Capone Roundtables With Michael Moore!!

Hey everyone. Capone in Chicago here. Michael Moore. Just saying his name divides a nation, and politicizes subjects that shouldn't always be political. ROGER & ME; THE BIG ONE; his Oscar-winning BOWLING FOR COLUMBINE; and FAHRENHEIT 9/11. He's aggressive; charming; passionate; manipulative; funny; sneaky; and restless. And say what you want about his politics, but at the end of the day, he's a guy I'd rather have on my team than against me. The first thing you notice when you walk into a room with Moore these days is that he's changed his image. The beard, ball cap, and about 30 pounds are gone. He's also very careful to find out what outlet everyone in the room is writing for. During the course of this interview, he was also picking grapes and sliced apples from a huge tray on the table, following his own advice in the film about eating and living healthier. No subject was off limits, criticisms are welcome and even encouraged, and you'll likely leave the room with an even higher opinion of him than you did coming in. The most controversial thing he says during the half-hour discussion is probably about the piracy of his movie and copyright laws in general. Oh, yeah, his latest film (opening Friday) is called SICKO, and it tackles the many ways the U.S. health insurance companies fuck us daily. And it's a masterpiece. The sheer number of people wanting to meet with Moore in every city guarantees two things: this would be a round table interview (this is practically a press conference), and there's no way the interview would begin on time (we were kept waiting nearly two hours past our scheduled time, but nobody left). I've distinguished my questions from everybody else's in the room. Here's Michael Moore y'all. I'll be making sure there's enough bandwidth to handle the Talkbacks.

Question: I wanted to ask you about the structure of the film, because I know when the film was first announced, you were going for a RUN LOLA RUN kind of thing, where you were going to rush through… Michael Moore: We were going to save 10 people's lives. When we sent out the request for people to send us their stories, there were so many people of stories where either they were dying or a relative was dying, and clearly saving 10 lives wasn't even couple to create a dent. And I thought we needed to focus not on individuals--saving 10 lives--but trying to save a whole lot more lives by going after the system itself. So my thinking about the film changed at that moment, as it did when I started to realize how many stories were coming in from people with insurance. I thought I'd be getting stories from people without insurance.
Q: In your films a lot of time we see heroes and villains, and we see the villains this time as being the insurance companies. Whenever I see a film like yours it feels like a call to action to do something. What does one person do? What can I do walking out of that theater, besides cast my vote? MM: Well, that's important. Most people don't vote most of the time, right? I have things on my web site to tell people how to get involved. There's a bill in Congress, H.R. 676…
Q: In 10 seconds, what is that? MM: The national health insurance, single-care system.
Q: That's the one you went to Capitol Hill on behalf of yesterday? MM: Yes. Organize locally around this issue. Push the politicians to pass legislation so that we can have the system that they have, say, in Canada. I don't know if the British system would work here. There are systems where they do a mix, and if it doesn't work, it's mostly because it's underfunded in those countries.
Q: Are you getting in any trouble for the trip you took to Cuba? Have their been any rumblings from the administration? MM: Yeah, they sent me a certified letter telling me I'm under investigation. They are planning to do something. That's all they've done so far. They have not confiscated anything from me, so we'll see what happens.
Q: When you were in Cuba, did it go through your head, "I can't wait to see what they're going to do."? You must have known something was going to happen. MM: No. The laws are very clear. If you go down there for journalistic endeavors--that's what this was, a documentary, a non-fiction film--I don't have to get a license or approval, as you wouldn't if you went down there to do a story. And no laws were broken, so I was kind of surprised they came after me, and surprised too on another level that they would want the publicity and bring attention to the film. If they wanted to go after me, go after me six months from now when it's already gone from theaters. Why would you do it just a few weeks before? It just doesn't seem very smart, and that the key word. [laughs] They've done a heck of a job in this situation and nobody really thought it out before.
Q: I wanted to talk nurses. What had you leaned about nurses and what they can do to get more involved? [shortly after our interview, Moore was scheduled to appear at a rally put on my local nursing organization on behalf of bettering patient care in Chicago]. MM: Nurses are on the front line of this problem and they see it every day. They decisions that are made. They see the doctor, after diagnosing what the patient needs, instead of immediately giving the patient what he or she needs, they've got to call and make sure the insurance will cover it. That doesn't happen in a single other country in the Western industrialized world. Doctor sees you need something; doctor goes and gets it. That's the way should be.
Q: What should they do on the front lines? I guess they're organizing and doing the rally. MM: And this is the nurses doing this. They hear I'm coming to a city [and they organize this]. This is the not the Weinstein Company, God bless 'em, but this is a new start-up company. They don't have the money. The nurses union are putting up $2 million of promotion for this movie, not the studio, out of their own pockets. They have a goal of getting 1 million nurses to go to this movie. They really see this as the tipping point; this film can really put this on the national agenda.
Q: Journalistically, I thought this was your soundest film of all. Did you work extra hard to get that, or did you have to work extra hard to get this film that way? MM: They all seem the same to me. But people have said that, or they say that this film is more heart felt or whatever. But then I say, what was the mother who lost her son in the Iraq War, chopped liver? Or the father who lost his son at Columbine. A lot of people forget. In ROGER & ME, as I'm following the deputy sheriff because he's evicting a family on Christmas Eve and putting the Christmas tree and presents out on the curb, while the kids are crying. There goes their Christmas out on the curb because they're $150 behind on the rent. To me, all my films have this element in them. I've also heard people say, "You're in this film less." The editors laugh when they hear that because actually I'm in this film more. I actually have more screen time in this film, but somehow it feels like less.
Q: It's the delayed entrance. MM: It's the delayed entrance. I think you're right, because I'm not in it for 30 to 40 minutes.
Q: And you don't seem as interested in knocking on the doors of the various CEOs. MM: That's right, because it's not just one company that's the problem here. And I know that my audience has grown with each film, and know they like to live vicariously through me. They like to go, "Yeah, Mike, go fuck up the man. Take him on." But this is never going to change with just Michael Moore doing it. The audience has to get up out of the theaters, and the audience has to go and participate, and I hope they feel that. I think they do; I've seen audiences at the end of this movie. They really leave the theater going [shakes his fist].
CAPONE: Yes but Americans by nature are an impatient people when it comes to change. You talk about it a little bit in the movie, but even if we decided today to go with a health care plan like you're talking about, it could still take 10 to 15 years to really get something in place and functional. It took the UK decades to work out the kinks of their system. Let's face it, the ice caps could melt before this happens in the U.S. [laughter]. Which issue to we choose? But how do we convey or inject a sense of urgency to this process? Is there a way to fast-track this process? MM: Well, we have to start somewhere. How about this? We already have the largest socialized medicine systems in the world: Medicare/Medicaid. So we've already covered tens of millions of people as it is. Then we have veterans. How many millions of veterans do we have covered by the VA? That's a socialized medicine system, so we have that. What don't we take the next step, and let's cover the 9 million kids? What liberal or conservative wouldn't support the fact that a kid should have the right to see a doctor and not have to worry about paying for it? There's 9 million more. Maybe it will happen like that. I hope it doesn't; I hope it happens faster than that, but I think it can expand and start taking care of more and more people. Maybe it's easier to think of this as Medicare for all. Surprisingly, it's going to be business and employers who support me on this on some level more than others, because they would rather pay a business health tax than the premiums they currently pay. It will far less in tax than it will be in the premiums. That's why GM likes to build their cars in Canada, because "Boom" all the sudden, no health insurance money. They do have to pay a tax that goes into the Canadian system, but it's far less than what they're paying out in premiums.
Q: We have ACT-UP to thank for faster access to experimental drugs and putting the spotlight on the insurance companies and their clever tactics, a militant organizations 20 years ago, and it affected a lot of change. Would an organization like that have a chance today, would those tactics work? MM: Yes, I do believe that. I believe we need that kind of direct action, and I think it would work. For example, what happened in that emergency room in L.A. a couple weeks ago, where they were calling 911 because nobody was helping the person that was dying. I actually had a scene I was going to put in the movie encouraging people…if the health insurance company is telling the doctor he can't treat you when you go to the hospital, call 911 and report an attempted murder, because this is attempted murder. Sometimes it is murder, because they're making a decision, and the doctor [in the film] says in her testimony, I signed 'Denied,' and knew when I was doing that, that person was going to die. It's a form of murder, and I'd like to see criminal charges brought against these people. And they won't do it until we the people stand up and demand it. When you think about 18,000 a year dying simply because they don't have health insurance. That's six 9/11s every year, and the only reason they're dead is because they didn't have health insurance. That's criminal. We shouldn't allow it. I'm embarrassed by it. Q: How do you make that shift? In the film, the British official says citizens would never stand for this and the government works for the citizens and the government is afraid of the citizens. The level of apathy in the average person, and the disconnection from the government… MM: Because it doesn't affect ME! ME! I don't have a kid in the war, so what do I care? We're in the fifth year of this war. [He gestures toward the windows of the room we're in looking out toward Grant Park, site of the 1968 riots.] Where are the people?! We're in Chicago!
Q: That plus the Congressmen having health care lobbyists in their back pocket or vice versa. It seems like a Herculean thing to achieve. MM: It is. All this stuff seems that way, but then sometimes a few people say, no, that's enough. And it's over.
Q: What about state-by-state pilot programs? I spoke with a nurse in the place where I work and she brought that up and she thought that might be the way to go. MM: Ah, that's such a long…There are 50 states, and to do it that way. And you'll get some states that'll do it the right way, then you'll have Arnold in California doing it his way, then you got [Governor] Mitt Romney in Massachusetts doing it his way. We're all Americans here; we've got to fix this thing. You wouldn't want 50 states' social security programs.
Q: What was the most challenging thing about putting SICKO together? What was the most surprisingly difficult thing you had to do? MM: Reading those letters from those 25,000 people. We read them all, the whole staff. It took us two-and-a-half months to read e-mail every day. And it was depressing; it was really tough. There were 10 of us, and we weren't just reading them. We then would put this one in that pile and check that out and call that person. It was quite a process. And let me just say this, we could have made a whole film just about the pharmaceutical companies, just a film about them. Twenty-five years ago there were 30 pharmaceutical companies that were working on cures and vaccines; today there are five. There's no money in it. There's a lot more money in HIV and producing those drugs and cocktails you have to take for the rest of your life, as opposed on working on a cure or vaccine for it. Because if you cure it, you can't sell any more pills, right? And that's not the way it used to be. We used to have people like Jonas Salk, who would find polio vaccine and work on it. We had scientists and doctors committed to that. Take a guy like Jonas Salk, he wouldn't patent it. He said, this belongs to everybody. The guy who invented the kidney dialysis machine, didn't patent it. He said, this belongs to everybody. These guys could have been billionaires, but that was a different time. People thought differently. Now it's all about the money; it's all about the Halliburtons of the drug industry. This whole thing with HIV, that should have been a full-force effort from the get-go, and we all know this history of this. Is was shoved aside, it was ignored, Reagan took seven years before he even said the word during his eight-year term. It was kind of like a lot of people died that didn't have to die, and now there's some money in it, so let's not talk about trying to cure it; let's just try and maintain it.
Q: I wanted to ask you about the piracy issue with the film. Do you know anything further about where that's going? And what is your reaction to that copy showing up online? Obviously, there's a financial cost, but on the other hand, more people are seeing your movie? And is there any news about how it got out? MM: Let's start with the last question. Who has a vested interest in destroying the opening-weekend box office of this film? Hmmm. Because this isn't a kid who took a home video camera to a movie theater and shot it. This is off the master digital. It's clearly an inside job. So if I were a detective, I'd ask that question, who has a motive for doing this?
Q: It wasn't a critic. That's all I've got to say. [laughter] MM: We don't give you guys DVDs of this, you have to go watch it in a screening room. It wasn't off a DVD; it was off the master tape. So it looks good. As a filmmaker I'm happy, it's not one of those cruddy copy [laughs]. I do not agree with copyright laws in this country. I believe art and information should be shared. I just read the new Don Dilillo book called Falling Man. I don't know if you've heard of that or not. If I were to hand you my copy of my book and say, Hey man check this out, this is great, would I be breaking the law? No. Same thing. Suddenly Don Dilillo's not going to get any money from you because I gave you my copy so you could read it. It's not against the law, is it? No, because our country, back when all we had were books, that was a good idea, to share. Also, if you like that book, next week, you might go on Amazon and buy a couple of previous Don Dilillo books and give him some money because he has a new fan now. Somebody gave me a cassette tape in 1978 of a group called The Clash. Wow. I didn't pay for that, but I bought the next album and I went to a concert, gave them money. Bands and filmmakers have the wrong idea about this. Sharing is actually good for their bottom line, if they approach it that way. If their pockets have been hurt over the years, it's because most of the movies you guys have to see suck. And Hollywood keeps putting out crap after crap, and if more attention was paid and more money was given to filmmakers who are doing innovative films or like films that came out in the late '60s or '70s, maybe they'd get more people going to the movies. Then they raise the ticket price because less people are going to the movies. Why do less people go to the movies, because most of the movies suck. I mean, I hate to say that, but I'm a filmgoer, so we all know that to be the truth. Less attention on some 16 year old copying a film and more attention on better stories and characters that are interesting. I'm happy that people see my work. Now here's the caveat: I'm a filmmaker; I make these to be seen on a 40-foot screen. That's how I want people to see them. I don't even like DVDs, frankly. I don't think I've rented more than 12 DVDs in my life. I like to see movies on a screen, and I hope people to see this on a screen. If I wanted to do internet content or TV shows, I do TV shows. But I don't. I hope this film is good for Harvey and Bob, so they'll put in on more screens and more Americans will see it. Those who have a vested interest in not seeing it go on more screens, hope the opening weekend isn't as good. So there you go.
CAPONE: Do you miss the days when you could be more stealthy with your filmmaking, where you could do something and not have these groups set up defensive walls against you? MM: Those days are gone. I lost 30 pounds, and if I lose some more weight, and I shaved the beard, I don't have the ball cap on. Maybe I could get away with it now.
Q: Where does this fit politically today? I don't know if we're still talking about red state/blue state thing… MM: This is a non-partisan…Illness does not care whether you're a Democrat or Republican. You get sick, you get sick, and we need to come together on this issue. People of different political viewpoints need to find common ground on this, and say, You know what? Every American should be insured. Every American should get help when they need help. Can't we at least agree on that? And I do see that happening. You saw the film. You saw me reach out to a hater [Moore donated several thousand dollars for the medical care of the wife of a man who runs one of the biggest anti-Moore web sites in existence] and say, You deserve this help too, even thought you spend your days attacking me. I thought instead of just preaching that, I should live it and be the first one to take that step, so I did. And you can go on his site. He seems pretty happy that I did it and wished me well.

And with that, Michael Moore was whisked away to his next interview.

Capone