With documentaries becoming more popular, some have traced that trend back to Michael Moore and his piece on GM Chairman Roger Smith in 1989.
Debbie Melnyk and Rick Caine had an interest in doing a documentary on Moore, but were resisted the whole way by him and his team; to the point where they were removed from an audience in which they were filming him talking. What's interesting about this is that both Melnyk and Caine consider themselves very left-wing themselves.
What they found out about Moore's methods shocked and disillusioned them as when they dug deeper into his history they confirmed that he had indeed did interviews with Roger Smith and simply neglected to put them in the documentary. Melnyk said, "It was shocking, because to me that was the whole premise of `Roger & Me.'"
With "Roger & Me" being the work that launched Moore's career, the producers found that the details of what really happened have been forgotten or possibly suppressed. Their new documentary on Moore and his methods is called "Manufacturing Dissent," and was premiered Saturday night at the South by Southwest film festival.
The husband and wife team attempted many times to sit down with Moore and get his comments on camera, but he refused to. That's what caused them to start questioning some things and to dig deeper into Moore's methods.
After finding that he "spiked" the interview he had with Smith, and not being willing to talk to the couple, Melnyk added that "We're a bit disappointed and disillusioned with Michael."
This is a film that definitely needs to be taken a look at, as it's one thing to expose and talk about the truth, it's quite another to create something out of nothing. Evidently this proves in this case that it's exactly what Moore did.
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