Michael Moore

Michael Moore was born April 23 1954 and is an American filmmaker, author and liberal political commentator. He is the director and producer of Bowling for Columbine, Fahrenheit 9/11, Sicko, and Capitalism: A Love Story. Which are four of the top nine highest-grossing documentaries of all time.

In September 2008, he released his first free movie on the Internet, Slacker Uprising, documenting his personal crusade to encourage more Americans to vote in presidential elections. He has also written and starred in the TV shows TV Nation and The Awful Truth.

Moore criticizes globalization, large corporations, assault weapon ownership, the Iraq War, U.S. President George W. Bush and the American health care system in his written and cinematic works.

From Michael Moore’s career so far he has been awarded many awards and been nominated for many other awards:

Academy
2002	Win	Best Documentary Feature
2007	Nominated	Best Documentary Feature
Cannes Film Festival
2002	Win	55th Anniversary Prize
Directors Guild of America
2004	Nominated	Best Documentary
Writers Guild of America
2002	Nominated	Best Original Screenplay
2007	Nominated	Best Documentary Screenplay

The documentary Bowling for Columbine explores what Michael Moore suggests are the causes for the Columbine High School massacre and other acts of violence with guns. Moore focuses on the background and environment in which the massacre took place and some common public opinions and assumptions about related issues. The film looks into the nature of violence in the United States.

In Moore's discussions with various people including South Park co-creator Matt Stone, the National Rifle Association's president Charlton Heston, and musician Marilyn Manson he seeks to explain why the Columbine massacre occurred and why the United States has a high violent crime rate (especially crimes involving guns).

An early scene shows how Moore discovered a bank in Michigan that would give customers a free hunting rifle when they made a deposit of a certain size into a time deposit account. The film follows Moore as he goes to the bank, makes his deposit, fills out the forms, and awaits the result of a background check before walking out of the bank carrying a brand new Weatherby hunting rifle.

Just before leaving the bank, Moore jokingly asks, "Do you think it's a little dangerous handing out guns at a bank?”

Another scene about 20 minutes into the film the Beatles song ‘Happiness Is a Warm Gun’ plays during a montage in which the following footage is shown:

• People buying guns
• Residents of Virgin in Utah, a town that passed a law requiring all residents to own guns
• People firing rifles at carnivals and shooting ranges
• Footage of Denise Ames operating an assault rifle
• Footage of Carey McWilliams a visually impaired gun enthusiast
• Footage of Gary Plauche killing Jeff Doucet a man who had kidnapped his son and molested him
• The suicide of Budd Dwyer
•  A 1993 murder where Emilio Nuñez shot his ex-wife Maritza Martin to death during an interview on the Telemundo program Ocurrió Asi
• The suicide of Daniel V. Jones
•  A man who takes his shirt off and is shot during a riot

Another scene early in the documentary, Moore links the violent behaviour of the Columbine shooters to the presence in Littleton of a large defence establishment where they manufacture rocket technology. It is implied that the presence of this facility within the community and the acceptance of institutionalised violence as a solution to conflict contributed to the mindset that led to the massacre.

Moore conducts an interview with Evan McCollum the Director of Communications at a Lockheed Martin plant near Columbine and asks him "So you don't think our kids say to themselves, Dad goes off to the factory every day, he builds missiles of mass destruction. What's the difference between that mass destruction and the mass destruction over at Columbine High School?" McCollum responded "I guess I don't see that specific connection because the missiles that you're talking about were built and designed to defend us from somebody else who would be aggressors against us." So Evan justifies the manufacturing of the missiles as they are killing people that are trying to kill us.

The documentary then cuts to a montage of American foreign policy decisions, with the intent to contradict McCollum's statement by citing examples of how the United States has frequently been the aggressor nation. This montage is set to the song ‘What a Wonderful World’ performed by Louis Armstrong.

The following is the onscreen text in the Wonderful World segment:

1953: U.S. overthrows Prime Minister Mohammed Mosaddeq of Iran. U.S. installs Shah as dictator

1954: U.S. overthrows democratically-elected President Arbenz of Guatemala. 200,000 civilians killed

1963: U.S. backs assassination of South Vietnamese President Diem

1963-1975: American military kills 4 million people in Southeast Asia

September 11, 1973: U.S. stages coup in Chile. Democratically-elected President Salvador Allende assassinated. Dictator Augusto Pinochet installed. 5,000 Chileans murdered

1977: U.S. backs military rulers of El Salvador. 70,000 Salvadorans and four American nuns killed

1980s: U.S. trains Osama bin Laden and fellow terrorists to kill Soviets. CIA gives them $3 billion

1981: Reagan administration trains and funds the Contras. 30,000 Nicaraguans die

1982: U.S. provides billions of dollars in aid to Saddam Hussein for weapons to kill Iranians

1983: The White House secretly gives Iran weapons to kill Iraqis

1989: CIA agent Manuel Noriega (also serving as President of Panama) disobeys orders from Washington. U.S. invades Panama and removes Noriega. 3,000 Panamanian civilian casualties

1990: Iraq invades Kuwait with weapons from U.S.

1991: U.S. enters Iraq. Bush reinstates dictator of Kuwait

1998: Clinton bombs possible weapons factory in Sudan. Factory turns out to be making aspirin

1991 to present: American planes bomb Iraq on a weekly basis. U.N. estimates 500,000 Iraqi children die from bombing and sanctions

2000-2001: U.S. gives Taliban-ruled Afghanistan $245 million in aid

Sept. 11, 2001: Osama bin Laden uses his expert CIA training to murder 3,000 people

The montage then ends with handheld camera footage of the second 9/11 plane crash, the audio is consistently the hysterical reactions of the witnesses, recorded by the camera's microphone.

Michael Moore attempts to contrast this with the attitude in Canada, where gun ownership is at similar levels to the U.S. He illustrates his theory by visiting neighbourhoods in Canada near the Canada U.S. border where he finds front doors unlocked and much less concern over crime and security.

In this section a montage of possible causes for gun violence are stated. Many claim links with violence in television, cinema, and computer games; towards the end of the montage, however, a series of statements all claim Marilyn Manson's responsibility. Following this is an interview between Moore and Marilyn Manson. Manson shares his ideas about the United States' climate with Moore, stating that he believes U.S. society is based on fear and consumption, citing Colgate commercials that promise "if you have bad breath, people are not going to talk to you" and other commercials containing fear based messages, and that the media would rather point at him as the one responsible for the killings instead of the President who ordered more bombings on Kosovo that specific day than any other. When Moore asks Manson what he would say to the kids and community at Columbine, Manson replies "I wouldn't say a single word to them; I would listen to what they have to say, and that's what no one did."

Moore then follows up his climate of fear theory by exploring the popular explanations as to why gun violence is so high in the United States. He examines Marilyn Manson as a cause but states that Germany listens to more Marilyn Manson and has a greater Gothic population than the United States with less gun violence (Germany have 381 incidents per year). He examines violent movies but realises that they have the same violent movies in other countries, showing The Matrix with French sub titles (France have 255 incidents per year). He also examines video games but states that violent video games come from Japan (Japan have 39 incidents per year). Concluding his comparisons with the idea that the United States violent history is the cause but opposing that with the violent histories of Germany, France, and the United Kingdom (UK have 68 incidents per year) Moore ends this section with gun related death per year statistics of a few major countries.

• United States - 11,127 (3.601 per 100,000)
• Germany – 381 (0.466 per 100,000)
• France – 255 (0.389 per 100,000)
•  Canada – 165 (0.484 per 100,000)
• United Kingdom – 68 (0.109 per 100,000)
• Australia – 65 (0.292 per 100,000)
• Japan – 39 (0.030 per 100,000)

In the final scene Moore takes two Columbine victims (Mark Taylor and Richard Castaldo) to the American superstore K-Mart supposedly to claim a refund on the bullets still lodged in their bodies. After a number of attempts to avoid the issue, a K-Mart spokesperson says that the firm will change its policy and phase out the sale of handgun ammunition; this comes after Moore and the victims go to the nearest K-Mart store purchase all of their ammunition and return the next day with several members of the media. "We've won," says Moore, "That was more than we asked for.”