MOORE:I founded and put out a little alternative newspaper in Flint, Michigan for a number of years called “The Flint Voice.” One of things we were always doing was challenging Roger Smith [former CEO of General Motors] to go bowling with us or something. When I no longer had a job, I was just watching TV one day and Roger Smith came on and said he was laying off another 10,000 people in Flint, and he’d already laid off about 20,000 at that point. I just got mad and said, “I’m going to make a movie about this.” Even though I didn’t know how to make a movie, I just felt like I’d seen enough movies and I knew how to do it.
Probably the most gratifying one from the first season was the piece where we went with this man whose HMO, Humana, would not pay for this operation he needed in order to live, even though the contract stated that they should pay for it. The HMO didn’t read the contract that way and so they said they wouldn’t pay for it. And since he couldn’t afford it, he was going to die. So we took this individual, his name was Chris Donahue, from Florida, up to the HMO headquarters in Kentucky and we staged his funeral–sort of like a wedding rehearsal–on the lawn of this corporation. We also went in to speak to one of the vice presidents. They were so humiliated that within three days they changed their minds and gave him the operation.
Well, the initial people you meet–the secretaries of the security people–are people who are working for not very much money and so they often can relate to what we’re doing. And we often find them to be somewhat sympathetic. They’re not the target of this, anyway. We want them to go and bring down a suit, somebody who makes decisions, somebody who can affect change within the company.
I have no sympathy for them.
Oh yeah.
Well, what can I say? He is their top management guy in public relations. I found out later that he left that job and went and took a job in PR for some non-profit organization, like the Cancer Society or something.
No, they don’t get violent, but they look like they’re having the worst day of their lives. Most of them are former journalists who found out they could make five times as much money in PR. Before, they worked in a profession where they’re supposed to tell the truth. Now they work in a profession where they have to figure out how to lie every day. For the most part, they’re used to dealing with the business press, who treat them with kid gloves. It’s rare that they have to deal with this. So for one day they’ve got to deal with it.
There is a piece we did [on “The Awful Truth”] where Manpower Inc. sent a memo around on what to do should Michael Moore come to your office, which I found pretty funny. So I thought I’d go and test them to see if they’re following their own memo.
Well, if you knew me personally, you’d know I’m actually a pretty calm person. A large part of me is very shy and introverted, which probably doesn’t make any sense whatsoever. But if you went back and talked to anybody in high school, they’d tell you I wasn’t asking a lot of people out to the Friday night dances. I’m really not prone to do this, and remember I didn’t start doing this until I was 35. I just got tired of saying, “Somebody should do this, somebody should do this.” And then nobody seems to do it. I finally reached a point where I said, “Well, I’ve got to do it myself.”
When “TV Nation” [a series that appeared on NBC, then Fox, and was canceled in 1995] was on the air, we had a number of run-ins–censorship problems at Fox mostly. There was one time when we were on NBC where they didn’t censor us, but the advertisers pulled all their spots because we did a piece on abortion. Specifically, we were following around these people who wanted to assassinate abortion doctors and the sponsors pulled the spots, so the piece had to be pulled. [But] Bravo has been very good. They don’t have any problems there. There is only one piece that they did not run and it’s on the home video and DVD. That’s “Teen Sniper School.” It was right after Columbine, and they were nervous about it.
No, I met the Chairman of Ford on “TV Nation.” We did a “CEO Challenge,” where we wanted to see if CEOs knew how to use or build the product that they sell. So we challenged the head of IBM to format a computer disk, we asked the head of RJ Reynolds to roll a cigarette, and we asked the Chairman of Ford to change the oil on a Bronco. And he actually came down.
Yeah. He did it like in 10 or 15 minutes.
Yes, I do worry about that. I end up trusting the intelligence of the audience–that they’ll get it and they’ll know where we’re coming from. Too much of TV talks down to people and has very low expectations of the audience and I think that all contributes to the dumbing down of our society. I would rather expect something greater from the audience, and so we stick to our guns in terms of the kind of humor and the way that we want to present this material.
No. I think that’s a question that some journalists feel because we’re at a point now with journalism in this country, where in order for it to be journalism, it’s supposed to be deadly serious. There was a time in this country where satire was seen as a form of journalism, where the Mark Twains and people like that wrote for newspapers. They had places on the editorial page; it was a respected form of journalism. Now satire is reduced to late night comedy, which I don’t consider myself part of. I consider “The Awful Truth” a form of journalism and it’s just the opposite of trivializing. It’s all the more powerful. Humor is an incredibly powerful weapon. It was only through the sort of dark humor of holding that funeral rehearsal that we got that HMO to pay for that guy’s operation. And that was pretty dark.
