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    Turning the tables on Michael Moore

    What goes around, comes around.
    A new documentary unmasking Michael Moore debuts today at the South by Southwest film festival
    March 9, 2007, 2:18PM

    http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ent/4616648.html

    SXSW festival documentary questions Michael Moore
    By CHRISTY LEMIRE Associated Press



    Among the many other items on the crowded schedule, which runs through March 17 and includes 110 features and 120 shorts:

    • Discussions with Bill Paxton, Richard Linklater and Morgan Spurlock.

    • A comedy panel with Seth MacFarlane (Family Guy), Rob Corddry (The Winner) and Al Jean (The Simpsons) and a horror panel featuring Eli Roth with a peek at clips from Hostel: Part II.

    • A session in which Austinite Robert Rodriguez will discuss the upcoming Grindhouse, the epic genre movie he crafted with Quentin Tarantino.

    The cameras get turned on Michael Moore for a change at the South by Southwest film festival, where the documentary Manufacturing Dissent will have its world premiere.

    The film from directors Rick Caine and Debbie Melnyk, playing March 10 at the Austin festival, follows Moore during the release of Fahrenheit 9/11 and questions many of his tactics.

    Among its revelations: that the confrontational documentarian did interview former General Motors Chairman Roger Smith, the elusive subject of his 1989 debut Roger & Me, and simply chose to leave it out of the finished cut.

    Moore, who won an Academy Award for 2002's Bowling for Columbine, has not responded to e-mail and phone requests for comment. "The people who can attest to this are extremely credible and do attest to this in the film," said John Pierson, the independent film veteran who helped sell Roger & Me to Warner Bros. and now teaches at the University of Texas at Austin. "I've always loved Roger & Me. I loved working on it. I really believed in it, and that's really bad. The fundamental core of the film is how his mission to get Roger Smith fails and, P.S., Michael spent 18 years since then swearing he never interviewed Roger Smith."

    South by Southwest producer Matt Dentler said there was a similar buzz at the festival in 2002 when Alexandra Pelosi showed her documentary Journeys With George, in which she followed President Bush during his first run for the White House.

    "I think on the surface people have a certain conception about what (Manufacturing Dissent) is that for the most part is probably false. The film is for the most part critical of Michael Moore but it's not a political film, there's no partisanship," he said. "It's an issue of questioning the media, deciphering who's the architect of what we consider fact and fiction and reality."

    But first, the festival opened March 9 with the world premiere of The Lookout, a thriller from Oscar-nominated Out of Sight screenwriter Scott Frank, making his directing debut. The movie stars Joseph Gordon-Levitt (3rd Rock From the Sun) as a once great high school athlete who suffers a head injury in a car crash and ends up working as a janitor at a small-town bank, where a group of criminals ask him to help them pull off a robbery. "I was bored as a writer and I really just wanted to learn something, I wanted to have a completely different creative experience," Frank said of directing for the first time. "It was enormously satisfying for me — I can't wait to do another."

    Actually, he says, he wishes he could make The Lookout all over again because "I now know how long things take."

    "When I first started doing films 20 years ago, I was 24, I wanted to (direct) then but I've put it off because I have such a great life as a writer," Frank said. "I was really comfortable — I think I got too comfortable. But it was always in the back of my mind as something I wanted to do."

    During that time he worked with directors including Steven Spielberg (Minority Report), Steven Soderbergh (Out of Sight), Sydney Pollack (The Interpreter) and Barry Sonnenfeld (Get Shorty). And he took a little of what he learned from each of them.

    "They all had very specific styles. They were all very much in control in terms of exerting their point of view on the material," he said. "The biggest thing I learned is that the art of filmmaking is compromise. Every day is a compromise, and a film's success is based on how you choose to compromise. Even Steven Spielberg is at the mercy of the production."

    The inclusion of The Lookout, which Miramax plans to release theatrically on March 30, reflects an increasing studio awareness of SXSW. Now in its 14th year, the festival has always been a mecca for indie films and aspiring indie filmmakers, but it's also drawing more big-name celebrities and high-profile movies.

    Columbia's Reign Over Me, starring Adam Sandler and Don Cheadle, is showing before its March 23 theatrical release. Paramount's Disturbia, a thriller starring Shia LaBeouf and produced by Spielberg and Ivan Reitman, is showing before it opens in theaters April 13. The Universal comedy Knocked Up"from director Judd Apatow is screening before its release in June. And last year, Robert Altman's star-studded final film, A Prairie Home Companion, played on opening night.

    "I think it's because South by Southwest has created an identity and a niche in the industry through the press and film distributors that it's really a destination to help earn a little bit of film-geek cred," Dentler said. "A large part of that has to do with our association with Harry Knowles (creator of the Austin-based Ain't It Cool News Web site), things of that nature," he said. "It's interesting having all these events on top of the true-blue indie stuff we've got."

    But that doesn't mean South by Southwest has turned into Sundance or Cannes — or worse, Hollywood, Dentler added. "I think (the studios) realize there's a really valuable audience at South by Southwest — not just filmmakers and industry people but film fans," he said. "That's what's nice about it, the egalitarian vibe. It's hard to tell who are the suits from New York and L.A. and who are the struggling filmmakers."


    On the Net:

    2007.sxsw.com/film/
    Laissez les bon temps rouler! Going to church doesn't make you a Christian any more than standing in a garage makes you a car.** a 4 day work week & sex slaves ~ I say Tyt for PRESIDENT! Not to be taken internally, literally or seriously ....Suki ebaynni IS THAT BETTER ?

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    Re: Turning the tables on Michael Moore

    I'm sorry if this offends anyone, but I think Michael Moore is a piece of garbage .. and I am being nice!
    They say it takes a minute to find a special person, an hour to appreciate them, a day to love them, but then an entire life to forget them. Distance and time may separate us but friendship and memories won't.
    ~When someone you love becomes a memory, the memory becomes a treasure~
    =^..^=

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    Re: Turning the tables on Michael Moore

    Film questions Michael Moore's tactics
    By CHRISTY LEMIRE, AP Movie Writer
    1 hour, 28 minutes ago


    AUSTIN, Texas - As documentary filmmakers, Debbie Melnyk and Rick Caine looked up to Michael Moore.

    Then they tried to do a documentary of their own about him — and ran into the same sort of resistance Moore himself famously faces in his own films.

    The result is "Manufacturing Dissent," which turns the camera on the confrontational documentarian and examines some of his methods. Among their revelations in the movie, which had its world premiere Saturday night at the South by Southwest film festival: That Moore actually did speak with then-General Motors chairman Roger Smith, the evasive subject of his 1989 debut "Roger & Me," but chose to withhold that footage from the final cut.

    The husband-and-wife directors spent over two years making the movie, which follows Moore on his college tour promoting 2004's "Fahrenheit 9/11." The film shows Melnyk repeatedly approaching Moore for an interview and being rejected; members of Moore's team also kick the couple out of the audience at one of his speeches, saying they weren't allowed to be shooting there.

    At their own premiere Saturday night, the Toronto-based filmmakers expected pro-Moore plants in the audience heckling or trying to otherwise sabotage the screening, but it turned out to be a tame affair.

    "It went really well," Melnyk said. "People really liked the film and laughed at the right spots and got the movie and we're really happy about it."

    Moore hasn't commented publicly on "Manufacturing Dissent" and Melnyk thinks he never will. He also hasn't responded to several calls and e-mails from The Associated Press.

    "There's no point for Michael to respond to the film because then it gives it publicity," she said.

    "(President) Bush didn't respond to `Fahrenheit 9/11,' and there's a reason for that," Caine added.

    The two were and still are fans of all his movies — including the polarizing "Fahrenheit 9/11," which grossed over $119 million and won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival — and initially wanted to do a biography on him. They traveled to his childhood home of Davison, Mich., visited his high school and traced his early days in politics and journalism.

    "The fact that he made documentaries entertaining was extremely influential and got all kinds of people out to see them," said Melnyk, whose previous films with Caine include 1998's "Junket Whore." "Let's face it, he made documentaries popular and that is great for all documentary filmmakers."

    "All of these films — `Super Size Me,' `An Inconvenient Truth' — we've all been riding in his wake," said Caine. "There's a nonfiction film revolution going on and we're all beneficiaries of that. For that point alone, he's worth celebrating."

    But after four months of unsuccessfully trying to sit down with Moore for an on-camera interview, they realized they needed to approach the subject from a different angle. They began looking at the process Moore employs in his films, and the deeper they dug, the more they began to question him.

    The fact that Moore spoke with Smith, including a lengthy question-and-answer exchange during a May 1987 GM shareholders meeting, first was reported in a Premiere magazine article three years later. Transcripts of the discussion had been leaked to the magazine, and a clip of the meeting appeared in "Manufacturing Dissent." Moore also reportedly interviewed Smith on camera in January 1988 at the Waldorf Astoria hotel in New York.

    Since then, in the years since "Roger & Me" put Moore on the map, those details seem to have been suppressed and forgotten.

    "It was shocking, because to me that was the whole premise of `Roger & Me,'" Melnyk said.

    She and Caine also had trouble finding people to talk on camera about Moore, partly because potential interview subjects assumed they were creating a right-wing attack piece; as self-proclaimed left-wingers, they weren't.

    Despite what they've learned, the directors still appreciate Moore.

    "We're a bit disappointed and disillusioned with Michael," Melnyk said, "but we are still very grateful to him for putting documentaries out there in a major way that people can go to a DVD store and they're right up there alongside dramatic features."

    http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070312/...niCJo8_o6s0NUE
    Laissez les bon temps rouler! Going to church doesn't make you a Christian any more than standing in a garage makes you a car.** a 4 day work week & sex slaves ~ I say Tyt for PRESIDENT! Not to be taken internally, literally or seriously ....Suki ebaynni IS THAT BETTER ?

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