Nearly Twenty Years Later, We're Still Talking About Roger and Me

Here's a small peak behind the blogging curtain.  Since last Friday, when indie film guru John Pierson posted his First Person Open Letter to Michael Moore, I've been debating about whether to write about it.  On the one hand, it's kind of an obvious thing for me to tackle - issues about nonfiction filmmaking combined with the timeliness of the wide release of Moore's latest movie, SICKO, which I've written about a bunch.

But Pierson's open letter is also tied to information contained in the film MANUFACTURING DISSENT, a film that I've also written about a bunch.  (If you haven't seen my initial thoughts after seeing the film at SXSW, you can read them here.  A later, more in depth post can be found here.)  I just didn't know how to write about Pierson's pleas to Moore without beating down again on a film that I didn't like.

Add to this a curious week of Moore-related press items - both in the Los Angeles Times - that I had contemplated writing about before ultimately turning to other subjects.  The first, suggested that MANUFACTURING DISSENT and its filmmakers are the victim of a kind of shunning campaign, wherein the two largest nonfiction film festivals in the country - Full Frame and AFI Silverdocs - both declined to screen the film allegedly in order to keep Michael Moore happy (and ensure future appearances by Moore and/or his films at their festival):

"This is like the last taboo in the industry," said co-director Rick Caine. "Look at anything you want, but not your own."

Two key U.S. documentary film festivals — Full Frame in Durham, N.C., and Silverdocs, the AFI/Discovery Channel event in Silver Spring, Md. — declined to screen "Dissent," in part because of Michael Moore. Silverdocs hoped to present "Sicko," and Moore was a special guest at Full Frame. A rep for one film buyer told the filmmakers in an e-mail that they were wary of the "political nature" of the film and would distribute "Dissent" on DVD in Canada but not in the U.S. (The filmmakers passed.)

Melnyk and Caine viewed this as a sort of blacklisting. But there's just as much indication that for some, including Silverdocs' programmers who found "Dissent" uneven, the film simply didn't live up to expectations.

In fact, in a conversation with Silverdocs programmer Sky Sitney after the Times piece ran, she told me that Moore played no role in the decision not to screen MANUFACTURING DISSENT, that in fact the film never progressed to a stage where it was under serious consideration based on quality issues.  (As for Full Frame, they already had Moore in place as a special guest for the festival's 10th anniversary before MANUFACTURING DISSENT surfaced.  There's no word on whether the film was given serious consideration in light of this fact.)

A second, more bizarre (if that's possible) piece in the Times which focuses on the fact that if Sicko does well at the box office, Michael Moore will get wealthy!  (or wealthier, I guess I should say.)  From John Horn's shockingly poorly-written piece:

MICHAEL MOORE'S "Sicko" focuses on how profit motives keep Americans from receiving quality medical care. But health insurance companies aren't the only ones in the documentary with revenue at stake: Moore himself stands to make a mint on the film.

Thanks to a lucrative contract negotiated with the Weinstein Co. by his talent agent, Endeavor's Ari Emanuel, Moore is in line to receive 50% of "Sicko's" gross profits — arguably one of the most lucrative deals on Hollywood's books, richer even than those enjoyed by the likes of Tom Cruise, Julia Roberts and director Peter Jackson. After theater owners have taken their cut, in other words, "Sicko's" profits will be split in half between Moore and Harvey and Bob Weinstein, whose Weinstein Co. is releasing the film nationally today.

Curious about those comparisons?  Outraged that this "man of the people" actually makes more money than Tom Cruise?!  Julia Roberts?!  The Hobbit King?! 

Except what John "I'm still learning here, so bear with me" Horn fails to mention is that Moore's deal with the Weinsteins is no different than any superstar independent filmmaker who can fund their own movies.  You think George Lucas didn't make 1/2 (or more) or the gross profits on ATTACK OF THE CLONES?  Or Mel Gibson on THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST?  Like Cruise, Roberts and Jackson, Moore is not a gun for hire, and to compare him to them in some sort of "gotcha" game is ludicrous.  But worse still, is Horn's questions regarding Moore's transportation and lodging, questions he'd never dare ask the aforementioned Cruise or Roberts.  Why are you riding in an SUV and staying at the Four Seasons?  Don't you know you should be in a Prius and bunking with your friends?

Only a third LA Times piece (jeez, don't they have a hot mayoral affair to cover?) would provide any balanced or reasoned thought to the subject.  Patrick Goldstein's column is all good, so you should read it all, but here's a sampling:

In "Sicko," for example, Moore takes a boatload of ailing 9/11 volunteers to the U.S.-operated detention camp in Guantanamo Bay to dramatize his contention, bolstered by various news clips, that the prisoners there are receiving splendid free healthcare, unlike our heroic volunteers. Denied entrance, Moore appears to spontaneously head for Havana, where the 9/11 workers enjoy the fruits of the country's supposedly superb healthcare system. What Moore doesn't show us is that their appearance in Havana was an entirely separate trip.

It's a small matter, but it gets at the heart of the debate over Moore's work. Do his embellishments and visual shortcuts damage his larger arguments? Do the details he conveniently leaves out — Cuba has great medical care but no political freedom while France has marvelous healthcare but astronomically high taxes — undercut his more salient point, that our healthcare system is a national disgrace?

Many journalists, including myself, have taken issue in the past with how much Moore plays fast and loose with the facts. But Moore's filmmaking peers defend his work, arguing that what he does shouldn't be confused with pure journalism.

"If you think you're seeing objective truth when you go to a Michael Moore film, you're missing the whole point," says Brett Morgen, director of the forthcoming documentary, "Chicago 10." "He's not a journalist, striving for objectivity. He's a provocateur trying to engage the viewer. Context belongs to journalism. The responsibility of a filmmaker is not to write an essay, but to create something exciting or entertaining that stays with you."

Greengrass has a great phrase to describe the moments in Moore's films that rattle those of us raised on "just the facts" documentaries. He calls Moore's work "highly interventionist," in the sense that Moore is willing to use the power of film, be it clever cutting or funny archival footage or cheap melodrama to carry the day. "His work is often intensely tabloid," Greengrass says. "But I remember from my days as an on-camera interviewer that the question that makes you sweat by the very idea of asking it is the one you should always ask. And Moore's brilliance is that he always asks that question, over and over."

Which brings us back to John Pierson's open letter, with its inevitable ties to MANUFACTURING DISSENT, and its reminder that despite the issues in BOWLING FOR COLUMBINE or SICKO, for some reason many are still talking about ROGER AND ME, Moore's breakthrough film.

From Pierson's open letter:

There is no percentage in me, or anyone for that matter, criticizing you. And since you've effectively become America's conscience, it must be awfully hard to pause for a moment and examine your own. And I would never have become part of an attempt to make you do that if not for a classroom full of angry and disheartened college students.

With the hugely entertaining and highly effective "SiCKO" opening nationwide today, you probably think that dredging up and examining bits and pieces of your storied past is nothing but a petty, narrow-minded distraction. Since your op/ed piece (your post-documentary coinage) on the healthcare industry is a fantastic polemic and your best filmmaking by far, I almost agree with you. Almost.

But still I find myself taking a stand for the only smart and even-handed documentary that's been made ABOUT you, "Manufacturing Dissent." Many have argued that there's little or nothing new in this film, that it merely aggregates your alleged filmmaking crimes and misdemeanors. I guess this category of criticism, as summed up by Hillary Clinton's spokesman Philippe Reines in dismissing two recent books about her, has been called "cash for rehash." (Hey what's her campaign saying about "SiCKO?") The only problem is that the Canadian filmmakers don't stand to make much cash beyond recouping debt, and for many of your international fans, if far less so in media-mad America, the rehash is apparently revelatory.

I know you've heard I appear in the film pointing out the supreme irony that the installation of the Bush regime was somehow an essential ingredient for your ascent to superstardom and financial success. Let's be honest, the Clinton administration was an eight-year slog for you. Opposition is the bee's knees. But ironies aside, the majority of my "Manufacturing Dissent" screen time is spent extolling the virtues of "Roger & Me," the movie that brought us together, especially for its almost incalculable influence on the course of documentary filmmaking...which brings me back to the disgruntled students.

They were pissed off. Since I wasn't sure exactly what anyone would make of "Manufacturing Dissent" or whether it added up to a hill of beans, I screened a working version of the film for several of my film producing classes at the University of Texas at Austin. You'll be happy to know that here, like at many film schools, "Roger & Me" is embedded in the curriculum. When the students learned that you had in fact talked to Roger Smith more than once, it mattered deeply to them because they thought it undercut the entire premise of the film that launched your career. I admit not every single student was horrified by that revelation. The rest were more troubled by your inability to admit the truth eighteen years later.

...

Did I know you had interviewed Roger Smith when "Roger & Me" caught lightning in a bottle back in 1989? No. Do I have any first-hand knowledge now that you covered it up? No. But do I fully and completely believe the testimony of people who were there with you in Flint and have absolutely nothing to gain by lying - eyewitnesses like Nader organizer James Musselman or even Roger Smith himself? Yes I do. And of all the answers you tried to give to explain this away - after starting with an all too typical ad hominem Fox News-style attack - I loved this one the most: "If I'd gotten an interview with him, why wouldn't I put it in the film?' Jeez Mike, I don't know; maybe because it would utterly destroy the structural essence of your one-man Don Quixote quest to get to GM's Chairman.

First, clearly I disagree (respectfully) with Pierson that MANUFACTURING DISSENT is smart and even-handed.  I know that he's been a friend and supporter of that film, so I won't belabor that point.  And I obviously think that he underplays the negative reaction to the film, which has been considerable and widespread.  And I wonder whether Pierson would have written the open letter if he weren't closely aligned with the filmmakers and if the film weren't having a bit of a struggle. 

I found myself a couple weeks ago with a group of filmmakers and the subject of MANUFACTURING DISSENT and ROGER AND ME came up, and while none of the people present thought DISSENT was good filmmaking, at least one felt that the questions raised - did Moore interview Roger Smith, did he fake his microphone getting turned off - were troubling and significant.

Strangely, the film (and the debate that has been stirred by it), which Pierson believes clears up any doubt as to whether Moore interviewed Smith, seems to me to have actually clouded it.  The evidence for the clouding, if one can refer to it as such, exists in the incredibly animated debate that follows in the comments to Pierson's post.

In fact, it's the commentators that have finally pushed me to write this post.  The entire exchange is a good read.  At least two of the posters - Bugmenot, who gets into it with Pierson and who seems likely to also be posting here as Mark S. on a recent Moore-related post, and blue collar, who posts things that seem very much like those posted here by Jill Sweet - are focused on the involvement of former Flint union organizer Michael Westfall, who once upon a time was instrumental in bringing Michael Moore and the GM story together.  Depending on who you believe, Moore was either inspired to make ROGER AND ME or proceeded to take credit for work already being done by other filmmakers and turn his documentary into cash gold (never mind the fact that next to no one was making money off of docs at the time).  No matter the truth, Westfall now spends a great deal of time howling at the liberal moon.  As Bugmenot writes in the comments:

Michael Westfall helped Moore get into the GM conference hall to confront Smith before his Roger movie. Westfall also served as a consultant for Manufacturing Dissent (along with truth teller Jim Kenefick). Alas, Westfall spends a considerable amount of time on FreeRepublic.com bashing homosexuals and .... people who promote the "homosexual agenda" like Michael Moore. According to Westfall, it is going to take Jesus Christ to stop liberals like Moore! Check out his website if you do not believe me.

To this, Pierson responds:

In many ways, Mike Westfall does seem to be a loose cannon - no disrespect Mr. Westfall - was not a consultant, and is not even interviewed in the movie. And for that reason, I did not mention his name. But even if he is a gay basher, he did eyewitness Mike talking to Roger and I'm not really sure what one has to do with the other - assuming we're not on Fox News. But you'll notice in my letter, I do invoke the name of the exemplary Jim Musselman, a true mensch with nothing to gain who now runs a socially progressive small record label. He's gonna be a lot harder for you to smear.

Back to Bugmenot:

Mike Westfall says he worked with Debbie Melnyk and Rick Caine for the best part of a year. They visited his home and the University of Michigan to examine his archived material. Much of the worker stock footage in the film belongs to Westfall.[2] The relevance is made clear in this sentence:

"Michael Moore was my guest at GM stockholders' meetings before his "Roger and Me" movie. At these stockholders meetings our blue-collar activists would confront Roger Smith on the issues that Moore would come to declare as his solo issues."

Pierson:

Mike Westfall was absolutely NOT a consultant on Manufacturing Dissent. He was an invaluable source of footage showing Mike & Roger in dialogue.

Then, finally, we hear from blue collar:

It is interesting that what is said here is that Westfall wasn't a consultant yet the producers spent a day at his home interviewing him, went over his archived material and included him in the film along with valuable ongoing clips of his various worker events. Could the real issue be that Westfall wrote an accurate piece condeming the movie Manufacturing Dissent because it didn't give a fig for the truth of the real story or the workers?

blue collar then links to Roseanne Barr's website (Jill Sweet did the same thing here) claiming that Roseanne is supporting his/her take on Michael Moore, when in reality it's just some other person (us that you blue?  Jill?  Mike?) posting the same links to Westfall's writings.

There's more in the comments, too, including wholesale attacks on and defenses of John Pierson's character and more back and forth on just who did what in Flint nearly two decades ago.

Several bloggers have written about Pierson's letter, but I want to close with two of my favorites, who happen to have taken differing sides.  First, my pal Agnes Varnum, who starts by quoting John Horn's LA Times debacle:

He knew that nearly everybody had their own horrible insurance tales — he received 25,000 e-mails when he solicited such stories — but he didn’t expect that “Sicko” would encourage so much activism. “Certainly, the No. 1 question I get asked is, ‘What can I do?’ ” Moore says. “I am not prepared for that. Because I am not leading a movement to revolutionize the healthcare system in America. I am making a movie. I have spent a year and a half making this film, and this is my contribution.”

What an asshole. Sorry, I know that this and my prior feminism post both have foul language but I can’t think of a better way of saying it. Outreach around films has reached a high art in this country, largely owing to the need for philanthropic contributions to fund documentary production–from big films like An Inconvenient Truth and Robert Greenwald and MoveOn.Org’s campaigns such as Walmart: The High Cost of Low Price to every film that appears on PBS’s P.O.V. series, there are so many models for putting tools for action into the hands of viewers, Moore would have to have his head in the sand for the last 10 years to proclaim seriously that he had no idea people would want to know what they could do or that he couldn’t figure out a way to create an action campaign around the film.

Just more evidence that he is as phony and as hypocritical as they come.

Tom Hall:

Who gives a fuck what gets left on the editing room floor? Does leaving out footage of Moore interviewing Roger Smith at some point early in the production of Roger & Me have any fundamental impact on the truth of the film, that corporations have abandoned working communities for profiteering abroad?* What John Pierson and Agnes Varnum get wrong in their separate pieces on Moore and his work is this earnest belief that documentary is reportage, that the ultimate goal of making a film and telling a story by way of documentary is somehow beholden to a literal presentation of events as they happened. Is Moore really an asshole for not setting up a direct action campaign against the Managed Care industry? Why isn't the film enough? Should Eugene Jarecki have set up an action campaign against the Military Industrial Complex when he made Why We Fight? How should Alex Gibney have empowered Enron stockholders to fight for their money after seeing Enron: The Smartest Guys In The Room? While we're at it, let's ask Gibney the next steps for dismantling the US policy for torture and detention after seeing Taxi To The Dark Side. The answer is always the same; the people of American need to learn to recognize their interests and vote to preserve them. Take political action. Filmmakers like Moore, Jarecki and Gibney are using their money and position to illustrate these problems and educate the public. That's far more than 99% of the rest of us. The world is full of great films about important topics that stand alone and raise more questions than they answer; For me that is a part of what makes them great. The film is enough.

While I agree with Tom that the film is, or should be, enough, the truth is probably more slippery than that.  And as if to demonstrate, what he writes about Moore still earlier in his excellent post could well be the best summary yet on his influence and effectiveness (or lack thereof):

It is a testament to Moore’s effectiveness as a storyteller and filmmaker that over the course of only six feature films he has been able to practically re-invent the political documentary as a new brand of political theater that resembles Upton Sinclair more closely than Al Maysles. That said, as an artist, he has become such a polarizing figure, so detested by his opponents and able to embitter even his ideological allies, that his work balances precariously between his decision to place himself in his films and the polarizing impact of his presence on the perceived legitimacy of his subject matter. Not surprisingly, no decision Moore makes is seen as the right one; if he speaks up, he is told to shut up and get out of the way. If he doesn’t stand front and center and promote direct action surrounding his subject matter (be it gun control, health care or NAFTA), he’s a profiteering asshole who doesn’t really care about his subjects. Damned if you do, I guess.

The funny thing about all of this is that no nonfiction filmmaker gets put to the scrutiny that Michael Moore does.  It was big news last week when CNN did a fact check of SICKO (yes, that's right, CNN is so confident in it's own fact checking, that it's starting to outsource) and declared it "Mostly Accurate".  And, of course, there was the tsk-tsking of PBS' Gwen Ifill in 2004 regarding FAHRENHEIT 9/11:

You know, I look at this movie as a journalist, and as a journalist I have this affection for facts and accuracy.  And even though there are facts in this movie, on whole it's not accurate.

...

Well, as David Brooks pointed out in The New York Times yesterday, in Europe, Michael Moore goes about very widely bashing America and bashing Americans as being stupid and not knowing how to put one foot in front of the other and he's received like a conquering hero.  They love this.  They want to hear this.  Now, that's fine.  They think he's a documentarian.  They think he is bringing them facts.  Now, they don't vote in American elections, but there is a wider question to be raised about the impact of Americans who take that abroad in a time of war.

So, here you have the most scrutinized, most successful, most everything nonfiction filmmaker on the planet, a guy who's reportedly not nice to the help, secretly bathes in money, owns stock in al Qaeda and routinely spits on the grave of Walter Williams.   But whether this discussion/debate ever moves beyond left/right or even schools of documentary thought (journalism vs opinion vs total verite vs narrative-like creation) is unclear.  Few outside the rabid anti-Moore forces or the overly thoughtful docu-theorists (and I include myself in that category) care what Michael Moore did or didn't do five films ago.  But it seems likely that for better (in my opinion) or worse, Moore and Errol Morris - the other doc filmmaker that dramatically burst onto the scene in the late 1980s - have, through their own dramatic loosening of the rules (not to mention their commercial success), forever changed the dynamic for every documentary filmmaker that came after. 

Maybe that's why twenty years later, we're still talking.

Comments

[Mark S]

'Mike S' and 'Bugmenot' are one and the same (bugmenot.com is a handy resource that allows users to post comments on other websites without registering). I strongly suspect 'Jill Sweet', 'Carol Green', 'carolgr', 'blue collar' and 'conservativeautowork' is Michael Westfall himself.

Westfall is in the unusual position of being angry with Michael Moore, Rick Caine and Debbie Melnyk. He remains upset with Roger & Me because it is a different film to the one he expected Moore to make (Westfall & Co were supposed to be the star of the show, not potato face himself), and he is now angry with Manufacturing Dissent because, ditto, it is a different film to the one he expected Caine and Melnyk to make. History is repeating itself. Both parties used his story/material to advance their own agenda, or so he feels. John Pierson significantly understates Westfall's contribution to Manufacturing Dissent (Rick Caine knows this and is smarter than to dismiss Westfall out of hand). In the original case of Westfall versus Moore there is probably a grain of truth, but Caine and Melnyk take the grain and turn it into a whopping big loaf!

My starting point in all of this is simple. I believe Michael Moore is the biggest target of inflated criticism today.

Pierson writes of Moore: "... I appear in the film pointing out the supreme irony that the installation of the Bush regime was somehow an essential ingredient for your ascent to superstardom and financial success. Let's be honest, the Clinton administration was an eight-year slog for you. Opposition is the bee's knees."

In the comments section, Caine chimes in: "What if the guy who is the most widely viewed and most popular documentary filmmaker in history also turns out to be one of the biggest bullshitters? [...] What to do with someone who has wrapped himself in the cause so thoroughly that it is impossible to seperate his film marketing from the cause?"

Are we 'honestly' expected to believe that Moore's primary motivation - the reason he plugged away all of these years - was his hope of reaching super-stardom and making it super-rich? A man with no conviction whatsoever? Incredible. Faced with this kind of crap, a lesser man would sooner have quit and walked away by now. "Let's be honest," says the inattentive Pierson. Okay. The Clinton administration was in office from 1993 to 2001; yet this was a period when Moore produced some of his finest work (The Awful Truth, TV Nation). [1] If people can't critique Moore's work without resorting to the very tactics they (falsely) accuse him of using in the first instance, then they're not worth serious attention.

[1] http://tinyurl.com/yvlcts

[Rick Caine]

Thank you for yet again dicussing our film Manufacturing Dissent (coming soon on DVD and depending on where you live a theater near you). We made it in the hopes that it would be a film that would be thought about and discussed long after the usual 5 minutes of discussion that typically follows any film viewing. We made it in the hopes that audiences would question not only Moore's films and tactics but also ours and every other documentary filmmaker as well. You falsely impune our motives (yes maybe we should have known more about Moore going into this doc, but the fact remains we didn't) and accuse us of the same tactics Moore employs. Please point to the fictional devices we have tucked into our non-fiction films, omitted (maybe we landed a sitdown with Moore we're hiding?) or distorting interviews and showing them in a false light (hello Larry Stecco)and taking them out of context (Bush speaking sarcastically about his public image at the Al Smith Memorial Dinner, among others) and cobble them together to make flat out lies (the splicing together of seperate Charleton Heston speeches, literally puttng words in his mouth, in Bowling, which isn't even in our movie.)

In one scene in Manufacturing Dissent Moore discussses how the Bush administration used fearmongering (trumped up WMD claims, bogus imminent threat claims, false testimony before the UN regarding mobile chemical weapons labs, etc, etc) to manipulate the American public into siding with him on the invasion of Iraq. Then in the same speech Moore turns around and tells the college students that if they don't vote for Kerry then Bush will draft them and send them right to the front lines. That statement had no more truth in then Bush's claims about WMDs. So fearmongering for Bush bad but fearmongering for Moore good? And what about the truth, or is getting people all riled up, even if its based upon lies, good enough?

We're just as frustrated as the next person that we have not gotten to the promised land with Moore's assistance. Why isn't he more effective? How about effective at all? Just maybe Moore's approach has something to do with it, which is exactly the issue Manufacturing Dissent raises. We're lefties so we get the whole speaking truth to power argument but what if it's half truth? Is it half as effective, or maybe not effective at all? Moore is hard to ignore but easy to dismiss.

Pierson writes in the open letter to Moore "You're on the side of the fucking angels with "SiCKO" and no lapses, omissions or oversimplifications can detract from its contribution to the greater good." But this is exactly the problem: the lapses, omissions and oversimplifications do distract from the greater good and to all of our detriment. This is akin to arguing that lying for the cause is good for debate. What's the point if it's based upon lies? We all want the same thing to live in a well-functioning democracy the only way we can get there is by having an informed electorate that acts upon their knowledge at the ballot box and the only way we can get there is by having media that chooses not to lie to the people. Part of our argument in Manufacturing Dissent that it is also destructive when Moore does it as it is when FOX News does it. Some say who cares if Moore lies to his lefty base and gets away with it? Others will argue it doesn't matter if FOX News lies to their viewers. For better or worse it does have an impact an that is exactly why its important. We need to be having debates based upon facts and not resting upon misconceptions and lies. How will this get us to where we want to be?

For the record, Mike Westfall, who seems to always have the last word in internet posts (under whatever pseud he chooses) was both interviewed and contributed footage to Manufacturing Dissent but it is incorrect to term this a "consultant" however grateful we remain. We never made any pretense with Westfall, we told him repeatedly that ours was a film about Moore. And yes Westfall is right there remains marvelous opportunity for films to be made about the plight of working Americans. Hopefully someone will "consult" with Westfall about that.

SiCKO, just like Moore's previous films, will have no impact on the American health care system. But hey why should some piss ant Canadians stand in the way of mighty America trying to get universal health care right? We meant many things with this film, this was not amongst them.

And maybe sometime we can go for a beer AJ and you can confess all of your ethical lapses to us like other filmmakers are doing. Let's start with the violating of your own 'self imposed' standards (if you don't follow your own 'rules' what's the point in having them?) about blogging about other films, even as you suck and blow your own mediocre and largely ignored film. I know I was at SXSW when it screened during the music part of the fest and all of like 50 people turned up for a screening in the 1,200 seat Paramount Theater, and that's the music crowd. Then we can discuss your ethically challenged principles that allowed you to put together a doc about deceased Kurt Cobain based upon interviews he granted to another under very different circumstances. To say nothing of what I don't yet know. Ethics smethics, who's kidding who here? Come confess, the filmmakers always seem to feel better afterward. Now if they just could have been as honest with their audience to begin with...

[Michael Westfall]

MICHAEL WESTFALL RESPONDS TO JOHN PIERSON AND RICK CAINE

Your various comments, including Rick Caine’s, relative to my participation in Manufacturing Dissent are very misleading.
For telling the Flint history I have been called a crackpot and been discounted by some on your site who want to rewrite history.
These contributors to your site know nothing about the real Flint story. They weren’t there.
I admit that it took a certain amount of courage for them to use someone from the right in their movie. The fact that Debbie and Rick had to use my material lends itself and exemplifies the importance of the issues that I have championed for 30 years.
I personally like both Debbie and Rick and found them passionate about the issues.
In my April 9, 2007 piece, Michael Moore Versus America, I stated that Debbie and Rick did a credible job in questioning Michael Moore’s ethics.
I do have a major disagreement with them on the big picture relative to the ongoing destruction of America’s auto industry, and their failure to show how Michael Moore used the work and the ideas of Flint activists back in the 1980’s as the rocket fuel to jumpstart his career.
Debbie and Rick followed direction from those who weren’t closely connected with the total Flint story beginning back in the 1970’s and failed to chronicle the bigger picture which they could have so easily done. If they had, then their film would have been a huge contender. Did they show that Moore has a problem with ethics? Yes. Isn’t that common knowledge? Yes. Did they miss the bigger more important story? Yes.
They simply made the mistake of listening to the wrong people. By listening too closely to erroneous peers and not understanding the complexity of what was going on in Flint, Debbie and Rick failed to tell the deeper and essential story about how Moore used the Flint activists work to create himself.
They discounted the real activists and the full truth. They gave some people to much credit and others who were critical, none at all. Pierson, who was nothing in Flint, continues this in his comments to this day. He thinks he was part of the story. That is delusional.
When John Pierson or anyone else says that I was definitely not a consultant they just have a clear problem with reality. They are talking the same kind of double talk that Michael Moore talks.
I think the truth is more likely that to these people the politics of liberal versus conservative is the priority. Well not so fast. Truth is still truth.
I don’t think that Rick and Debbie would deny that my material plays a major part in their movie. I have dozens of copied e-mails from them asking advice and giving thanks. I spent hours of my time helping them over a period of many months and I am greatly disappointed that they would allow others to get in the way of the bigger real story.
I am sure Rick and Debbie would concur that for months they e-mailed me weekly and sometimes daily, requesting information and suggestions. They traveled a long distance to visit, film and discuss the movie for hours at my home. They spent much time going over my documented and archived material at the University of Michigan-Flint Frances Willson Thompson Library. They sent me an autographed copy of Manufacturing Dissent as it was premiering in Texas in March.
I find it interesting that there can be still be a question that Michael Moore officially debated Roger Smith before Roger and Me. That is ridiculous. He did. He got in as my guest at the GM stock Holders meeting and was able to ask anything he wished. I was there, it is documented and I furnished Rick and Debbie with tapes to that effect.
I also furnished them critical information including documents showing that Roger Smith was accessible to us in all other ways including letters I received from him. I shared hours of my videos and audiotapes with them, and clips from my tapes were used throughout their movie. No one else could furnish this material because no one else was doing these things except my people.
I was the chairman of the union caucus in power at the largest truck plant in the world at the time. At one time my plant had over 7200 workers. There were many people with me back then and new material is still surfacing.
My people worked on every element of corporate restructuring and how it was going to devastate Americas manufacturing workers and the communities in which they lived. We worked on these issues from the 1970’s into the 1990’s until I retired. Were we right? Just look at our domestic auto industry today and you answer that!
One of the side issues back in the 1980’s was GM property tax assessment reduction fight. We were thankful to Ralph Nader who sent one of his attorneys, Jim Musselman to Flint for a few months in 1985-1986 to work on that particular issue.
Significantly, some of the most central information that I furnished Debbie and Rick was smoking guns. I was shocked to see that they totally ignored it.
The story included worker, union, religious and educator activists who were fighting to preserve America’s middle class. It is a story of corporate mismanagement, restructuring of huge American based multi-nationals and weak union leadership. It is about corporate greed and the struggle and demise of Middle America.
Come on, couldn’t the movie have asked the questions, what is the authentic Flint story, where did Michael Moore really come from, what did he base his career on and does he really have any credentials? Is he really on the side of the common man and an expert on everything from politics to health care, or a charlatan multi-millionaire playing out his illusions?
Since he claims to have come from the people, just what did he do? Did he lead any large rallies or demonstrations like the honest hard working activists who had the intestinal fortitude to address the big picture that covered all of the complex issues ranging from automation to global sourcing?
Today, the talking heads that weren’t there are all talking. They are from academia land and the liberal film industry. I am talking about you.
You base your assumptions on biased opinions not on historical fact. You only prop up information that supports your opinions and skim over any factual information that runs contrary to your political persuasions or ideologies. You people call me a loose cannon and smear what I say because I have told the documented truth while you call yourselves writers of documentaries and only use the pieces of the truth that support your political agenda. You fail to understand that the true history of Michael Moore’s beginning is the essential key to the narration of Moore’s story.

You don’t get the real story, because you are not after it.
The true documented full Flint story hasn’t been told…yet.
In the past I have refused to participate with moviemakers about Michael Moore. Debbie and Rick are avowed leftists, as are many of your readers while I am on the right. This fact should not have been used to stand in the way of the bigger picture.
Going forward I will be much more careful to whom I trust my resources with.

Michael Westfall
westfallpapers@yahoo.com

[Michael Westfall]

NEW CHRISTIAN MOVIE STUDIO

http://michaelwestfall.tripod.com/id118.html

Michael Westfall

[MW]

"CITIZEN MOORE"

How about the truth from the people who were actually there? ...
http://www.speroforum.com/a/18233/Who-is-Michael-Moore-really

[Mark S.]

Are you still beating this old drum?

"In Roger & Me, he [Michael Moore] miscast himself because he was not the one leading the Flint fight."

Moore never said, nor ever claimed, to be 'leading' the fight. He approached the topic from a different angle, with dark humour, because it remains, in his words, a 'serious weapon'.

"She [Nina Rosenblum] spoke in part of consumer advocate Ralph Nader’s comments about the Flint movie that I had proposed and would appear in. She said, “As Ralph Nader was saying you [Michael Westfall] are one of the truly greats of our time” … “You will be the greatest on-camera because all you have to be is yourself, and your true genius and profound humanism comes through without any effort."

Get over yourself. What kind of humanist wishes to abolish Gay and Lesbian rights? Homo's are headed straight to hell, right?

Are you ready for your close-up now, Mr Westfall?

[Peter P.]

You are confused.The documented Flint story has absolutely nothing to do with homosexual rights. To suggest it does is ridiculous.
Truth is truth. Even if you,and many others on this site,are incapable of believing it.

http://www.weirdrepublic.com/episode73.htm