{"id":334,"date":"2007-08-07T14:11:15","date_gmt":"2007-08-07T18:11:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jonesing4movies.com\/?p=334"},"modified":"2009-09-09T21:47:27","modified_gmt":"2009-09-10T01:47:27","slug":"manufacturing-dissent-2000-movie-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jonesing4movies.com\/?p=334","title":{"rendered":"Manufacturing Dissent (2007) – Movie Review"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Awkward\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Awkward Silence: Canadian journalist Debbie Melnyk is the only person on the planet able to silence "documentary" director Michael Moore. Her tactic? Just asking him for an interview.<\/p><\/div>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Ends Justify the Meanness<\/span><\/em><\/h1>\n

[xrr rating=4\/5]<\/p>\n

Manufacturing Dissent<\/em>. Featuring Dave Barber, Noam Chomsky, Peter Damon, John Derevlany, Janeane Garofalo, David Gilmour, Ben Hamper, Christopher Hitchens, Harlan Jacobson, Jim Kenefick, Albert Maysles, Nick McKinney, Debbie Melnyk, Michael Moore, Errol Morris, James Musselman, Ralph Nader, Kevin Rafferty, Sam Riddle, Michael Wilson, and Byron York. Original music by Michael White. Cinematography by Rick Caine. Edited by Rob Ruzic and Bill Towgood. Written and directed by Rick Caine and Debbie Melnyk. (Liberation Entertainment\/Mongrel Media\/CHUM Limited, 2007, Color, 96 minutes. MPAA Rating: R.)<\/strong><\/p>\n

I confess: I thoroughly enjoyed Michael Moore\u2019s \u201cdocumentary\u201d Sicko<\/em>. I went to San Antonio\u2019s Bijou Crossroads on its opening night, and from the looks of the crowd, every alienated leftist in town made it to the theater. They were there to commune with the work of this filmmaker, who looms (literally and figuratively) larger than life in American pop culture.<\/p>\n

As Moore used cellulose acetate to compare and contrast the worm-eaten apples of American HMOs with the wholesome oranges of Canadian and British socialized medicine, I yucked it up with the rest of the crowd. It really was <\/em>that entertaining, full of biting sarcasm and uproariously funny. Watching it, I became conscious of what it must have been like to have seen the \u201cstrike play\u201d Waiting for Lefty <\/em>during the nadir of the Great Depression. <\/em>Moore\u2019s agitprop films are crafted to be apprehended at an emotional level\u2014bypassing critical thinking and sober reflection\u2014to impel the audience to direct political action.<\/p>\n

Unlike Moore\u2019s conservative critics, though, I refused to get sucked into his hunger for publicity by reviewing Sicko. <\/em>On one hand, panning Michael Moore\u2019s facile infotainment is like shooting fish in a barrel. But, on the other, giving his sophistry the imprimatur of serious debate raises it to the unmerited plane of intellectual honesty.<\/p>\n

As a result of Moore\u2019s taking liberties with truth in his films, combined with his obstinate persona, some conservatives turned to the documentary medium to take on Moore on his own turf. Lionel Chetwynd\u2019s Celsius 41.11 <\/em>grapples with Fahrenheit 9\/11<\/em>\u2019s many inaccuracies. Radio personality Larry Elder took on Moore\u2019s shoddy treatment of gun control in Bowling for Columbine <\/em>with Michael & Me.<\/em> In his film, Elder took a page from Moore\u2019s first feature, Roger & Me, <\/em>attempting in vain to interview with the corpulent director.<\/p>\n

Husband-and-wife documentary filmmakers Rick Caine and Debbie Melnyk began work on Manufacturing Dissent<\/em> with a different purpose in mind. With their background in investigative journalism, they had already turned the camera lens on what they considered to be unsavory people in their trade. Their 1998 doc Junket Whore<\/em> explored the incestuous relationship between the news media and the entertainment industry. Then they returned to their native Canada to cover press baron Conrad Black in their 2004 release Citizen Black.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cWhile we were following him around, we found out he was stealing millions of dollars from his shareholders,\u201d Melnyk told me in a recent interview. \u201cSo, we decided for our next project to do one on someone we liked, Michael Moore,\u201d whose confrontational interviewing style Melnyk has emulated in her work.<\/p>\n

A self-described liberal, Melnyk has consistently voted for Canada\u2019s New Democratic Party, which puts her considerably to the left of our northern neighbors\u2019 Liberal Party. She and Caine oppose the U.S. war in Iraq as well as Canadian military involvement in Afghanistan. In Manufacturing Dissent,<\/em> they use such documentary clich\u00e9s as slow-motion and ominously foreboding synthesizer chords to depict George W. Bush\u2019s two presidential election victories. Obviously, they wear their ideological hearts on their sleeves.<\/p>\n

Yet, when they hit the road in search of Michael Moore, they unexpectedly and slowly begin to uncover the real man beneath the carefully cultivated mask of the blue-collar Everyguy.<\/p>\n

Filmed during Moore\u2019s 2004 \u201cSlacker Uprising,\u201d get-out-the-vote college campus tour, Melnyk calmly but firmly approaches Moore to ask him for an in-depth interview. He noncommittally promises an interview \u201cafter the election,\u201d but shortly thereafter, Moore\u2019s security detail doggedly shoo Melnyk and her crew away. After being turned back from venue after venue, Melnyk dryly narrates, \u201cI thought Michael Moore liked<\/em> Canadians.\u201d<\/p>\n

Much of their film centers on reminiscences from Moore\u2019s friends and associates. Former \u201cTV Nation\u201d producer Nick McKinney remembers Moore as a volatile but generous boss, who made the touching gesture of buying his prot\u00e9g\u00e9 airline tickets so he could attend his first film\u2019s premiere. For Democrat Party consultant Sam Riddle, Moore\u2019s still a longtime pal with a heart of gold. Yet even Riddle admits \u201che can be a bit megalomaniacal at times, with a paranoid tinge.\u201d Rock music journalist Dave Marsh remembers Moore as a jerk whose alternative paper would regularly run Marsh\u2019s popular syndicated features, but who\u2019d always stiff him on payment for reprinting his column. Slowly, a portrait emerges of Moore as a user who\u2019d make even Dorian Gray blush.<\/p>\n

Worse, Caine and Melnyk uncover a plethora of instances in which Moore manipulated facts in order to present a warped version of the truth. While admirers like former Toronto film festival director Helga Stephenson brush aside such peccadilloes, saying that Moore\u2019s approach has popularized what was previously an aficionado\u2019s genre, others find his opportunism troubling.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s been found to have fabricated, or invented\u2014carpentered\u2014a number of distortions and outright lies into his narrative,\u201d notes writer Christopher Hitchens.<\/p>\n

One example is how Moore used footage of Massachusetts Army National Guardsman Sgt. Peter Damon, who lost both arms in a helicopter accident in Iraq. Moore edited the footage in Fahrenheit 9\/11<\/em> to make it appear the gung-ho troop was disenchanted with President Bush and the Iraq War effort. But Damon still supports both Bush and the war and (unsuccessfully) sued Michael Moore for taking his words out of context.<\/p>\n

Pioneering documentarian Albert Maysles dismisses Moore\u2019s achievements. For the eclectic director\u2014whose subject matter ranges from door-to-door Bible salesmen, the rock group Rolling Stones, and virtuoso pianist Vladimir Horowitz\u2014what\u2019s at stake is the integrity<\/em> of the documentary process as a means of imparting truth. In a recent interview, Maysles described the documentarian\u2019s role as filmmaker:<\/p>\n

Hitchcock put it beautifully when he said, \u201cIn a fiction film the director is God. In a non-fiction film\u2014a documentary\u2014God is the director\u201d. . . . And if you happen to be an agnostic or an atheist, then call God \u201creality.\u201d We are governed by reality rather than trying to control it.<\/em> [Emphasis added].<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In bonus footage in the Canadian screener DVD, Maysles expanded on this, saying, \u201cWhat we need more than anything is knowledge of the real world that is unprejudiced, that doesn\u2019t start out with the determination on the part of a filmmaker to prejudge and to be limited by a point-of-view.\u201d Maysles doesn\u2019t buy that Moore is a boon to the documentary trade, despite having raked in millions. \u201cBut he\u2019s entertaining us with propaganda<\/em>,\u201d he countered a journalist supporting Moore. \u201cSo did Hitler.\u201d<\/p>\n

It is not at all surprising when we arrive at the most damning evidence of Moore\u2019s personal and professional malfeasance, in a former friend\u2019s testimony. Jim Musselman worked with Moore during the inception of Roger & Me. <\/em>They envisioned it as a document of the efforts of workers, labor unions, and liberal groups in Flint, Michigan, to keep the General Motors plant open in the late 1980s. To the idealistic Musselman, seeing his friend transform that film into an unfulfilled personal<\/em> quest to interview GM chairman Roger Smith\u2014leaving hours of footage of community efforts and rallies on the cutting-room floor\u2014left him disillusioned.<\/p>\n

Moore telephoned Musselman late one night, asking him not to mention that Moore did,<\/em> in fact, interview Smith\u2014twice. \u201cI can make it look like anything I want,\u201d Musselman recalls Moore telling him. \u201cIt\u2019ll just go on the cutting-room floor.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cMichael Moore says everyone is subjective,\u201d Melnyk told me. \u201cYou cannot say no one is objective. There are certain truths in the world, certain things you should not do like taking people out of context, and Moore does that. He puts two half-truths together and then tells you it\u2019s the whole truth.\u201d<\/p>\n

By movie\u2019s end, what\u2019s left of Michael Moore\u2019s credibility is shredded to ribbons. Melnyk and Caine started out on a quest to capture their hero on film, only to find an empty windbreaker strutting about, leaving a trail of broken friendships and a pack of lies in his wake.<\/p>\n

But, Melnyk also found many principled people along the way, such as Albert Maysles and Ralph Nader. \u201cIn particular, Jim Musselman had such great integrity,\u201d Melnyk said, referring to Musselman\u2019s refusal to fall on his sword for Moore.<\/p>\n

It is borne out in Musselman\u2019s warning in the documentary, about the dangers of those who succumb to the cult of celebrity, at the expense of the evidence of their own experiences.<\/p>\n

\u201cI would get calls from people who were quote-unquote pretty high up on the left, and they\u2019d say \u2018you have to stand up and lie for him,\u2019 and they\u2019d say, \u2018the ends justify the means,\u2019\u201d Musselman recalled. \u201cIt\u2019s the saddest thing, who we put our faith in. We follow leaders too much. We don\u2019t follow what\u2019s in our own heart and soul enough.\u201d<\/p>\n

Robert L. Jones is a photojournalist living and working in Minnesota. His work has appeared in\u00a0<\/span>Black & White Magazine<\/span><\/span>,\u00a0<\/span>Entrepreneur<\/span><\/span>,\u00a0<\/span>Hoy! New York<\/span><\/span>, the New York\u00a0<\/span>Post<\/span><\/span>,\u00a0<\/span><\/em>RCA Victor\u00a0<\/span>(Japan)<\/span><\/em>,\u00a0<\/span>Scene in San Antonio<\/span><\/span>,\u00a0<\/span>Spirit Magazine<\/span><\/span>\u00a0(Canada),\u00a0<\/span>Top Producer<\/span><\/span>,\u00a0 and the Trenton\u00a0<\/span>Times<\/span><\/span>. Mr. Jones is a past entertainment editor of\u00a0<\/span>The New Individualist<\/span><\/span>.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0 \u00a0 The Ends Justify the Meanness [xrr rating=4\/5] Manufacturing Dissent. Featuring Dave Barber, Noam Chomsky, Peter Damon, John Derevlany, Janeane Garofalo, David Gilmour, Ben Hamper, Christopher Hitchens, Harlan Jacobson, Jim Kenefick, Albert Maysles, Nick McKinney, Debbie Melnyk, Michael Moore, Errol Morris, James Musselman, Ralph Nader, Kevin Rafferty, Sam Riddle, Michael Wilson, and Byron York. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23,45,37,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-334","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-documentaries","category-foreign-films","category-independent-films","category-mreview"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonesing4movies.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/334","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonesing4movies.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonesing4movies.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonesing4movies.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonesing4movies.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=334"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/jonesing4movies.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/334\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":338,"href":"https:\/\/jonesing4movies.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/334\/revisions\/338"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonesing4movies.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=334"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonesing4movies.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=334"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonesing4movies.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=334"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}