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FROM THE PHONE BOOTH: The Smallest Space in  Hollywood

	FINEFROCK

Michael and Me
Or, Moore v. Leni
by Steve Finefrock - Hollywood Forum [scriptwriter] 7/16/07

Two questions were in my mind as the rowdy-clad fatso entered the Egyptian Theatre for a Q&A after his film/screed, “Fahrenheit 9-11” had just aired.  That very afternoon, Michael Moore had cleaned up his act for the earlier taping at NBC for Jay Leno: republican-cloth suit and tie, combed hair, shaved face.  Yet he galumped into the Egyptian in his standard uniform of rumpled and dimpled grub.  Looking like a makeup artist had given him a renewed two-day stubble, to match his stained gimme-cap, he took questions from the interlocutor, then the floor opened for questions from the three-quarters full audience.

“Fahrenheit” had long finished its theatrical run, and this free screening notice came to me with less than 24 hours notice, so my ‘posse’ which got the e-mail alert during wee hours was small, but select.  Sitting with me was a longtime screenwriting coach and UCLA instructor, and a few others, sitting along the side aisle as the interlocutor looked up and found my hand raised, among many.  Then the complete exhaustion of my lifetime’s luck accrual in H’W’D occurred: he called on me, unsuspecting my question.
 
Amidst the controversy about whether his film should be nominated as a feature or a documentary, I suggested a new category for the Academy to create, for which his film clearly would win in that new category, “That being one called ‘propaganda’” and then sat down.  Michael muttered a weak humor line about me being a deliberate plant by the right wing, then ranted about the bias of the media in its supposed propaganda, revealing  his ignorance of politics: he felt a scene in the film, absented from contemporary news coverage, of his moveon.org crowd pelting the presidential limo with raw eggs, should have been included in the news.  He took especial glee at Tom Brokaw, whom he said he knew was aware of the egg-attack.
 
Such an ignoramus.  This event was proof positive of the media protecting him from the hate of America, who would turn hard against him if they saw national broadcast of such behavior.  As the media failed to ‘cover’ the mall madness of the queer-power gathering’s more outrageous public displays of affection [more like lust], so they kept the blunt visual evidence of this edifice of idiocy from the nation’s living rooms.
 
The question lingers, as I remember my other query – do you give lifetime health insurance to everyone you’ve ever employed? – about the propaganda category.  Recently, Steven Bach discussed his book on Leni Riefenstahl on BookTV, noting the historical change she made in the documentary format: using feature-film methods, such as reaction shots, to make a docu which was more than the earlier cinema verite method of just pointing the camera and recording the event statically and without comment.  
 
She’d borrowed from her acting experience in “Blue Angel” and other rousing features to direct “Triumph of the Will” and “Olympia” with an emotional edge never seen before.  “It’s a reality-feature more than it’s a documentary” asserts Bach, “and it’s propaganda more than it’s a reality feature.  It’s not a documentary in the sense of unmediated reality, captured by a disinterested filmmaker.”
 
BINGO!
DITTO!
JACKPOT!
 
While bashing Leni – whose book I must examine for my own assessment – he was setting up Michael Moore for the observation that his work is not documentary in the sense of cinema-verite camera-recording of a factual event.  It’s all reality-feature work. Not a thing by Moore is any more than more-or-less Leni-lens work on behalf of a socialist scheme.  
 
Shortly before Bach’s blather was the revelation of a British leftwing docu couple, who’d sought Moore’s cooperation in a hagiographic “documentary” of their beloved role model – and they discovered in his vault that “Roger and Me” was a lie from the beginning.  For Roger Smith, CEO of GM, had in fact granted a lengthy interview on-film, at the early phase of Moore’s first famous foray in ‘reality-feature’ propaganda.
 
Not that you’ll see that long-ago display of lying – Moore’s film then asserted throughout that Smith was avoiding him as he staked out GM offices, Smith’s home, etc. – to be any reason for Hollywood to dismiss his newest crop of lies.  While the two Brits were dismayed to find their ‘documentary’ icon to be a  big, fat liar [the label put on Rush Limbaugh in a book title last decade], no flood of NY Times and LA Times and Variety reporters in the entertainment industry descended on this mendacious Moore.
 
It’s nothing new.  Just proof positive again, that the Academy does need to create a new category for Leni Riefenstahl’s memory, with her face and Moore’s face engraved on the category for all to realize that Moore is no more a documentarian than was Leni.  Nor Sergei Eisenstein, Russia’s film propagandist – which Bach denies is equivalent, since Sergei was not promoting the commie party per se, but telling regular ole mythical tales from the past in Russian history.
 
Maybe name the special award the Leni one year, the Moore the next, or a blend: The Leni-Moore Oscar for agitprop.  Being fair and balanced, they would one year give it to a Moore acolyte, then next to a Frank Gaffney type.   But wait, that would play into their hands, letting them brand our propaganda equivalent to Leni’s.  Maybe not such a good idea after all.
 
We have to be very careful what we wish for – the left will rig any game and any rule to fit their needs.  Oddly, not even Fox News’ various focus programs has focused on the history of Moore’s mendacity, despite my regular “input” to two contacts.  Seems to hot to handle?  Or, too much work?
 
Dunno.  But Michael and Me had a meeting at the Egyptian once, and his behavior then was a lie, and now even a pair of Moore-lovers found his first ‘documentary’ to be a lie, born a lie before it was even one-fourth completed.  It is Michael Moore who is the Big Fat Liar.  Starting with “Roger and Me” and thru “Fahrenheit” [rebutted by three films shortly thereafter, one by Lionel Chetwynd and another by Dick Morris], and now to “Sicko” – regarding which I just learned that Cuba’s health system damned near killed Castro.  He had to call in a second surgical team, from Spain, to fix the mess made in his first “life-saving” surgery.
 
That wasn’t in “Sicko” – and oddly, enough not even on Fox News.
 
We gotta do a better job, folks.  We got a country to save.  If we can’t get this word out, even on Fox News, what chance do we have in the ’08 battles?  So far the only ‘challenge’ to Moore has been on CNN, of all places!
 
Just more proof we’ve got a target-rich environment, but we’re very poorly armed.  ExileStreet

copyright 2007 Steve Finefrock

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