Michael Moore: 'Where are the Pitchforks and Torches?'

[youtube mRm0S0__3ns nolink]

—

From the USA Today:

The still untitled film, which opens Oct. 2, will zero in on the corporations and politicians he says caused the global financial crash.

Wall Street robber barons are Moore’s new on-screen enemy.

“The movie is not going to be an economics lesson; it’s going to be more like a vampire movie,” the filmmaker jokes. “Instead of the main characters feasting on the blood of their victims, they feast on the money. And they never seem to get enough of it.”

When the collapse walloped the country last September, Moore says he knew not only that it would matter to regular people, but also that the inherent decadence was ripe for his style of satire.

“If you go to see my movies, even if you don’t agree with everything in the movies, you’re going to have a good laugh,” Moore says. “I want them to walk out at the end saying ‘Wow, that was something!’ And in this case, maybe they also walk out asking the ushers, ‘Um, excuse me. Where are the pitchforks and torches?'”

Moore’s cinematic hey-day has hopefully passed. “Sicko” made less than 25% of what “Fahrenheit 9/11” cleared, and Moore’s last film, a love letter to himself, ended up being distributed on “Captain Mike’s” website … free of charge.

Admittedly, while I agree with nothing Moore stands for, that doesn’t mean he’s not a talented filmmaker. During the summer of 2007, the summer of the terrible threes: Spider-Man 3, Shrek 3, Oceans 3, Bourne 3, Pirates 3… “Sicko” was the rare entertaining bright spot.

As propaganda, however, “Sicko” failed and then some. If anything, the film’s lack of intellectual firepower and comically absurd portrayal of Cuba’s health care system probably set the socialized medicine cause back a few years.

As chance would have it, at the very moment Moore was summoning everything he had to convince me to back his cause, I was awaiting final test results regarding a spot on my lung. A big one. Combine my family history of cancer and my personal history of alarmism and you got yourself one sorry s.o.b. ready to renounce everything he’s ever stood for if it means just one more day of life. But even with the Grim Reaper sharing my tub of popcorn, Moore’s engaging but profoundly stupid propaganda piece only increased my gratitude for our wildly imperfect health care system.

The spot on my lung turned out to be nothing, by the way. But I am closer to Jesus.