Look it’s a bird, with a baseball cap, wielding a camera, able to leap tall controversies in a single-bound–no, it’s Michael Moore! Both reviled and revered by millions during a pivotal election year, the burly, scruffy documentarian superstar and his complicated myth, rises to the top of our list as the filmmaker with the mostest in 2004–a year in which films fraught with controversy (religious, political, and moral) brought in the biggest bang for box office bucks.
Bombastic, opinionated and fearless, Moore displayed that a camera could be as dangerous or liberating of a weapon, as the smoking gun itself. Armed with his American right to exercise the First Amendment, Moore took to the streets like a vigilante. So, while Mel Gibson ran a close second, no one can deny that the relentless Moore and his hit Fahrenheit 9/11 energized the industry to remind itself that reality-film, could be just as popular as reality TV.
Following his Oscar-winner doc about gun control, Bowling for Columbine, this year’s Fahrenheit 9/11 reached all new heights in making film history. The super-sized everyman persona who blends verité, known footage, and research with sardonic narration, Moore thrust himself into Guinness-like World Record status by making the first documentary in history to open with $21.8 million, then to go on to be the highest grossing documentary ever–$119-million to date. This proved to the industry, at-large, that the non-fiction film could to be a money-maker. The first filmmaker to be awarded the coveted Palm d’Or prize at the Cannes Film Festival, for a non-fiction work, Moore realized that the more resistance, controversy and lore that his film inspired, the more that tongues would be wagging to see his work that focuses on the Bush administration and America’s ties to the Middle-East.
According to Moore, in a July 2004 interview with People magazine, “All they did was give more publicity for the film and made more people aware of it. The great thing about our fellow Americans, no matter what their political stripe is, they don’t like being told that they can’t see something as an adult. This just doesn’t go over very well.” Vigilant and roguish in his savage exposé of the complicity of the American public and its leaders in today’s terror crisis, Moore reached an international audience, as well, further inspiring a furor over his work. Perhaps, in entertainment history, many parallels will be made between Michael Moore and Madonna–two Michigan natives.
Lampooning the establishment, questioning our political malaise, Moore comes across as a throwback hippie, clamoring for a mature America, to remember its blue-collar roots–even in this era corporate America. The independent, guerrilla documentarian, often elevated to Robin Hood status, was inspired by his roots: his working class hometown of Flint, Michigan and the economic disparity that has devastated towns like his across the country. While many criticize him for proselytizing to a nation, we should all be made a ware of a very significant fact: the crunchy, baseball cap wearing liberal spent two years in the seminary, studying to be a priest, before dropping out. Moore‘s intention–to spread “the message” of his belief–fits in squarely, with his original life mission before he took up an affair with the camera. Moore is seeking to get answers–but at the very least, raise questions by creating an investigative fervor.
According to the philosophy of Moore, be the administration Democratic or Republican, they should know that they’re on watch–by him and the rest of conscious America. Whether you agree with his “preachy” style or not, one should be commended for being able to inspire transformation, even if just in the film industry, while staying close to one’s roots–for this we tip our hats to the abhorred and exalted, Moore-Man, the lefty Mister Incredible born of middle-America.
