Thanks for posting this - you reminded me I still need to see it. Mike is a "family friend" of ours, and has been for about 25 years. I wouldn't go so far as to say we're close with him, per se, but he's known my family since just before Roger and Me (back when no one knew or cared who he was, when he was doing his expose on the slow agonizing death of Flint, not too far from where my folks grew up), and he still answers our emails.
He can be cliche and arrogant and full of himself sometimes these days - I think partly because he's still not quite used to *not* having to wave his arms and leap up and down to get anyone to listen - and he's sometimes guilty of wild hyperbole, but he's still fighting for "the little guy" in so many ways. And he's quite softspoken in person, believe it or not!
Wow! I saw him speak at UGA in 1994 (? I think?) and waited around afterwards for autographs, etc. He is soft spoken. Very sweet.
I am such a fan. I have seen all of his movies and TV shows, read all his books. He has been consistently pointing out that things are Not OK, even when the larger cultural message has been Everything Is Fine.
I think he's too well known to do the street theater now, and that tactic has been done to death. It doesn't work any more. Although it was brilliantly done in some of his earlier work - the voice box choir serenading the tobacco companies on The Awful Truth, and having the guy who'd been denied health benefits to treat his pancreatic cancer ask the CEO of the health insurance company to help him pick out a coffin - those were brilliant stunts.
I'm a huge fan, too. :D We've got a screener of Roger and Me, somewhere... it was actually *banned* in Michigan for a little while, so he got the word out with screener copies till whoever banned it realized we were all watching it anyway (and driving to give Indiana our money, where necessary!) Every time someone starts taking cheap shots at him, I tell them they have no idea what it was like, growing up in Michigan in the mid 80s and *watching* Flint die at the hands of corporate greed... and then came Mike and a camera, there to throw back the curtain and try to make a difference. I'll never forget going to Flint in... God, 1983? I was tiny, but a vaguely remember it as a nice city... and then I went back in 1985 for a wheelchair track meet, and there was just... nothing. *Nothing*. It was a ghost town. Just complete urban decay and abject poverty. The few locals we saw were living in their cars or sorting through garbage bags of their possessions (from when they'd been foreclosed on), while their houses stood dead empty mere yards
( ... )
One of the things that I love the most about FDR is that most folks don't seem to understand how much they owe to him and the New Deal. Especially where I grew up. As a reminder, Sarah Palin is from basically the same place, and her views on socialism (and what constitutes "socialism") are somewhat representative of the local culture.
Well...in 1935, there were no settlements there. None. And no white folks to speak of. The New Deal colonized the Valley where I grew up with farmers from the upper midwest. Had it not been for that very socialist program, the Matanuska-Susitna Valley would probably be very different today.
How could you be Depressed looking at that? I thought it was funny as hell. Michael Moore is a Joke and I love him for it. he has done well as a Capitalist himself.
Yeah, i'm with you on the "economics" of Wall Street. I'm not a person generally interested in finance or statistics, but I certainly do have a better-than-average understanding of investing. that I have ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA how these corporations bought up known toxic loans and repackaged them with AAA ratings and sold them off...just makes me want to smack around my lower middle class family members who will defend the "free market" to the death.
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He can be cliche and arrogant and full of himself sometimes these days - I think partly because he's still not quite used to *not* having to wave his arms and leap up and down to get anyone to listen - and he's sometimes guilty of wild hyperbole, but he's still fighting for "the little guy" in so many ways. And he's quite softspoken in person, believe it or not!
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I am such a fan. I have seen all of his movies and TV shows, read all his books. He has been consistently pointing out that things are Not OK, even when the larger cultural message has been Everything Is Fine.
I think he's too well known to do the street theater now, and that tactic has been done to death. It doesn't work any more.
Although it was brilliantly done in some of his earlier work - the voice box choir serenading the tobacco companies on The Awful Truth, and having the guy who'd been denied health benefits to treat his pancreatic cancer ask the CEO of the health insurance company to help him pick out a coffin - those were brilliant stunts.
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I don't think I can watch, because he's RIGHT, and it's depressing as all fuck.
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Well...in 1935, there were no settlements there. None. And no white folks to speak of. The New Deal colonized the Valley where I grew up with farmers from the upper midwest. Had it not been for that very socialist program, the Matanuska-Susitna Valley would probably be very different today.
G-d, do we need another FDR.
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However, even his interns get a living wage and are unionized.
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