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This interview was originally published in IMAGES Journal.
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“There’s not enough kindness in the world,” at least the kind practiced by Michael Moore, the enemy of corporate America, the conscience of America. His latest book, Stupid White Men: And Other Sorry Excuses for the State of the Nation! is a must read.
GJ: The conflict or the irony of talking against corporate
America and yet having to go on a book tour for a big corporation (Random House);
having Roger & Me released by Warner Bros., a big corporation; having The
Big One released y Miramax, a big corporation that's owned by Disney--how has
that worked out?
MICHAEL MOORE: It's worked out with me getting away with it (laughs). And I wonder how much longer I'm gonna get away with it. It is an interesting irony and it is not an irony that is lost upon me. I believe that these companies that distribute my book, or film, or TV show do it only because they believe they can make money. All the decisions are based on their bottom line, and it's one of the wonderful flaws of capitalism that they will actually produce and put forth that which is actually against their best interests--if they believe they can make a dime off it. Because they are so blinded by the desire for money, they will put you out there even though you really are against everything that they stand for. It's interesting to me, that they believe, these big media conglomerates, that there are billions of people out there that would want to watch my movie, or my TV show, or read my book. They believe our numbers are larger than we believe they are--"we" meaning those on the left or liberal end of the political spectrum. Most liberals of the last fifteen years have felt like part of a small niche, out of the loop somewhere. When George Bush got that 90% approval rating after the Gulf War, it suddenly felt like "Oh, I'm one of the 10%. I'm so lonely." It's just odd to me that these corporations don't see it that way. They believe that there are millions of Americans who are upset and distressed over what has happened. And they should know because in part their brethren have helped create the situation. And the irony that is built upon that irony is that they produce entertainment for those very masses that they helped to disenfranchise. "Okay, now, we're going to put joke boy up on the screen for an hour and a half, and it'll be good for you. But ultimately, we know that you can't do anything about it. Or better--we know you won't do anything about it." That's really why they put out my stuff--they know it's not a threat. They know that the audience is so dumbed out at this point, so numbed out, that they will not leave the theater and go out and try to change this [country] politically. It's safe to put it up there as long as the public does nothing. Once the public starts doing something, once people actually start to take the country back and put it into our hands--take it away from the big money, take it away from the politicians who are bought by big money--once that starts to happen, you won't see me anymore. I'm actually hoping to put myself out of business because I want you to leave the theater and get involved and do something. And eventually, if everyone does their part, there won't be a need for me.
GJ: How would you define your audience?
MICHAEL MOORE: My audience is made up of working stiffs, of people who come from the working class, and it is rare that you hear our voice in the media. We don't own newspapers, we don't have TV shows, yet we make up the majority of this country. I want the average working Joe or Jane to be able to go to the movie theater and sit down and, for an hour and a half, laugh and feel like here's one for our side. They've been sticking it to me for years and now, here for 90 minutes, we're gonna stick it back. It's like payback time. And payback is always a good feeling, especially if you can do it legally and without any bloodshed.
GJ: What type of luck have you had so far in mobilizing people? Your book, Downsize This!, ended with a chapter called "Mike's Militia." What's happened with that? Have you had any luck mobilizing people to act?
MICHAEL MOORE: We've got about 40,000 people signed up on the Web. (Mike's Militia, for those of you who didn't read the book--don't be scared by the word militia--it's a militia for all of those feeling left out by the militia movement and who are firearm challenged. There's no weapons.) I get great mail from people everyday about the things they're trying to do. I still have a sense of optimism that things are going to get better. That's why I end the film with the kids at Borders--not only having their union victory but they run across the street to tell the baggers at the grocery store. These kids get it. They get it. I don't want to listen to another baby boomer complain about young people these days. They are smarter, hipper, more aware, and more angry at the situation that we left them--because we only went halfway with it. The women's movement has only gone halfway. All these things have only gone halfway. Whereas our parents, that came out of World War II, were able to get a job, have a home. I think most of your dads, at least in my age, probably owned their first home in their mid twenties. None of these kids here will own a house in their mid twenties. They'll be still living at home in their mid twenties. My feeling is that corporate America is doing the organizing for us. By treating those kids like you see in the film--these kids have college degrees, they're paid $6 an hour, they've got to pass a test to prove they know the great works of literature to work at Borders, and on top of that they take money out of their paychecks for a healthcare plan, an HMO, that has not a single [local] doctor listed. So for 9 months they beg, "Please give us the healthcare that we're paying for." They wouldn't give it to them. So what'd they do? They called the union. I met with the head of Borders, and I said "You're complaining about the union in there organizing and causing trouble and all that." (Believe me these union leaders have been so damn lazy for the last 20 years. They're just padding their own pockets and making life easy for themselves. These kids went and did it on their own.) "The chief organizer, Mr. Flannagan, was you. You took money out of their paycheck and didn't give them healthcare. You don't consult with them about the hours they have to work, so they never know from week to week how many hours they're getting paid." You can't build a life like that. If there's no sense of job security how do you figure you can buy a house or should I get this car, should we have another kid? All those things that people go through--they can't go through anymore because nobody has a sense of job security. Allan Greenspan, chairman of the Fed, commissioned a poll last year. He wanted to know what the level of fear was in the American work force. How afraid are people of being downsized? There were more people afraid of being downsized in 1997 than there were back in 1991 when the recession was going on. The level of fear has risen--even though the economy is supposedly better. And that's what they want. They want that fear, because fear keeps people down. If people are afraid that they're going to be downsized they won't have parades, they won't form a union, they won't give any lip when the boss says you gotta work a couple more hours and you're not getting home until 8 o'clock at night. That's how they get away with it. When someone retires they don't hire somebody to fill their spot. They just say, "You'll take over here and Sally'll take a little bit of it. If you'll just work harder." That's what's going on. That's the underreported story. 4.7 percent unemployment, lowest in 20 years. That's not the story. That doesn't tell me anything. That doesn't tell me that the guy who worked at IBM and made $40,000 two years ago is now working at Denny's or Taco Bell off I-80 for $25,000 a year. That's the story, that that dad is now making $15,000 less. The 14 and 15 year olds now have to go work at McDonald's to put money into the family kitty.
GJ: W hat are you seeing when you go to university campuses? Are you seeing that there are students actively organizing, thinking that what we do now is going to affect what we're doing in the future when we're in the work place? Or are you encountering a certain amount of passivity?
MICHAEL MOORE: First of all, students, like the rest of society, by and large, have always been apathetic. The '60s have been romanticized and turned into a myth. You're led to believe that everyone had long hair and protested the war, hanging out with Jefferson Airplane. The truth is that that was a minority of students who protested that war--and who were being degraded by the other students who were there for their business degrees or their ROTC or whatever. All change throughout history has always occurred with a minority of people. Our American revolution was supported by only 25% of the population. I never get caught up in this feeling of "Oh, my God, look how stupid and apathetic people are." The majority are always apathetic--that's just the way it's always been. So I just kind of accept it. Let's just say 75% of the country is completely apathetic. Well, how much is 25% out of 270 million people? What is that? 70 million people? 70 million people give a shit? That's a lot of people. You could create a lot of change if you could mobilize 70 million. So I never get bothered by that. What I see going on campuses is that young people these days, I think, are a lot more aware than when I was that age about what's going on in the world. These anti-Nike movements on the campuses are very strong. Students are very upset about that swoosh being put on football and basketball jerseys and what Nike is doing overseas [where 14 year old Indonesian girls work in the shoe factories].
GJ: I heard that Nike tried to get you to change some scenes in The Big One?
MICHAEL MOORE: Nike [CEO, Phil Knight] sent his vice-president out to meet with me a few weeks ago, trying to get me to take out two of the things he said in the film, because they do not want the public to see him say that about 14 year olds [making Nike shoes in Indonesia].
GJ: Give us some ideas, if you were king, what kind of changes would you make to government?
MICHAEL MOORE: Well, first of all, I would change our system to a proportional representative system, like a parliamentary system, where you could then have 4, 5, 6 major political parties and those parties would represent the broad spectrum of political thought that exists in the country. We don't have that right now. We have one party that has two names--Republicans, Democrats. They virtually believe in the same thing. And they don't represent the will of the people. They're there to represent people with money. Money buys them. We always knew that about the Republicans. Thank God for Clinton. They've shown us the Democrats too want the money. And so, the richest 1% that own 50% of all the wealth in this country now have two political parties, the Republicans and the Democrats, and we, the other 99% have none. Now when anthropologists dig us up hundreds of years from now, they're going to laugh their asses off at us calling ourselves a democracy when the richest 1% controls the democracy with 2 political parties and the other 99% had no say and no voice. It's no surprise to me that over 50% of the people did not vote in the last political election. And they didn't stay home because they're apathetic or stupid or don't care. It's because they know those two parties do not represent them. We get these signs all the time. When 20% showed up to vote for Perot in '92, that blew my mind. 20%. He got 20% of the vote. I mean, think about this, 20% of the people actually left the house, got in the car, drove to the polls, stood in line for an hour, and voted for someone they knew was a certified fruitcake--just to send a message. That's like an act of civil disobedience. "I know he's nuts. I'm gonna vote for him anyway." Now this year, Colin Powell in all the public opinion polls would beat everybody. Is that amazing? Do you realize that we still have a problem with race in the country? A huge problem. A huge divisive problem regarding race. And yet Americans are so upset at what is going on in this country right now they're willing to set aside their own personal racism and vote for someone they would not want living next door to them or marrying their daughter. But they would put him in the White House because they are that pissed off. That's an amazing, amazing signal to me. They don't care what his politics are. Nobody knows what he stand for. He's just a giant (gestures)--you know--oh, sorry about that. [Apologizing to the microphone:] There was a slightly obscene gesture.
GJ: What can we do to change corporate America?
MICHAEL MOORE: You need laws that require them to do certain things. Just like we have laws that tell them you can't pollute the air, you can't pollute the river, you have to put air bags in the cars. We have to create more laws that put restrictions on these companies who are not making decisions in our best interest. They're making decisions based on greed--the desire for more and more money.
GJ: What do you think the labor unions should do to apply pressure on corporate America?
MICHAEL MOORE: Labor unions should devote every available dollar they can afford into organizing the unorganized--number one. Organize the unorganized. Labor unions, number two, should be completely democratic. There should be a direct vote of the leadership by the membership. Number three: we need a political party, working people. We need a political party that represents us and I suggest we do two things. We either need to start a third party, which will never ever win, as long as it's a third party because our system is rigged against third parties. But we need to support either the labor party or new party or the greens or some conglomerate of the three of them, so that we start organizing locally because, remember, most of the elections in this country, school boards, city council, etc. are not Democrats, Republicans. They're non-partisan. You know that the majority of elected officials are non-partisan, in most places. So we can organize--without having to have a party on the ballot--around candidates that we want to support, by forming our own third party. But having said that, I also believe because so many people have checked out of the political system and so many people don't give a damn and don't go to political meetings anymore that if you went to the Kansas City Democratic party meeting next month, the monthly meeting, I bet there won't be 10 people there--10 party hacks running everything. You go to the caucus meeting--there is never enough people for the state convention, the county convention, so what happens? The hacks put in their own people. The hacks nominate hacks and they go to big hack conventions and that's that. I've really been encouraging people on this tour to sign up as a delegate, to go to those caucuses, this is an election year, and take over the democratic party. Or show up at the next monthly meeting of the Democrats here, bring 20 of your friends; you'll outnumber the 10 hacks and just start taking over. They won't know what hit them. This is how the fundamentalists took over the Republican party. The Christian Right took over the Republican party over the last decade by doing it this way, locally, grass roots. We've got to start doing that. So I'm encouraging people to do that. And I've actually got some good e-mail from people on the tour who've actually went and done that.
GJ: When do you check your e-mail?
MICHAEL MOORE: I check it every night. I get probably a 100 letters or so a night. I read them all and I respond to maybe 20 of them. It takes a long time. It's a good hour a night that I'm on e-mail. But it's great. It's really a great tool. I said that in St. Louis last night and a couple of them say, "Isn't that a little corporate?" You know, my grandmother never learned to drive a car because she was born before cars, so she was a prisoner then. She couldn't get around. Typical baby boomer--don't be talking anti-computer talk. This is a great invention for us. It's a great tool for us. Because the Internet is still an egalitarian place to be.
GJ: For how long?
MICHAEL MOORE: Well, not long. Not long. They just haven't figured out how to take it over yet. Right now they're trying to figure out how to make money off it--which is good cause they'll never figure that out. That buys us more time.
GJ: Some of the people you talk to, some of the interviews are so spontaneous. Are they really as spontaneous as they appear?
MICHAEL MOORE: I worry that people will not believe that when we showed up in Milwaukee that that was the day Johnson Controls announced they were going to Mexico. Or that we just went and found out where Rick Nielsen [of Cheap Trick] lived. Or that Hershey was taken over an hour before we arrived, and we didn't even know it. I must have a really good guardian angel helping me out. This is all as you see it happening. Phil Knight [the CEO of Nike] calls me. I had already sent the crew back to New York. There's an 800 number you can call--called Crew Connections, where you can get a camera crew in an hour anywhere in America. I had to call them, get a camera crew, we barrel up to Beaverton, 15 miles up out of Portland. I'm passing by a travel agency and a light bulb goes off [in my head]--"Hey! Ooh!"--and I run in and buy two round trip tickets to Indonesia. (Note: Michael Moore used the tickets to urge Phil Knight to accompany him on a trip to the Nike shoe factories in Indonesia. Mr. Knight turned down the invitation.) This all happens just as you saw it. Just on the fly!
GJ: Tell us about Dog Eat Dog Productions. Is it a letterhead on a piece of stationery, a tag on a door, a staff? What is it exactly? Or is it like "Acme" in a Chuck Jones' Road Runner cartoon -- sort of a front for whatever you want to do?
MICHAEL MOORE: [We have] a staff of four people. My wife and I are from Flint and so we did Roger & Me. And then a number of people who worked on Roger & Me came to New York with us and we did "TV Nation." They've all now gone on to get better jobs, for the most part--although I still call them up, like I did with The Big One. I was already out on the road in the middle of this book tour and I called up some friends who worked on "TV Nation" and said, "Can you drop what you're doing in the next 24 hours and go with me on the road for 3 weeks?" It's a small group of us, a core group of about five of us from Flint. And then a slightly larger group of about maybe 10 people that we've met over the years.
GJ: You're suggesting that outside the core group there is a bit of a network out there?
MICHAEL MOORE: There is. I believe that there are people like this in every city. Look, you gotta look at this as being very strange that I'm even sitting here talking now. This is not what was in the cards for me. I mean, I might sound like I know what I'm talking about, but I . . . . Look--I have a high school education. I'm supposed to be building Buicks. And through some fluke, because I got pissed off and made Roger & Me, you know, I now get to make this other stuff and now you can sit here and hold court while I eat pizza. It's all kind of strange if you kinda sit back from it. What gives me the right to sit here and talk to you?
GJ: About the lack of Oscar nominations for Roger & Me -- ?
MICHAEL MOORE: It's a honor. They put us in with Shoah, Hoop Dreams, Thin Blue Line, Brother's Keeper, all good documentaries. So it's an honor. And it's interesting that this year's Oscar nominations in terms of Best Picture, 4 of the 5 have one basic theme throughout them and that is working class versus the upper class.
GJ: What tricks did your cameraman learn while making Roger & Me and The Big One?
MICHAEL MOORE: Never turn the camera off. He only turned it off that one time when he saw the handcuffs come out.
GJ: What sources of information do you recommend for keeping track of the "tax-cheating, job-exporting, environment-destroying corporations?”
MICHAEL MOORE: Read any of Ralph Nader's publications, all the stuff that comes out of Ralph Nader's office, Multi-National Monitor, Corporate Crime Reporter, The Nation is a good source, and I tell you, the Internet is a great source of information.
GJ: When will we see more "TV Nation"?
MICHAEL MOORE: End of this year, beginning of next year you'll see more "TV Nation."
GJ: What was your publisher's reaction when they found out you were turning their PR tour into a movie (A) and (B) taking on Borders bookstores?
MICHAEL MOORE: The first part of your question: they didn't care about the movie because I was the only bestseller that Crown had all last year in the non-fiction list. I made them a lot of money. The book cost $21. The book sold a quarter of a million copies. Add it up. So what are they going to say? But they were very upset at taking on Borders. When I refused to cross the picket line in Philadelphia, then three days later they took the microphone away from me at the World Trade Center in New York at Borders. They warned me not to say anything publicly about this, this would be disastrous. Borders is the second largest book chain in the country. One out of every two books in the country is bought at a Borders or a Barnes & Noble-owned bookstore. Because Borders has bought out Walden, Brentanos and Barnes and Nobles has bought B. Dalton and other book chains. So they essentially control--two companies!--essentially control half the books sold. Now publishers are sending the manuscripts before they publish the books to the bookstore executives, to get their input on how to alter chapters, titles, book covers, or even should they publish the books at all. In a democracy, I tell you, it's not healthy.
GJ: Did you try to sell your book to one of the small publishers?
MICHAEL MOORE: No. Why would I do that? Why would I want to go to a small publisher that has a hard time getting the book in stores and won't be read by as many people? Why would I do that?
GJ: Because it does send a message. If we’re talking about helping the smaller individual, how do you combat the big corporation?
MICHAEL MOORE: I don't feel like that's sending a message. I feel like that's posing. It would be like I'm a liberal poser. "I'm gonna go to the groovy left-wing publishing house and publish my book." I want to see change in my lifetime. I'm out to reach as many millions of Americans with this message as possible and I will use whatever vehicle I can. I will use whatever institute of theirs I can to get that [message] out there. And I do not want this message marginalized. I don't want to just preach to the converted. So if I can get on NBC, all the better. The question you should ask, in having my movie distributed by a company owned by Disney or a book by Random House, have I pulled my punch? Have I softened my message? Have I somehow pulled back because now I am part of the loop? If I have done that then you should kick my ass. But if you feel like I've gone even further than Roger & Me, that in the progression from Roger & Me to "TV Nation" to Downsize This! to this film, that I'm even more angry now and more upset and more outraged at what I see and more in their face about it--then you should say that. We live in the real world. I don't go around seeing if people are wearing Nikes. I'm not into that. It's just like poser stuff. You know? I'm drinking a Coca Cola. You know what they've done?
GJ: Companies seem very angry when you try to meet with them. Have you ever got a violent reaction from them?
MICHAEL MOORE: Yes. Well, not violence toward me. Fortunately, I'm like 6'2" 260. That works in my favor, I think, for my own protection. I'm always nervous going into those places. I don't really enjoy it. I'm always thinking "Can't somebody else do this?" Why doesn't the mainstream press go in and ask the question? Why is it a schlump in a ball cap asking this question: "Why are you laying people off at a time of record profit?" Simple question. It shouldn't have to be me. When you see me doing it, it represents a failure of our media--not doing the job they should do.