Michael
Moore gets behind Hillary Clinton at surprise TrumpLand film
screening
Film-maker
and Sanders supporter says he was so spooked by the shock Brexit vote
he rushed his documentary out before the election to make the case
for Clinton
Jordan Hoffman
@jhoffman
Wednesday 19 October
2016 07.41 BST
Everyone loves a
surprise. Hours after announcing the existence of a new film, Michael
Moore in TrumpLand, film-lovers, leftists and New Yorkers drawn to
wherever the action is were lining up outside the IFC Center in
Greenwich Village.
The free screening,
which included a chat with the Oscar and Palme d’Or winner that
lasted almost as long as the film, had a bit of a carnival
atmosphere. People with megaphones, lighted signs and placards
quoting Bob Avakian mixed with folks taking selfies in front of a
Zoltan-esque Trump fortune-teller booth. One weary person looking for
a spare ticket raised her index finger, a holdover from Grateful Dead
shows, when people “need a miracle”.
The real surprise:
the movie itself consisted almost exclusively of footage of one man
talking.
Once inside, we
learned what inspired the populist documentarian to shoot a new movie
11 days ago and rush it out just two weeks before the election: he is
terrified.
“I was in England
during Brexit week, promoting my last film. All the polls said it
wouldn’t happen. They were wrong,” he said.
He also referred to
the Michigan primary in March, in which Hillary Clinton was ahead in
every poll, sometimes by as many as 20 points. Clinton lost Michigan
to Bernie Sanders.
There’s great
irony to Moore citing the Michigan primary as impetus for his new
film, which is an urgent, 73-minute call to arms to get out and vote
for Clinton, mixed with some jokes. Michigan is Moore’s home state
and he voted for Sanders. In fact, he’s never voted for Hillary
Clinton before, or any Clinton for that matter. But he felt compelled
to do everything he could to support her now, in the general
election.
That meant going to
one of the more ardent rightwing counties in Ohio, one which he calls
“the Brexit states” which also include Michigan, Wisconsin and
Pennsylvania. He put on a one-man show – a mix of a TED talk with
some populist Prairie Home Companion gags and prerecorded bits –
and did his best to engage with undecided voters, third-party voters
and, yes, even Trump voters.
The resulting film
is more like a shaggy dog Spalding Grey monologue than one of his
satirical, incendiary documentaries like Bowling For Columbine or
Fahrenheit 9/11.
“What this country
doesn’t need is a horror movie about Donald Trump. He’s producing
that himself,” Moore said. But get past the less successful gags
and assertive crowd reaction shots, and Moore’s central thesis is
one that has been strangely absent from the conversation: everyone
should be thrilled to vote for Hillary Clinton.
What Moore does is
work through his own troubled relationship with her. He hates that
she voted for the Iraq war, and surely the director of Roger & Me
isn’t thrilled with her ties to Wall Street. “But she’s still
the same woman who gave that commencement address at Wellesley
College. And we’ve got to hold her to that.”
Jokingly, he added
that two years into her term, if she doesn’t make good on her
promises, he will run for president himself in 2020. But first we’ve
got to “stop doing end-zone dances. That’s going to get Trump
elected. She is still the second most hated candidate in history,
only behind Trump”.
Michael Moore In
TrumpLand spends a great deal of time compassionately getting into
the head of a would-be Trump voter in the “Brexit states” who
deserves “the right to send a ‘fuck you’ vote”. But he urged
us all to “make a party” of being able to have the first woman
president and not “someone like Margaret fucking Thatcher”.
Moore’s lengthy
post-screening chat was a bit of a roller coaster. For starters, he
seemed exhausted, having just finished editing at 7am that day. He
got emotional discussing his late mother, who chose to work at a time
when wives and mothers just didn’t do that. He explained how the
act of voting for Obama (and seeing his middle name Hussein on the
ballot) caused him to sob, thus smudging his check mark.
He also went on a
tangent about the reality television show The Bachelorette, because,
at heart, Moore will always be an entertainer and a showman – the
type of guy who can get Twitter trending for a full day for the
release of a monologue encouraging people to vote for a candidate
they may not be too enthusiastic about.
“If you leave and
think, ‘Oh this was just a funny show’, I’ve failed,” he
warned.
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