NEW YORK, Dec 21 — It’s been almost 13 years since bombastic film documentarian Michael Moore was booed at the Oscars for slamming the Bush administration’s invasion of Iraq. He promptly found his Oscar statue keyed (he’d won for Bowling for Columbine), and became the target of attempted assaults, death threats and a few truckloads of manure dumped at his Michigan home.
This year, Moore, 61, whose Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004) remains the highest-grossing documentary of all time, returns with a kinder, gentler film, Where to Invade Next, opening Wednesday in New York and Los Angeles, and being released nationally in February. (The film has already been shortlisted for the Oscar for best documentary feature.) In it, Moore travels to three continents to “steal” good ideas from foreign lands and bring them back to the United States, including France’s gourmet school lunches and Finland’s successful, and homework-free, public education system.
Moore recently spoke about the film’s origins (it began with a 1970s backpacking trip) and why he thinks Democrats are like chihuahuas. Following are excerpts from the conversation:
This film seems unlikely to tick people off.
I don’t know, maybe Fox News is going to do a whole thing on me wanting our third-graders to be fed lamb skewers and French cheese. No, I don’t think they can be so mad at me. I’m not making a policy film; I’m making a human film. I’m showing the humanism of how they decide to treat their children in Finland and how the French do not poison their children at lunch. If enough people leave all stirred up, if just 10 per cent of them go to the next PTA meeting and say, “Hey, why don’t we start doing lunch differently and get local farmers and do this?” that is going to motivate people to do something.
Was the idea for this film cooking for a long time?
Since I was 19. Since I got a Youth Hostel card and Eurail Pass. Each country I went to with my backpack and my little tent, I’d keep saying, “That’s such a good idea; how come we don’t do that?” Then I was hiking in Sweden and busted my foot and had to go to the emergency room and they fixed it. And I’m so nervous because my Blue Cross from the US wasn’t going to cover me. I don’t have any money on me. “They go, ‘OK, goodbye.” “What? That’s it? Don’t I owe you anything?” “'No. It’s all free here.” “But I’m not a Swede.” “It doesn’t matter.” I couldn’t believe it. I was gobsmacked.
Bowling for Columbine was 13 years ago and look what’s happened with guns; Fahrenheit 9/11 11 years ago, yet the United States is still involved in conflicts. Do you ever despair?
I’m of two minds about this. I’m frustrated constantly and often wondering why bother making these movies. When Bowling for Columbine came out, there was not a weekly or even a monthly occurrence of school shootings; it was still pretty rare. There’s that sense of you make these films in the hopes that things will get better and they don’t. But I made a film called “The Big One.” I got Phil Knight to talk to me, the head of Nike. I said, “Do you realise there’s 12-year-olds working in your factories in Indonesia?” After the movie came out he changed it to 18 years old. I introduced this idea of the 99 per cent and the 1 per cent (in) Capitalism: A Love Story. That was in ’09. Two years later, Occupy Wall Street. I think if you talk to any of the young people, that was one of those things that helped trigger the movement and gave it a lexicon. The ball is being moved down the field.
And with your new movie, do you think America would ever adopt some of these very progressive…
Absolutely. Instead of being 10 years or 20 years ahead of the curve of some of these things, I think I’m right on the curve. I think people are already there. The war on drugs isn’t working. We have Jim Crow in our prisons, no paid maternity leave. It’s down to us and Papua New Guinea (without guaranteed paid maternity leave for mothers). Come on. This is going to happen under the new president.
Who’s going to win to the elections?
Whoever has a D beside their name in parentheses. Seriously, I tell people, “Vote for who you think is the best candidate in the primaries, because on the Democratic side that’s who’s going to win.” All you need to understand is one statistic — I think it’s 81 per cent of the country is either female, people of colour or young voters between the ages of 18 and 35. (He arrived at that figure by crunching recent census numbers; of course not all those people vote.) The three groups that the Republicans have targeted for “Who can we turn off to everything we believe in?” Liberals and Democrats are (like) one of those little dogs that shake all the time.
Chihuahuas?
Chihuahuas. They’re like, “Oh, they’re going to win; what’s going to happen?” The only way the Democrats can lose this is if they stay home. We don’t have the courage of our convictions the way that the right and the conservatives do. It’s something you have to admire about them. They’re up on Election Day at 6 in the morning, ready to go do their duty, and we’re like, “I don’t know, Bernie didn’t go for the Brady Bill, or Hillary voted for the war.” — The New York Times
