Profile:Loathed by right-wingers and loved by conspiracy theorists, Michael Moore combines his unique journalistic style, controversial stunts and a cavalier approach to the truth in Sicko, writes Donald Clarke.
Last week it emerged that Sicko, Michael Moore's arresting meditation on the healthcare system in the US, had become the victim of internet piracy. Reports suggest that the film, a characteristic blend of serious journalism and frivolous stunts, had, within days of its appearance on the web, been downloaded some 4,000 times. Moore did not, you can be sure, hold his tongue for long.
"If you were a police detective, one of the first questions you would ask is about motive: 'Who has a vested interest in ruining the opening weekend's box office of this movie?'," the film-maker mused. "If I were the police or FBI investigating this felony that's taken place, that's where I would look." This is a typical Moore ploy. Without explicitly outlining any conspiracy, he invites his audience to jump to the most outrageous conclusion possible. The health insurance companies and their lackeys in government - all powerfully lambasted in Sicko - are, we are being encouraged to surmise, conniving to damage the box-office receipts of Moore's film.
Now, hang on a moment, Mike. Why would these bodies care how much money Sicko made? Their only concern would be to stop potential clients viewing the picture and, surely, distribution on the internet serves only to swell a picture's audience. The imagined plot makes no sense.
A day later, another missive from Moore Towers arrived. In the course of Sicko, the director takes a group of people invalided while involved in rescue work at the World Trade Center to Cuba, where they receive free healthcare. Terrified that this breach of the US trade embargo with the island would lead to the suppression of his film, Moore announced that he had secreted the negative in a secure place beyond the attentions of (shudder) The Authorities.
There was, of course, never any serious danger of the film being seized. The Paranoia Express chugs on.
It is, sadly very difficult to carry on a rational conversation about Michael Moore in today's America. The political divisions in that nation are now so stark that any criticism of Moore's methods is invariably taken as support for his political enemies. A glance at the mob of right-wing commentators arrayed against him - Bill O'Reilly, Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh - should certainly cause any reasonable fellow to think twice about laying into the big man.
To the attack dogs, Moore is an ignorant, unpatriotic, mendacious, traitorous fatso. His denunciations of George W Bush are, it seems, denunciations of the nation as a whole. Though he has never claimed to be socialist and has denied even being a liberal, Moore cannot buy an apartment without being accused of hypocrisy.
Long resident in Manhattan, married for 16 years to Kathleen Glynn, his producer, Michael Moore is, it appears, expected to dress in animal skins and eat garbage. No wonder liberals are fearful of mentioning the director's infelicities.
A consideration of Moore's CV does, however, serve to remind one of the film-maker's somewhat slippery relationship with the truth. Born in Flint, Michigan, Moore, now 53, has always made a point of asserting his working-class credentials, but his dad, though active in the union, was sufficiently well off to retire in his 50s and send all three of his children to college.
Moore was always politically motivated. After dropping out of university, he set up an alternative newspaper, the Flint Voice, and used it to expose corruption and racism in his hometown.
In 1986 he was named editor of Mother Jones, a respected left-wing periodical based in San Francisco and, shortly thereafter, became involved in the first of the several personal feuds that were to pepper his career. Following his sacking after only a few months in the job - the owners claimed he was impossible to work with; he suggested they disagreed with his unquestioning support for the Sandinistas (the Nicaraguan left-wing political party) - he walked away with a $58,000 (€43,000) settlement and set out to make himself the Michael Moore of contemporary legend.
His first documentary, Roger & Me, made with his payoff from the Mother Jones fiasco, immediately established him as a polemicist of rare genius. Detailing his failed attempts to interview Roger B Smith, then CEO of General Motors about the car firm's decision to abandon Flint for Mexico, the picture was funny, angry and relentlessly compelling. Moore's disingenuous wonder upon discovering corporate atrocities of which he must have been long aware was somewhat irritating, but the film asked important questions in a voice with a singular comic timbre.
In later years, while making the ribald television series TV Nation and hit films such as Fahrenheit 9/11 and Bowling for Columbine, Moore developed his impressive talent for composing gripping montages from found material. The opening of Fahrenheit 9/11, his 2004 dissection of George Bush's response to the terrorist attacks of September 11th, 2001, began with superbly eerie footage of the president's most sinister lieutenants preening themselves before appearing on television.
Propaganda rarely gets more skilfully insidious.
Moore's undeniable abilities helped Fahrenheit 9/11 and Bowling for Columbine attain degrees of commercial success previously undreamt of by documentarists. Indeed, those movies precipitated a thrilling boom in documentary exhibition that is still continuing today. Without Bowling for Columbine, films such as The Fog of War, The March of the Penguins and An Inconvenient Truth would, perhaps, have never made it into cinemas.
For all that, the ability of Bowling for Columbine and Fahrenheit 9/11 to win previously hostile hearts and minds was fatally hampered by the director's cavalier approach to the facts and his overbearing personality away from the camera.
One example of the former must suffice. In Bowling for Columbine, an investigation of the insanely lax gun laws in the US, Moore happens upon a "missile plant" some short distance from the unhappy school whose name appears in the film's title. The implication is that proximity to weapons of mass destruction may have had something to do with the students' decision to annihilate so many of their classmates. Sadly, the rockets depicted carried nothing more sinister than communication satellites.
Such all-too-frequent outbreaks of unreliability - and shouty aggressive public appearances such as his acceptance speech at the 2003 Oscars ceremony - allow his political opponents to write him off as an annoying combination of carnival huckster and deranged zealot. Why pay attention to his more cautiously made points when untrustworthiness is so conspicuous elsewhere?
Many of the expected controversies have already begun springing up around Sicko. The film, which focuses on the convulsions through which insurance companies will put themselves to avoid honouring claims, details any number of dark stories concerning untreated diseases and shameful corporate obfuscation. His investigations into the Nixon administration's shoddy behaviour in creating the current market-driven system reveals real diligence on the film-makers' part.
But, once again, the picture showcases Moore's tendency to simplify the motives and achievements of those he likes while simultaneously constructing unreliable conspiracies around the actions of his enemies.
If the film is to be believed, the health services of every country in the western world function with divine smoothness. In France, Britain and Canada, he strolls about, marvelling at the quality of the hospitals and the efficiency of the care. On each occasion, he fakes astonishment when informed that the service is free.
Not surprisingly, journalists from all those countries have seen fit to point out that their hospitals do not, in fact, provide hot-running milk and honey. Peter Howell, film critic for the reliably liberal Toronto Star, wrote that Sicko made it seem "as if Canada's socialised medicine is flawless and that Canadians are satisfied with the status quo". When some of Howell's compatriots harangued Moore at a Cannes press conference, the film-maker hid behind a façade of bluff flippancy.
"You Canadians! You used to be so funny," he laughed. "You gave us all our best comedians. When did you turn so dark?" (Considering the simmering outrage at the state of Ireland's health service, Moore can count himself lucky he decided not to take a tour of our hospitals. There is as yet no date for the film's release here.) But, for all his inadequacies, Moore has done his nation a significant service. Throughout the drowsy 1980s and 1990s, America's cinemas were not at home to political discourse or the consideration of social responsibility. The wide release of Fahrenheit 9/11, Bowling for Columbine and, now, Sicko - perhaps his most sober film - has re-introduced a popular medium to its conscience.
Michael Moore may irritate, but he very rarely bores.
The Moore File
Who is he?Famously scruffy documentary film-maker who has caused right-wingers to fulminate with movies such as Fahrenheit 9/11 and Bowling for Columbine.
Why is he in the news?Sicko, his investigation of the health system in the US, opens in American cinemas this week. Previously enormous, he has, mindful of his own perilous health, recently lost 30lbs.
Most appealing characteristic:Consistent ability to infuriate the sort of people who fully deserve heartburn and raised blood pressure. Neither Bill O'Reilly nor Ann Coulter is a fan.
Least appealing characteristic:Tendency to undermine the power of his argument by constructing tendentious conspiracy theories and staging trivial stunts. In Sicko he takes a group of 9/11 survivors to seek medical treatment in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.
Most likely to say:Sarcastic remarks about George Bush over archive footage of copulating monkeys.
Least likely to say:Anything that might represent the views of his opponents in a reasonable light.