Fahrenhype 9/11

[Grojlach]

Originally posted by Ronn_Bman: quote: Contrary to its title, Michael Moore Hates America isn’t a hatchet job on the filmmaker. It’s a journey across the nation where we meet celebrities, scholars and average folks alike, and we find out whether the American Dream is still alive! In the process, we’ll look at Michael Moore’s claims about the country, its people, and our way of life.

The description sounds good, and he may actually have a good idea, but I think the title makes it... too.. hateful?

He says he wants to interview Moore, but the truth is, he wants to complain about Moore's rejection of the offer of being interviewed more. [/QUOTE]I hope they're going to add that hilarious footage from Saturday Night Live (? not sure, could be another show), in which the guy who made MMHA is followed by a camera team in his attempts to track down Michael Moore, who just happens to appear constantly in the background (which poor Mike Wilson never noticed until it was aired ).
You can say a lot of things about Michael Moore, but not that he doesn't have a good sense of humour.

[ 09-14-2004, 05:42 AM: Message edited by: Grojlach ]

[Barry the Sprout]

Originally posted by Timber Loftis: I do think it's relevant that he's overweight slovenly unshaven and be-capped. I recall the words of one of my law professors commenting at our tendancy to wear sandals at Vermont Law School: "Don't these people know that they're going to have to wear actual shoes and put on a tie someday if they want to be taken seriously?" I'm not big on the "challenge the status quo" and "look at them for their ideas, not appearance" excuses either. It's all one big picture for me. Moore dresses like he directs: a quick tossing together of a hodgepodge of random and only seemingly-related things -- just enough effort to let us know he may be witty, but not enough to convey any clear picture or theme. You may say I'm superficial. I'll just say he's a lazy slob -- which is by far a worse thing to be.

In my opinion the kind of people who'll only listen to a guy in shoes and a tie are only going to listen to the kind of things a guy in shoes and a tie would say. And if you can't see a clear theme in Fahrenheit 9/11 then you're really not looking hard enough. Or maybe you're looking at the wrong things - like how the people involved are dressing...

As for Moore's directing style being a "hodgepodge" I'd like to say that he builds from real peoples liveas and experiences of concrete events like job losses or election scandals and progresses from them ultimately to Orwellian anti-capitalism. Thats a hell of a lot more sophisticated than a lot of people give him credit for. His argument is constructed mostly through the use of examples, not polemic, yet clearly conveys the largely abstract points he wants to make about authority in a capitalist society whilst remaining grounded in everyday peoples lives. He knew who and what he was making this film for, and it wasn't to persuade middle america, or the right, or even the left leaning intellectuals - it was made for, and aimed at, the working class.

Also while Moore may be a slob I think calling him lazy is possibly a little misguided. From what I know of him he's a shrewd and energetic campaigner on a number of issues. I think anyone who pulls the kind of stunts he did on TV Nation can't really be considered lazy.

[Oblivion437]

Originally posted by Grojlach: I hope they're going to add that hilarious footage from Saturday Night Live (? not sure, could be another show), in which the guy who made MMHA is followed by a camera team in his attempts to track down Michael Moore, who just happens to appear constantly in the background (which poor Mike Wilson never noticed until it was aired ).

He was never in a shot WITH Mike Wilson, and you'll note that the way they ran into him was obviously set up. Moore would of course accept an interview from The Daily Show, especially if it makes his detractor look bad.

You can say a lot of things about Michael Moore, but not that he doesn't have a good sense of humour.

About others, yes, but if anyone cracks a joke at him, he threatens a lawsuit.

[Ronn_Bman]

Originally posted by Grojlach: I hope they're going to add that hilarious footage from Saturday Night Live (? not sure, could be another show), in which the guy who made MMHA is followed by a camera team in his attempts to track down Michael Moore, who just happens to appear constantly in the background (which poor Mike Wilson never noticed until it was aired ). You can say a lot of things about Michael Moore, but not that he doesn't have a good sense of humour.

Moore did a similar bit on Comedy Central's The Daily Show With John Stewart. They had the 'MM Hates America' guy on talking about how Moore wouldn't return his calls, and how he had been to all these places where Moore was suppose to be, but Moore was nowhere to be found, and then every bit TDS did afterwards with their news correspondent Moore was there and ready to chat. It was hilarous, but TDS usually is. [img]graemlins/hehe.gif[/img]

[Oblivion437]

That's the only bit. There was no SNL bit...

[Grojlach]

Originally posted by Oblivion437: That's the only bit. There was no SNL bit...

I wasn't sure actually, hadn't seen the footage myself but had heard about it. Thanks for clarifying it to me, though.

[Grojlach]

Originally posted by Oblivion437: About others, yes, but if anyone cracks a joke at him, he threatens a lawsuit.

Got an example?

[ 09-15-2004, 01:21 PM: Message edited by: Grojlach ]

[Grojlach]

Two other, similar documentaries - The least they can do is pick a title that isn't a play on his name or his movies, though; it's getting kinda lame. Ah well - at least you can tell by the titles how terrible they're all going to be. [img]graemlins/heee.gif[/img]

Celsius 41.11
Another anti-moore movie filmed by citizens united. Comes out september 21st. From a overview it sounds like it basically tries to debunk F9/11 and the fad around it.

http://www.citizensunited-interactive.org/c41.11/

Michael & Me
"Michael & Me" was made by talk-radio star and soon-to-be TV host Larry Elder. The 90-minute documentary takes on Moore's BFC.

[ 09-20-2004, 04:08 PM: Message edited by: Grojlach ]

[Grojlach]

Okay, I've seen Fahrenhype 9/11 now, and it made me groan even more than Fahrenheit 9/11; they actually had that David Kopel guy (of Internet fame) in the movie as well, which is a favourite of some of the more rabid anti-Moore fans as far as I can remember from the old F9/11 threads.
They managed to discuss some of the biggest non-issues and non-points of Moore's movie - Moore allegedly "faked" the layout of a single newspaper article that was shown for a second (which basically consisted of enlarging the article's head and some sloppy typos regarding the article's date); they focused on single statements made by Moore rather than the point in its entirety (fans of strawman arguments will absolutely *love* this documentary); they took Moore's statements regarding "there is no terrorist threat" out of context and blew it to ridiculous proportions, filling about a third of the movie to emphasise that people *should* be scared of terrorists and that the Patriot Act is the only thing standing between the US and Total War on American soil; according to Kopel, Iraq *was* a direct threat to the US (and the invasion was "justified" in result) just because an Udai-owned newspaper had called up to rise against the US on some rare occasions (no evidence was provided by Kopel, by the way); they "disprove" the links between Bush and the Carlyle group (and, subsequently, with Saudi Arabia) by pointing out that several Democrats are involved with that group just the same (erm...); Ann Coulter wasn't as vitriolic as her usual self (I suppose part of it was cut out ), but I don't believe there were many of her lines in the movie that didn't include the word "liberals"; oh, and apparently, Michael Moore is "unpatriotic" as some alleged Hezbollah-associated filmhouses in Palestine decided to show F9/11, because Moore didn't use his "power" to disallow these filmhouses from showing it (rrrright ); there's a focus on the situation in pre-invasion Iraq, but never give a single reason why *Iraq* was invaded for that situation and not one of the countless other countries in the world violating those same international laws and committing those same "atrocities"; in an unexpected twist, Michael Moore's propaganda techniques are actually compared to Hitler's (!); Michael Moore's election fraud theories were dismissed with only a single mention of an investigation that was published a few months later, while never even going into any of F9/11's "conflict of interest" accusations (which was in my opinion - if proven to be true - the most interesting part of that entire section of F9/11 and the reason why Bush's election will be fishy until the end of times, even if it turns out he still won it by a wide margin in case everyone *was* allowed and able to cast the vote they wanted to); "the military is doing a good job because the Taliban would have eaten all the Iraqi kids instead" (or something along those lines); oh, and there's some guy who thinks he's really witty by concluding that Michael Moore has to be French (?).
Oh, and note that I don't guarantee to represent this movie fairly in the above paragraph, I'm far too much in a silly mood for fair rebuttals thanks to this movie ; this in case someone like, say, Oblivion decides to strawman my strawman impressions of this strawman documentary that claims to take on Michael Moore's strawman arguments in F9/11. [img]tongue.gif[/img]

Basically, opinions are posed as "facts", and that's pretty much it; overwhelming the few *good* points made regarding F9/11. A great movie if you want a good laugh or simply if you are in the mood to yell at some rightwing nutters and their downright bizarre concept of reality on your screen, but not much else. Let's hope the other F9/11 rebuttal movies have more substance than just a parade of hardly related personal attacks at Moore's address.

And in addition, some words by a guy named Lobst who posted this on the SA-forums, and which I agree with to some degree:

Massive liberal here. Downloaded it, watched it, loved getting angry -- all by illegitimate means while playing video golf. There were one or two verifiable facts that debunk major turning points in F9/11, but there's so much subjective opinion, conjecture, fallacy, semantics, and irrelevant data surrounding them that they can be difficult to get into. Most of FH9/11's rebuttals include statements from people who, instead of pointing out and ripping apart the facts cited by their appearance, simply state "Hey! I didn't know I was in Moore's film and I don't agree with him and his terrorist-humping!" or "Hey! KKKlinton felt the same way about this shit!" (which doesn't make sense as Moore was anti-Clinton as well, though not to any staggering degree), or "Hey look at me, I'm (a mother of a soldier who died, a soldier, an army recruiter) and the individual(s) Moore put up, supposedly to represent the group I'm in, did not represent me!" -- I ended up shouting "This... this is just FILLER!" at the screen, followed by "This film is a s***stain!" Then I actually punched my screen and my downstairs neighbor pounded on my door and was all "what's all this hubjub" and i turned out the lights and stood really still for about an hour. Not like F9/11 was a bastion of incontrivertible truth, but Moore has more good points, and I love this film because I find them validated by this film's vehement merchandising of subjectivity as objectivity. Check it out if you want, but be prepared to wade through a sea of strawmen if you want to find anything of substance. (...) I find it amazing how they could fill 80 minutes with semantic rebuttals to seconds-long pieces of footage in F9/11, yet they wouldn't even touch the worsening conditions in Afghanistan and Iraq, Bush's military record or his pre-1998 Bath/Carlyle/Bin Laden connections, the subject of Lila Lipscomb and her family, the compounded invasiveness and ineffectiveness of our new airport security policy, the rampant pro-war bias of the media, or the seemingly-rising-by-coincidence and improperly colored Terror Alert system. Oddly enough, this film also takes pre-9/11 situations and puts them under a post-9/11 perspective, which is ridiculous when you consider that nobody had even considered the possibility that people would use planes as makeshift missiles. Did you know that before late 2001, the consensus from experience was that hijackers were only interested in going toward internationally volatile places and, as such, all flight crew were instructed by airline officials to cooperate with all hijackers? WHAT? BLASPHEMY! BLAME CLINTON! I also found it disturbing that they would compare weakening-daily-by-sanctions Saddam in 2003 to rising-from-his-grave Hitler in 1937, or to a nest of copper-head snakes in Zell's backyard, or even to villainous-cyborg-Saddam in 1992. That whole segment requires that you thought a preemptive strike was a good idea, which I found rather telling of the film's nature - that this is little more than a DVD made in three months and put out to soften the release of F9/11, to be obsessively purchased by the right wing so they can have their talking points parrotted back at them and their egos massaged as such. To be fair, I did state (in uncertain terms) I'm an easily-swayed left-wing shill, and F9/11 and Control Room compounded themselves into an anti-war argument in my head that's going to be difficult to refute. Still, if this is all the right could come up with, then I'm bewildered by their tactics. This is supposed to convince me that our neverending war was the right idea? Sorry, Dick [Morris], but you're fired.

[ 10-10-2004, 05:08 PM: Message edited by: Grojlach ]