No, it gets into the ethics of Michael Moore and whether he was exploiting the grief of a family for his own purposes. We can discuss the legality of what he did, or fair use for the media in general in another thread, but this thread is about Michael Moore and his movie. My claim is that his use of footage from a funeral for one of our fallen soldiers without the family's consent was at the very least a crappy thing for him to do. My claim is that it was exploitation.

Okay, you can have your point in my thoughts. But then, you're opinion of Michael Moore is no different than before. Nor is mine. Nor probably is the family's in question (of question?).

So Moore did a crappy thing. It ruffled some feathers. Meanwhile, the point of the flick is that many very big crappy things have been done, resulting in the deaths of thousands.

So what's Moore to do to make amends? Apologize? Hey, if only we could get that from the gigantically crappy ones. You know, the ones who put that poor soldier into the coffin in the first place. Oh, I know it was a crazy soldier who actually did the fragging.

But it was the gigantically crappy ones who put the two soldiers into harms way, one psychologically and the other physically.

So, I'm arguing perspective here. Moore gets whipped with a wet noodle and might even apologize, could even donate money to some charity in the soldier's and family's names. That'd be a cool thing to do. See? This one can be fixed.

Not the other one.

I saw the movie a few days back, and was pretty impressed. Being a filmmaker myself I saw some things I would have done differently, I thought it was too long it should have been 20 minutes shorter, and there were a few things that annoyed me but nothing that impacted the quality of the movie. I can understand why it got the award at Cannes, this is good stuff.

Being aware of the criticism Bowling got in the US I surfed the net and tried to find what the reaction was. There were a few articles scattered around that tried their best to discredit not so much the movie but mostly Moore himself.
"He said this back in 1999 and now he's saying something else" etc. very unconvincing trashmouthing if you ask me. But generally people were hailing this movie as something very important, well done and with a message. This made me all fuzzy inside, you see, I when seeing this movie hoped that this would be a wake up call because it has been my feeling of late that Americans are loosing sight of many important things, what the US does in the world affects everybody on the planet, your liberties is being forfeited right in front of you, I think I know more about the patriot act than many Americans, this should worry you. I'm sure I'm getting in way over my head here, but that is what I felt.

Ikeaboy69
Iceland
Coalition of the willing

Your judgement of the situation is necessarily going to be tainted by your low opinion of Michael Moore. The fact of the matter is, if this footage was part of the public record Michael Moore was in no way required to obtain permission from the family to use it.

Would you have objected to the footage being aired if it were on the evening news showing some of the casualties of war -- the story being that these brave Americans died for a cause? Or do your objections to it simply have to do with the fact that Michael Moore used it and you don't like his message?

The purpose of this thread isn't to discuss the ethics of Michael Moore, discussing that would be more appropriate as either a general or specific question in the Media forum. I don't think we should continue to discuss it here taking this thread off topic. So with that in mind, I do not plan to discuss this further in this thread.

That's a big "if". the family sure doesn't know where it comes from, that was stated in the article. I sure don't know where it came from. Do you? If it came from a news broadcast, there should have been creidt given for that newscast. If it came from a pool feed, and that's typically the way things work at Arlington, then Moore either paid for membership in the pool, or he pirated the feed. We don't know. Maybe I should see if I can go over to where Moore's office is and stake him out and shove a camera in his face and ask him? Wonder if he'll talk to me.....



I raised the question of exploitation of another's grief in the film in this thread before I even heard about this one. Now, all of a sudden, it's not appropriate to discuss here anymore? Ok, take your ball and go home.

You're right, I don't know where it came from. My assumption is that it was taken from the public record, otherwise Moore would have exposed himself to legal difficulties, which I'm assuming he is not stupid enough to do since he has been sued before and has not lost yet. But more to the point, how can we debate this if neither of us has any facts whatsoever? It'll forever be a "its black, no its white" debate until some kind of source for this comes out. I believe my assumption is probably closer to reality than Moore staging a camera crew in the shadows of a funeral, but I also have no way to credibly argue that other than to appeal to common sense.

As a note, the majority of the film was made with footage from the public record. I saw no credits for that footage other than where the name of the network was part of that footage as a way of identifying who was talking for example.


My point was that this thread is in the casual conversation forum, not one of the debate forums. I am in no way saying that is not a valid question which should be discussed, I am merely suggesting that perhaps this thread isn't the appropriate place to discuss it. But, I'm not a moderator and therefore it isn't my decision.

That's what I mean by "credit". That little identifier for the network is called a "chyron" (I think that's the right spelling) and it's something that's inserted in master control as the broadcast is being transmitted out. However, the raw feed or in this case a pool feed being transmitted out from Arlington most likely via satellite does not have that chyron inserted into it, especially with a pool feed. Anyone with the proper equipment and internet access to this site can grab the video. Whether or not they can use it is another discussion and if I can figure out how to frame the question for debate, I'll post it in the media area.

I know this may sound tongue in cheeck, but I am actually being serious...

Aquilla, taken as a given that this film was going to be very anti-Bush and was going to explore and discuss holes in his administration and unsavoury connections...

Is there ANY way at all you were going to do anything other than hate this movie? Even if Moore had crossed the Is and dotted the Ts to your satisfaction, an displayed the 'chyron' on his feed, is there any way your reaction to the movie would have been anything but hostile? If there was, what would Moore have had to do?

Knowing the answer to this would assist us in gauging your current reaction to the movie.

That's a fair question, Vermillion.

Obviously I wasn't going to agree or like the political message contained in this movie. Heck, I wasn't even planning on seeing it because I didn't want to put any more money into Moore's pockets, but then the free tickets became available so why not? Now, going in I knew I wasn't going to agree with the message of the movie so instead I went to view it from a purely artistic standpoint. I worked with film-makers in Los Angeles for 10 years while I was at Disney and I know what works for me and what doesn't in a movie. It's a purely subjective thing to be sure, but this thread does ask the question about one's impressions of the movie. I thought it "blew chunks" to use one of my kid's expressions. Not just from a message standpoint, but also from an artistic standpoint. I've identified several things that I though were poorly done. The quick cuts from soundbyte to soundbyte that I thought disrupted the flow in the storyline because they didn't give the audience any time to consider what had just been said. I thought the segment with the mother of the fallen soldier focused too much on her and not enough on her son and it told her story, rather than his. His story would have been far more effective in my opinion at delivering the message about the real cost of war. Those are just a couple of things, I can go through my notes if you want and detail other specific areas I disliked.

But, believe it or not, it's really not a political thing. I thought it was a crappy movie because it was a crappy movie, not because I disliked the message. I dislike Barbra Streisand's politics, but I appreciate her tremendous singing talent. Steven Speilberg is about as liberal as one can get, but the guy makes absolutely terrific movies. I consider Dustin Hoffman the finest actor of his generation based on "Rainman" and he sure isn't a conservative. Heck, I think Mohammed Ali is truly the "greatest fighter of all time" (not to mention one of the finest philosophers of the 20th century) and there's a whole lot about his political stance with which I disagree.

So yeah, I can give credit where credit is due. Just not a whole lot to give credit for in this particular movie.

Sounds like a fair assessment to me, movies are subjective and art is definitely subjective as well.

Personally I pretty much hate mainstream Hollywood and the drivel it churns out (there are noteable exceptions of course). I prefer indie movies and foreign flicks because they don't follow some tried and true formula and every movie isn't essentially the same thing with a different plot. Special effects don't impress me, something that makes me think does. I'll take something like Donnie Darko or a Tarantino flick over something like Spiderman 2 any day. But that's just me.

Now as far as the artistic merits of the film, you have to keep things in context. This is a documentary style film, how many other documentary films out there are able to tell a story so well and at the same time elicit emotional responses covering the gamut from anger to laughter to sadness? I can't name one, can you?

Probably one of the most artfully done sequences in the film was the 9/11 scene where Moore painted a black screen and only let us listen to the sounds and then immediately afterwards all we saw were crowd reactions. Now in flim making when you have nothing but a black screen your senses become acutely focused on the things you can sense. In this case it was sound, by removing the visual he forced us to pay attention to this sequence and picture it in our minds.

Overall the footage of Bush and others Moore stitched together was also very artfully done. Now you may disagree here because you disagree with the message. But out of thousands of soundbites over 4 years Moore was able to find the ones that were exactly appropriate and relevant for his message. Doing this takes talent. He could have picked other soundbites, but they might have been less effective or ineffective in getting his message across.

Finally, the editorial quality of the film was superb. I am positive you have overlooked this because you didn't want to hear the message. Moore put together a movie that communicated exactly what he wanted you to hear. It was done in a way that was interesting and evoked emotional responses. More importantly it was effective -- there are plenty of people that came out of the theater with their minds changed. As much as I know you don't like his message Aquilla, you have to admit that he did a good job of conveying it. Do you think just anyone could do something similar and make a film against say -- Clinton? Pulling something like this off in an editorial is very artistic indeed and not just anyone is capable.

To address my last sentence there let me give you an example. Let's say you are reading the news paper and there is an editorial written to fire up the right wing. Can you honestly say you have ever read anything that fires you up in that fashion? Could you honestly say you have ever read anything that even stands a chance of convincing an independent while infuriating the other side? I doubt that you have -- and there is the art.

I saw Fahrenheit 9/11 the day it opened in New York City - and have been one of its most devoted advocates ever since. But I have to pretty much agree with a lot of what Aquilla is saying here.

As one who supports much of what Moore is saying, I generally feel that the content of the film was brilliant. However, in terms of the form, I thought this was one of his weakest attempts (indeed, I've felt that his work has gone steadily downhill since Roger and Me, however much I may agree with him politically). Many of the criticisms I've seen elsewhere are ones I'd have to agree with:

There is no coherent through-line and Moore's rants go off in several different directions, seldom drawing any clear conclusions (at least not with much foundation within the film).

I felt that many of the sequences were poorly edited, some of the claims not well-supported, and a lot of the shots unnecessarily cheap. The average posting here is far better-constructed - and more convincing. He had a wealth of material - but did not make the best possible use of it.

The sequence setting up Iraq as a pastoral land full of kite-flying children was dishonest and inept. I know Moore has claimed he was trying to balance all of the news coverage which has generally depicted Iraq as a total nightmare since the birth of Saddam Hussein, but still. It weakened whatever point might have followed even if it heightened the "drama" of the US bombing campaign.

As a viewer, I felt that the footage of Lila Lipscomb breaking down on the streets of DC went on way too long and, to me, felt exploitative, regardless of Ms. Lipscomb's assessment.

I didn't always see a clear line between what was pure documentary and what was Michael Moore's opinion - and I expect this would have been much more difficult for the generally less informed movie-going public.

There are serious criticisms being leveled against Fahrenheit 9/11 and both Michael Moore and his supporters (myself included) should bear them in mind. There may be few, if any, factual inaccuracies in the movie, but that does not mean that the film is consequently a meisterwerk.

I still think that the content is vitally important and should be widely broadcast and that most of the conclusions drawn by Michael Moore are reasonably sound. I still feel that this movie should be seen by every voter in the country simply for the amount of information contained in it which they are never going to see in the mainstream press. But that does not, by any means, imply that the film is flawless. It isn't.

Worth seeing? Absolutely - by all means. The epitome of documentary film-making as an artform? Hardly.

Actually, yes I can and it's even made by one of those "evil liberals" - Steven Speilberg. Band of Brothers. Perhaps some might not consider it a documentary because it didn't use the "real people" although it did include real footage and testimates from the real people, but I did consider it a documentary. It told a real story not unlike the story my father told me and he was there. It told the story of what war is really like and of that, I have personal knowledge. Speilberg got it right and yeah, it took him over 10 hours of film to do it, but he had a long story to tell and unlike Michael Moore, Speilberg wasn't lazy. He got to know the people involved in his story and he enabled his audience to get to know them as well. We learned to laugh with them, cry with them, shiver with them and be frightened with them. And, in some cases, we died with them. That my friend is a powerful way to deliver a message. You don't just hammer people with soundbyte after soundbyte and then get artsy with a blank screen and then hammer them again the way Moore does it. Instead, you tell a story and as you progress through that story you draw your audience into the story. Make them a part of the story, not beat them over the head with it. Moore doesn't do that in this movie and that in my opinion makes him a crappy film-maker. Speilberg does in his movies, whether they are 10 hours or 90 minutes long. That in my opinion makes him a brilliant film-maker.

Normally, I wouldn't mention Moore and Speilberg in the same post, that is a horrible insult to Speilberg, but what the heck. He's just a dang liberal anyway....

I can't even begin to argue with that -- nor do I want to. I didn't even really consider that a documentary but you have a point. Well, you win some, you lose some.

Yep. Length matters.

Now compare a Dostoyevski novel with Ann Coulter drivel. It's easy to take the expectations of a true master and apply the *artistic* criteria to Moore's flick. Moore doesn't do art, nor does Coulter. They do commentary.

The reactions I've read regarding the black screen go along the line of sparing us yet another whipping with the scenes many of us, if not most, watched live.

Some of the footage was crude television stuff. The resolution was poor. Art or just not having any better footage to work with?

I suppose Moore could have spent years on this effort and used professionals to play the parts, and gone into the drama/comedy/deep conflicts that lead up to major SNAFUs -- even yanked very hard at archetypical images. And maybe Speilberg will eventually come out with something along these lines.

Long after the 2004 election is over and everything is safely pushed into history. Then we, the audience, can pretend we laughed, cried, and died along with the actors playing their parts.

Real art. Real safe.