Roger Ebert & Me

Today in Roger Ebert's "Movie Answer Man" column: It's an all-Michael Moore spectacular!

Comments

[Fatty]

Michael Moore's special talent is to annoy and offend everyone, and I am pleased he didn't disappoint at the Oscar's. He appears to have no personal redeeming personality features and seems fatter and uglier than ever.

Nonetheless, his movies and books are funny and thought-provoking and should be treasured.

[Madog]

While I don't really like his "movies", I thought his show TV Nation was pretty good. His style works best in small doses.

[Casey Tompkins]

Madog: humor through homeopathy? 🙂

[Harry Tuttle]

Sadly, it sounds like a lot of his documentaries are based on fictition.

[Madog]

Well, I should say at the time TV Nation was on, I was a teenager and a Democrat, so I'd probably think completely different when it came on today.

[Rachel Cohen]

Ask the staff of TV Nation--when they asked for union represenatation, (WGA and DGA) so they could get better money, better health benefits and residuals, he went apeshit. Now, many shows on TV aren't union, but with all his bluster about the little guy, the folks on his show thought he'd put his money where his mouth was. They were wrong. He had a tantrum.

He's a pompous fuck.

[Tim Stich]

Hey thanks Rachel for that little note about TV Nation and the union dispute. I didn't know that. The example certainly illustrates what a hypocrite Moore is. I fell for the basic premise of "Roger and Me" when I saw it with my brother years ago and I loved TV Nation. But I couldn't bring myself to see "Bowling for Columbine" once I started getting the picture that Moore is so dishonest. There's enough bullshit missinformation out there without him.

[roy edroso]

Yeah, and I hear that William Faulkner was mean to people when he drank, so I don't like his books anymore.

"Roger & Me" is great. I don't care if Michael Moore is an asshole.

[Jesse Walker]

Roy: I liked *Roger & Me* too, despite its factual flubs. It's a very entertaining movie, and sometimes it makes some sharp points -- especially when it shows Flint's desperate, inane efforts to remake itself as a tourist destination.

But it ain't Faulkner.

[Anonymous]

You're right, JW -- it ain't Faulkner. But it has more in common with Faulkner than with, say, a Heritage Foundation monograph -- not in terms of quality (heavens no) but because it springs from a creative rather than a journalistic impulse.

I don't feel too misled by Moore on this because I can always check his facts at one of the seventy million blog postings devoted to that purpose.