Manufacturing Dissent

The film makes an important distinction for those who are still unsure about how to view a "documentary" film. Recently we have seen "mainstream" film makers such as Ron Howard and Clint Eastwood make movies that are based upon actual historical events, but purposely deviate from the truth in order to make a more dramatic movie. Michael Moore has done this in every "documentary" he has ever made. He admits as much, claiming that the words spoken by his subjects are theirs alone, but he is in charge of editing them however he likes. Using this technique, Moore has managed to make films which were more successful than they might have been otherwise. The success he has enjoyed has allowed him to assume the same "fatcat" attitudes which he criticized and parodied in Roger and Me. This is nicely pointed out in this film. One fault with this film is that it starts slow and you wonder if you are in for a very dry and unfocused personal history of Michael Moore. After about 20 minutes, it picks up speed and focus and has a powerful conclusion.

Manufacturing Dissent (2007)

*** 1/2 (out of 4)

This documentary has director Debbie Melnyk following around Michael Moore as he promotes Fahrenheit 9/11 and calls him on various lies he's told throughout his career. I've said this countless times that I find Michael Moore to be a very talent filmmaker and I think he makes very entertaining films but there's no denying that he's a hypocrite and lies just as much as the people he goes after. This documentary tells Moore's story from his high school days all the way up to the release of his controversial film and the funny thing is that when this documentary is released, there's even more lies out in the open. Moore's use of fear is something that he often tries to go for yet he uses this against people claiming they use fear to push their points. In 2004 Moore was saying the draft was coming yet here we are four years later and this appears to have been a use of fear to try and sell your point. Another thing that I'm glad got cleared up was the heated debate over the Charlton Heston sequence in Bowling for Columbine. I've always felt Moore crossed the line in this segment and we get to see that the original speech from Heston was not made days after a little kid was killed but four months before it. There's a lot of debate on whether Moore really believes in freedom of speech but I'll let the clips in the movie speak for themselves. I'm not sure if this movie was made to make one hate Michael Moore but it really didn't change my mind of the mind. I still think he's a great talent but as far as calling him a documentary filmmaker is a joke. There are three legendary documentary makers interviewed here and their comments are priceless.

Strategically timed with the DVD release of "Sicko", as is the other Moore-stalking film, "Michael Moore Hates America", a wannabe documentary maker cashes in, again using the same "Fahrenhype 911" rehash and Albert Maysles ax-grinding as Michael Wilson's film used.

It's good for people to remind Moore of any factual errors he needs to improve on, which can be done in an article. As to the film's refrain about Moore's film not being a "documentary", Moore has said repeatedly he is not a fan of documentaries, does not watch them and is not trying to make them. People keep putting his films in the documentary category and they win prizes there.

So aspiring directors Caine and Melnyk, as with Michael Wilson, latch on to him playing "gotcha" to make themselves famous. Melnyk has the camera focus on herself intermittently as she plays "investigative journalist on the phone taking notes", then puts forth the message in her film that Moore's including himself in his films is bad film-making. Sour grapes abound from film people interviewed, at least one of whom defames him personally. As with "Michael Moore Hates America", the crew follow Moore from place to place for interviews.

One would think that the fact Moore was himself making a film (Sicko) the past two years might have entered their minds as a reason he might have been busy, but they take their complaints in with them to his public appearances to paint him as a hypocrite. Moore has brought this on himself to a degree by his "Roger and Me" film's style of following Roger for an interview, but in that case it was to try to bring attention to a problem affecting other people. This new crop of directors following Moore are all about manufacturing images for themselves to no particular end since the topic has already been handled in full by Fahrenhype 911 previously.

how people will defend Michael Moore as if somehow showing he is dishonest is representative of the democrat party as a whole. I found this movie an honest look at Michael Moore and who the man really is, compared to what he sells himself to be. Sure, the filmmakers were probably a little miffed at Moore by the end of their film, but that was a result of Michael's mentality. He claims to support the little man, but offers little support for the crew of this film who ask time and again for a sit down interview.

Michael is doing the same thing that he demonized Roger Smith for supposedly doing 20 years ago. On top of that his excuses are incredibly lame. "I can't interview with you until after the election, but then I have to sleep for 6 months,.. then we can do an interview." "Oh now, I can't do an interview because I am about to start my next movie, and it will be another years or so before I could possibly do an interview." (not exact quote mind you)You would expect someone like him to not only be supportive of those who admire him, but also a fellow documentary filmmaker.

So yes a large part of this film is meant to show Moore's character, which seems to have more of the same qualities as the type of people he claims to be against as opposed to those he claims to defend. Apart from that it is not hard to find evidence of his factual inaccuracies in his films. It amazes me how people still defend his work only because he is outspoken and shares the same political views. A little research will bring up many things that show how dishonest his work is.

Bottom line.. this is a film made by left winged filmmakers who are not making a documentary against democrats, but rather a dishonest filmmaker that ultimately would do more to harm the party he claims to represent rather than help it. I don't care how much I agreed with someone's view points, I would never support someone that was this dishonest, and in fact would be ashamed to have them be apart of my party.

I liked that this film did not focus too much on the same stuff we've all read about before. About half of the film discusses Michael Moore before he made Bowling for Columbine. Specifically, they examine his work as a magazine editor, and they examine Roger and Me. But even then, the main focus wasn't to illustrate Moore's manipulative techniques. Most people already know about that. Instead, the main focus in the film was to illustrate that Moore, himself, is a phony.

There is a distinct parallel to the plot of Roger and Me, which I thought was too much of an homage to Moore, but perhaps appropriate given the context of this documentary. The film crew is constantly struggling to get an interview with Moore, and Moore consistently gives them the runaround.

So I guess one interesting aspect of the film is that they show how Moore is very willing to put other people in uncomfortable situations or catch them off guard so as to juxtapose their fumbling against his well-prepared rhetoric. However, when Moore is threatened with the same tactic by his opponents, he cowers and fights dirty to avoid it. He knows how chicken sh*t it is.