Bigger picture

THE LAST TIME I spoke with Michael Moore, while he was on the road promoting The Big One, he told me that despite the serious politics of the film, the only things interviewers wanted to know were had he ever met Roger and how fares the Bunny Lady. That, Moore says, has changed. Not because his films have – from the first frame there's no mistaking who made Bowling for Columbine – rather it's the mood and context of the country's mainstream that has changed. Critics seem less able to ignore the message at the heart of this picture – try though they may.

Bay Guardian: Did Bowling for Columbine start as a gun-control movie?

Michael Moore: As soon as I started down that road, I realized I had to be honest with myself: Mike, would you go see a movie about gun control? We know there's a gun problem! You'd just be following into the same trap of all the other journalists who do the "who, what, where, when, and how," but they don't do the "why." So why not do the "why"? Why are we so violent? We're not any worse than the Germans are, the Swiss, or whoever. Yet we do this to each other, and then we do it around the world.

BG: Did you know "why" before you started the film?

MM: It came out in the process. I got slapped up pretty bad when I went to Canada. I went there with a basic liberal notion: if we only got rid of the guns, we'd get rid of the problem, our American mental problem. But I go there and I find out they didn't get rid of the guns. I thought a lot about this culture of fear, about how the media manipulates us, how politicians manipulate us. It's why conservatives usually win: law and order, bigger military. They appeal to the most basic instinct in us as humans, our self-preservation. We'll always vote for anybody who's going to promise to protect us. But sometimes they need to create the illusion there's a greater threat than there actually is, they create the need to be protected. They have to invent the Other. The Other can be the black man, the Other could be the poor, the Other could be Saddam Hussein. Whatever it is, they've got to have it.

BG: Your films carry the sense that if you can just get to the right person, sit down and talk, then problems might be resolved.

MM: That's at the core of who I am. I believe that all human beings have a conscience, they're not machines, and if you could somehow prick their conscience, some of them will respond.

BG: The montage of American imperialism in the latter 20th century, with its murder tallies: What's the reaction to that segment? Does it confront audiences the way you wanted that picture of the six-year-old school-shooting victim to confront Charlton Heston.

MM: It is, to me, the most powerful moment in the film. I knew it would be a kick in the gut to a lot of people, and a bitter pill for them to swallow, especially how it ties up with the World Trade Center. But you've got to tell the truth. And to me, that's the truth. That's the whole truth, actually, not just the truth. That explains a lot. Reading the reviews today, in the L.A. Times and the New York Times, it is clear I cost myself a four-star review by putting that scene in the film, because it deeply offended the critics at both of those papers. In fact, the New York Times called me an idiot for daring to put on the screen, "Osama bin Laden uses his expert CIA training to murder 3,000 people." Now, the reviewer says people must see this film. But if I could capsulize what the L.A. Times and the New York Times said, it amounts to: "Guns that kill innocent children in America at school? Bad. Guns that kill innocent children abroad – what's that doing in the film? Mike was doing so well, and then he had to lose his marbles." So they hate that. And they hate pointing out that Bush is using, in my opinion, 9/11 as a cover.

BG: Your role as a filmmaker reminds me of the strategy of public shaming employed by people in Chile, Argentina, Guatemala, places where victims of former regimes have been denied justice for the crimes of the powerful. Is that a role you're conscious of, and do you find it an effective strategy in the context of this country?

MM: I'm conscious of it, yes. And I think it's very effective. We don't have many tools or weapons on our side to fight this battle. It's not a level playing field. When I read those same critics today say how they felt sorry for Heston because he's being sandbagged by me, I'm thinking: Heston is the head of the most powerful lobby in Washington, D.C., I have a camera and some Canadian dollars backing me. I'm using whatever I can. I am up on that screen as a stand-in for the audience. I'm letting you live vicariously through me because you don't get that access, and I don't get it, but I do get a pretty big forum. I get to distribute my movies. So I want to take you with me on that little ride into the corporate offices and help give them their comeuppance.

Robert Avila