
Moore: I don’t think the people in Traverse City are afraid to take a look at art and life as it exists on the edges of our society. In fact, I’m convinced they embrace it.

Editor’s note: Anne Stanton is married to Doug Stanton, a co-founder of the Film Festival.