MichaelMoore.com

Michael Moore takes on capitalism: `everything I want to say is in this film.'

By Jay Stone / Canwest News Service

TORONTO - Michael Moore's new movie, Capitalism: A Love Story, is the Michael Mooreiest film he has ever made.

It has a little bit of everything, including attacks on George Bush, exposes of dreadful behaviour by large corporations, scenes of economic devastation in Flint, Mich., and sequences where Moore arrives at various corporate headquarters demanding that the executives allow themselves to be arrested.

``I sort of started with this attitude: what if they weren't going to allow me to make another movie after this?'' Moore said shortly before Capitalism: A Love Story had its premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival, where it went on to win the runner-up award for best documentary.

``What if I wasn't able to get the money or the theatres wouldn't show my movies? If I could make one last movie, what would that movie be? And I sort of operated with that attitude of, `Let's go for it here. Let's make sure everything I want to say is in this film.'''

That tone of valedictory suits Capitalism, which was made on the 20th anniversary of his breakthrough film Roger & Me, the story of how General Motors abandoned Flint, his hometown. Capitalism: A Love Story has a broader canvas - it is an omnibus attack on an entire system - but it circles back to GM and to Flint, and includes bits of Moore's own life: photographs of him as a child, and scenes with his father, who worked for an auto parts company, looking at the empty lot where the firm once stood.

Along with the nostalgia, however, there's also the old fire, and Moore is as voluble as ever about his passions. Capitalism: A Love Story plays like a call for revolution, but Moore said the public is already in a state of what he calls ``pre-revolt'' over the behaviour of large corporations.

``It's not just the minimum-wage people they're going after,'' he said. ``They're going after everybody. They want everybody to make less money. They want everybody to be filled with a state of anxiety or fear. That way you're not going to ask for a raise. You're not going to ask for an extra day off. They can keep the leash round you tightened by having such a crazy and scary economic situation we're in.''

The film shows people whose houses have been seized and also their neighbours, who realize that foreclosures are bad for everyone. Moore finds underpaid airline pilots, some of them who need second jobs, and companies that take out secret insurance policies on their workers so that a dead employee becomes a valuable commodity. And among them all are the bankers and politicians who get rich from hard times.

It's a typical Moore position, and it's the kind of thing that has made him a villain to the right-wing press and a hero to the left, who support his evisceration of Bush in Fahrenheit 9/11 or his exposes of American gun culture (Bowling for Columbine) and health care (Sicko). If there is a common theme, Moore said, it is, ``What those in power try to do to limit our participation.''

``These companies will get away with murder, if they can,'' he said. ``They will do whatever they have to do to make as much money as possible. That is capitalism.''

Still, he's willing to admit that the original idea of capitalism wasn't so bad. In the film, his friend Wallace Shawn talks about how it is supposed to work: there are two ice cream shops on the corner, and the people decide which one they like better. The popular one thrives and the one that makes inferior ice cream goes out of business.

``But we're so far away from that now,'' Moore said. ``It's all about trying to be the only ice cream company: merging, buying out, shutting down, killing the competition.'' He gave the example of Goldman Sachs, the investment house that benefited, along with other banks, from government bailouts.

``I love when these people say they believe in capitalism,'' Moore said, warming to his subject. ``They don't believe in the free market or free enterprise. They want welfare as soon as they hit the skids . . . they hate choice. Goldman Sachs would prefer the Soviet way.'' An enthusiastic performer, Moore then adopted a Russian accent: ``We only need one investment firm, we only need one newspaper, one radio, one car company. That's their nirvana.''

Moore said he is not against profit, or rewarding hard work, but that the present system isn't working and it needs to be overhauled.

Like all Moore's movies, Capitalism: A Love Story combines theorizing with human stories and telling detail. ``I don't think of myself as a documentarian, '' he said. ``I'm a filmmaker. I think it's about telling a story.''

He said too many documentaries feel like medicine, then collapse with weak endings: the ecological documentary that ends with a call to use fluorescent bulbs, for instance. ``Oh my God, the polar ice caps are melting and we're changing light bulbs. It's like `hello.' ''

At the same time, Moore said he doesn't want viewers to leave the theatre feeling paralyzed. ``I want them leaving with an act of emotion,'' he said: anger, or a desire to tell their neighbours about an interesting fact they've heard.

But if Capitalism: A Love Story was made as if it was his last documentary, does that mean he's going to stop? Moore shrugged.

``I'm not going to stop making movies, but maybe I'll take a break from documentaries for a while, because there are things I'd like to say and do artistically with fiction,'' he said. Still, it may be harder to stop than he thinks: while he was making the movie, he came up with two more ideas for documentaries. ``I thought, `Go back to that screenplay you're writing.' ''