Michael Moore considers retirement because his documentaries don't effect behavior change

I've written more than a million words, and only one article I've ever written had a demonstrable on anything. Did it comfort the afflicted? Did it afflict the comfortable? No, it helped pressure the city of Chicago to improve the Park District golf courses.

Big fucking whoop, right? Well, what's the biggest measurable change your writing has effected?

Now here comes documentary-maker Michael Moore, quoted on the Huffington Post saying his latest documentary, Capitalism: A Love Story, might be his last.

Why? Because people aren't doing what he's telling them to do:

I've done this for 20 years. I started out by warning people about General Motors, and my whole career has been trying to say the emperor has no clothes here, and we better do something about it. I've been having to sort of knock my head against the wall here for 20 years saying these things.

Two years ago, I tried to get the health-care debate going, and it did eventually, and now where are we? We may not even have it. What am I supposed to do at a certain point?

You're supposed to ... keep making documentaries, fool! What else are you going to do fatass, join the NBA? This is what you do. It's the only thing anybody will pay you to do.

And you know as well as I do—just like any professional communicator who promises his or her work will lead to demonstrable results—that communication is faith: The belief that what you're dishing out is providing comfort to someone who needs it, is upsetting someone who has it coming, and is doing some good, somehow, somewhere, some way.

And anybody who demands more control than that from mass communications either has a dictator complex or is trying to promote a movie.

Comments

[Yossi Mandel]

Either-or? Aren't they one and the same?

Excellent common sense observation. It's very telling of a person involved in an effort who at some point says, "I've done enough to change the world. It's the world's fault for not changing." No, if you see you haven't changed anything, perhaps stop skipping from topic to topic, and fight one battle beginning to end. Do more, don't tell everyone else they're lazy bums. Keep doing it until you drop. That might earn you the right to kvetch.

[amy]

"Communication is faith."

That is so true. No matter how many metrics and measurement plans we come up with, that's the bottom line. Communication is faith.

Amen, brother.

[Tom Braxton]

"What am I supposed to do at a certain point?" Keep plugging. Wars are won in a long series of battles, many of them lost.

Either Moore has been unrealistic in his goals or else he's come to believe his press clippings. Facing adoring crowds for 20 years will do that to a guy.

What he's done for those years in his movies and books is add fuel to a fire that had already started to burn. His mistake is thinking that he was the one to strike the match and will be the one to determine when it's been quenched.

He's a good communicator, but marginal as a messiah. He can be effective for many more years if he can understand that.

[David Murray]

Yossi, Amy and Tom—you wrapped this discussion up in three different wrappers, all beautiful.

[Steve C.]

Let's all just be happy that he's retiring. That should be enough. His first doc about GM was great, and everything else has been twisted shit.

Let him fade into the sunset, and let us not question why.

Steve C.

[Kristen]

The problem, Steve-O, is that there are about a MILLION of these kamikazi "in-your-face" issues highlighter people on the right, but Michael Moore is the only one we really have on the left of the issues.

While I agree that he has some issues with how he presents things, his basic premises in each of the documentaries he's made have been true and legitimate and deserving of a spotlight. If he goes, we'll have no one presenting the left focused side of issues, and I do think that would be a concern . . . well, unless of course, you're a rightie!

[Steve C.]

OR, Kristen . . . . OR . . . someone with integrity and ethics and real journalism skills on the left could step up and fill the void left by this con artist, and take up the very worthwhile causes he claims to care about!!

Let's hope that happens.

Steve C.

[David Murray]

For a Hunter S. Thompson fan and a youthful lover of journalistic mayhem who once wrote a wild gonzo story about attending an IABC conference shitfaced, you sure have gotten square over the years, Uncle Steve.

[Steve C.]

Touche, David (please insert the appropriate accent mark).

Touche.

Then again, trying to make an industry conference entertaining with some fun writing isn't QUITE the same as tackling health care, corporate greed, or gun control.

But I am getting old beyond my years. Thanks for the wake up call.

Steve C.

[David Murray]

I blame parenthood and mortgages. If one doesn't make you square, the other one surely will.

[Kristen]

Oh, for pity's sake, don't you people EVER get tired of blaming Canada?!

Michael Moore was just interviewed on TV (the Toronto international film festival's on, so we're currently lousy with celebrities around here) and he made a point of saying "Canada gave me my start and is responsible for a lot of my success."

Seriously, Michael - thanks, but no thanks!!

[Bill Dunne]

Isn't knowing the difference between "effect" and "affect" pretty basic for a writer? And, sorry, but I still find it jarring to encounter the F word in places like this.

[David Murray]

Bill, will it jar you again to learn that I've used "effect" correctly?

http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/affect-versus-effect.aspx

[Yossi Mandel]

David, you've been hit by subtle spam. That's what the above is.