CNN reported this weekend: Moore's 'Fahrenheit 9/11' wins Cannes award.
"Fahrenheit 9/11" was the first documentary to win Cannes' prestigious Palme d'Or since Jacques Cousteau's "The Silent World" in 1956.
Michael Moore's far left politics are bad enough, but the fact that his political films continue to win major awards as documentaries is absurd.
The American Heritage Dictionary defines documentary as: "Presenting facts objectively without editorializing or inserting fictional material, as in a book or film." Editorialize is defined as: "To present an opinion in the guise of an objective report."
Moore proudly notes on his web site regarding his Cannes award: "It is the first time in nearly 50 years a documentary has won the Palme d’Or (the Golden Palm)." [Emphasis added]
Yet in a 2003 interview (viewable here and on DVD), Evan Coyne Maloney pointed out to Moore that his films are more like video editorials. Moore responded:
"Yeah, it's like an op-ed piece in the newspaper. These are my opinions. I'm very up front about them. I don't try and disguise them. I don't try to present them as objective news. They're not. They're very subjective."
Even when Moore himself admits to editorializing (which is likely his justifications for the distortions and fabrications that taint his work), he still wins awards for his "documentaries." Perhaps there needs to be a new category for what Moore creates; there's already one word that comes close: advertorial.
Of course, Moore is free to express and market his political opinion. But passing them off as documentaries and accepting awards for them as documentaries is artistic fraud.
More Moore: Evan Coyne Maloney points out how Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 will function as a Democrat-promoted political advertisement that skirts the campaign finance reform laws: The Michael Moore Loophole.
And in Michael Moore and Me, Fred Barnes, executive editor of The Weekly Standard, describes how Michael Moore lied about him. (Via LGF)
Posted by Forkum at May 26, 2004 03:07 PM
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