5. The Charlton Heston Interview
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1iuEcu7O50 Id be lying if I said that the Charlton Heston interview was rotten to the core. To give Moore his due, he is initially respectful and asks good questions. Its only when he gets onto the subject of the Columbine and Flint school shootings that things go downhill. He states that the choice to have an NRA rally in Flint was made after the killing as a fact while Heston explains that he was unaware that the killing had taken place at the time the rally happened. The rally itself was part of a whistle-stop tour of three states in three days. Something that would have been planned long before the shooting. Moore then begins to ask leading questions such as Why do you go to places after they have these horrible tragedies. In any kind of journalistic situation, a leading question is a bit of a dirty trick as it locks the interviewee into a position where their answer is strictly limited and gives them very little leeway in their response. As well as being a leading question, this is all but saying that the NRA deliberately chose to stage rallies in Denver and Flint immediately after school shootings occurred there. Which is simply not true. Eventually, Heston dismisses himself, leaving Moore to see himself out. And its here that any sense of truth that the sequence has to it disappears. Heston is shown defiantly walking away while Moore holds up a photo of the six year old girl killed in the Flint shooting and pleads with Heston not walk away.. The shots of Heston walking away have a small portion of Moores body in shot. While the shots of Moore holding the photo are clearly filmed from a short distance in front of him. Given that the film is shot with a single camera, it is physically impossible for the sequence of events we see to have happened as filmed. The end of the Charlton Heston interview is staged in such a way to make it look like Heston is callous and indifferent to the shooting of a child. Nice try, Moore, but your propaganda tricks arent quite good enough yet. Amazingly, despite being full of lies, Bowling For Columbine won an Oscar and grossed over fifty eight million dollars. I cant help but be reminded of the Oscar-winning Disney nature documentary White Wilderness. A film that claimed to be 100% truthful but staged a mass lemming suicide scene for two reasons: 1. Lemmings werent native to the area where Disney was shooting and were brought in specially for the shoot. And 2. Lemmings dont commit mass suicide. The filmmakers pushed them off a cliff. This is basically the socio-political equivalent of White Wilderness. Its filled to the brim with untruths but by virtue of the basis of its content not being common knowledge and it claiming to be completely true, it was lauded as revolutionary and truthful. And thats why its not a real documentary. Because a fair bit of it is falsified. Which kind of kills your films chances of being thought of as a legitimate documentary stone dead. Im not trying to sway anyone to any kind of particular opinion. If youre a Michael Moore fan, then thats your business. As for me, Ill stick with Louis Theroux from now on. At least he doesnt bend the truth over a barrel and bugger it from behind like Michael Moore does.
JG Moore
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JG Moore is a writer and filmmaker from the south of England. He also works as an editor and VFX artist, and has a BA in Media Production from the University Of Winchester.
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