Michael Moore showed up for a twentieth-anniversary screening of Roger and Me in Ann Arbor last night, and said some very interesting things. Like, he didn’t like The Hurt Locker, but he did like Avatar:
“I did not like ‘The Hurt Locker.’ It’s a lazy way to make a movie, frankly. I could put you on the edge of your seat quite easily, and have you feel the tension for 2 hours, if every other scene practically is, ‘Should we cut the red wire or the green wire?’ And if he cuts the wrong wire, he gets blown to smithereens, and you never know who’s going to get blown up in any given second. That doesn’t take a whole lot of skill to get big emotion out of this if you’re in the audience. And there’s a pornographic element to it that’s a little disturbing because you can’t take your eyes off it. But what’s it saying? What’s the substance of this? I think ‘Avatar’ was really trying to say something about the planet, about indigenous people, and about how we construct war now, how we privatize it. And I think these are really powerful things to say in this time, and I give James Cameron a lot of credit.â€
So what Michael Moore seems to be saying here is that every movie needs to have a very overt message, and a movie can’t just be about telling a story and letting the viewer draw his or her own conclusions. Got it. Moore also said that George Clooney called him once and said he wouldn’t go on a second date with any woman who didn’t get Roger and Me, a weeding-out strategy of which we heartily approve.
Michael Moore Talks About ‘Roger and Me’ and More at UM [Annarbor.com]