Convenient Neglect of Pertinent Material

Manufacturing Dissent di Debbie Melnyk e Rick Caine
la recensione del Corriere della sera, qui

Fahrenheit 9/11 va bene, ma credo che rientri in una certa categoria, quella di chi predica ai convertiti. E’ diventato quasi una chiesa laica dove la gente poteva pregare insieme e attaccare gli infedeli di Bush. Una comunicazione partigiana a senso unico tende a richiamare un publico di credenti e a rafforzare quello in cui già credono, anziché indurre qualcuno a cambiare idea. - Erroll Morris, documentarista




Al minuto 2'48" - David Gilmour, critico cinematografico e commentatore della tv canadese, ricorda la sua intervista a Michael Moore, dopo l'uscita del suo primo lungometraggio Canadian Bacon. Una commedia stroncata dalla critica. Interessante il match Gilmour/Moore.

2'48"MELNYK - David Gilmour interviewed Michael Moore when he was film critic for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. In his fifty years of doing interviews, David says the one he did with Michael Moore about "Canadian Bacon" is the one every one remembers. This is Michael’s only dramatic film and is one his rare failures.
GILMOUR - I suspected, and it turned out to be true, that the second I asked the first thing he didn’t like to hear, the little persona of the sweet little boy, the regular guy, that mask slipped off and I thought: “That’s the real Michael Moore!”

GILMOUR:
There are people who had some serious problems with this movie, you know, Canadian Bacon…
MOORE:
You have a list?
GILMOUR:
I have a long list. (Bacon is an undercooked comedy, Childish, boring, ineffective blabber, Pure awefulness, Moore should stick to the nonfiction world, A dreadful waste of talent) They think it’s amateurishly shot, badly directed and not funny…
MOORE:Wow...
GILMOUR:
… which is a problem for a comedy.
MOORE:Well, you know, those people like art films. I made a film for people like me. Some critic said: “This is the first left-wing film for the mall crowd”. Now I don’t know whether he was referring to people who go to shopping malls or who live in trailer parks, but I consider that a compliment. Where are you from?
GILMOUR:
Toronto.
MOORE:
Where did you go to school?
GILMOUR:
I went to private school.
MOORE:
Well, you come from a different class than I come from, you know. You might like different things than I like.
GILMOUR:
I don’t think it has anything to do with the highbrow intellectual crowd. I think it’s possible that maybe you didn’t make a good film, and I think that you got to acknowledge that, rather than dismiss the people who don’t like your movie as if there’s something wrong with them.
MOORE:
Oh, I don’t have to acknowledge that. I made a very good film. A film I am very proud of.

GILMOUR - It was really quite a schizophrenic interview. Because I could tell that he wanted me dead, but in the same time I had him on film. And the only way that he was going to get that off film, was to make me like him again.

MOORE:
Some people won’t like the film. It’s ok, you don’t have to love the film. It’s alright, I’ll still talk to you.

GILMOUR - Here's a guy who makes his living going around, dropping in on people, putting the camera on them, capturing them in awkward positions and then filming them. All I'm saying is, if you are going to do that for a living, you've gotta be prepared for it to happen to you and when it does happen to you, you better behave with some grace otherwise, you're gonna look like a hypocrite.

Al minuto 4'03" - l'intervento di Erroll Morris (in apertura del post)
Al minuto 4'26" - l'intervento di John Pierson, cineasta indipendente, già produttore di Spike Lee, Richard Linklater e Michael Moore (Roger & Me) - "(...) Escludo nel modo più assoluto che (Fahrenheit 9/11) abbia favorito anche solo minimamente la campagna di John Kerry. Michael ha finito per vendere se stesso. E da "Bowling a Columbine" in poi, ogni volta che le cose vanno a gonfie vele per Michael Moore - a livello personale, a livello di popolarità, a livello di conto in banca - fondamentalmente vanno sempre peggio per il paese."