Amy Goodman: After 20 yrs of filmmaking on US injustices, Michael Moore goes to the source.....

from Democracy Now!:



After 20 Years of Filmmaking on US Injustices, Michael Moore Goes to the Source in “Capitalism: A Love Story”

Beginning with the 1989 classic Roger & Me, the Academy Award-winning director Michael Moore says his films “come back to a central core concern: the economic system we have is unfair, unjust and undemocratic.” With his new film, Capitalism: A Love Story, Moore tackles the financial system and the interchanging circles of Washington politicians and corporate managers that run it. Moore says, “I thought I’d cut to the chase and propose we deal with this economic system and restructure it in a way that benefits people and not the wealthiest one percent.”

....(snip)....

AMY GOODMAN: Yes, Michael Moore is back, with his new film Capitalism: A Love Story. It opened in New York and Los Angeles yesterday. It opens nationwide October 2nd. The Academy Award-winning filmmaker Michael Moore joins us in the firehouse studio for the rest of this hour.

Michael, I went to the 10:40 showing last night on debut here in New York. Why Capitalism: A Love Story?

MICHAEL MOORE: Well, I’ve been making movies for about twenty years now. Actually, it’s twenty years ago this week Roger & Me was at the New York Film Festival. And the films I’ve done, from that one all the way through Sicko, always seem to come back to this central core concern, which is the economic system we have is unfair, it’s unjust, it’s not democratic, it seems to lack any sort of ethical center to it. And I guess I can keep making movies for another twenty years about the next General Motors or the next healthcare issue or whatever, but I thought I’d just kind of cut to the chase and propose that we deal with this economic system and try to restructure it in a way that benefits people and not the richest one percent.

This is the way it is now in this country. The wealthiest one percent right have more financial wealth than the bottom 95 percent combined. When you have a situation like that, where the one percent essentially not only own all the wealth, but own Congress, call the shots, are we really telling the truth when we call this a democracy? I know we get to vote every two or four years. Is that it? Just because we get to vote every now and then, we can call this a democracy, when the economy is anything but? You and I have no say in it. The people watching this, listening to us today have no say in how this economy is run. There’s not democracy in the workplace. I mean, through most of our daily lives, the idea of democracy is fairly nonexistent. And I think things work better when the people who have to work with whatever it is we’re working with have a say in how it’s working.

So I made this movie to do a number of things. One, to just go head on at this system. I’m not a reformer. I’m not looking for Congress to pass a few new regulations, which, by the way, it’s been a year since the crash, and they haven’t passed one of these things, which is what they said they were going to do right away, right? “All we need is a few rules. Don’t get rid of capitalism, just a few rules, and we’ll get everything back in shape.” Of course, they have no intention of doing that, and the banking industry has lobbied them successfully over the last year to leave them alone so that they can keep doing their crazy schemes. That’s one reason.

The second reason is, I wanted to present a filmed explanation of just what exactly did happen a year ago, what led up to it. I think a lot people, including myself—you know, we’re not economists. We don’t—we hear these terms, we don’t understand what they mean—derivatives, credit default swaps and all this stuff. And I thought, you know, I’ll bet you there’s a way to tell this story so that anybody will instantly get exactly what the looting was that took place a year ago this time. So I wanted to do that.

And then I guess I’m—I guess I’m doing what I’m always trying to do and what I think what all filmmakers try to do, is that I’m—I recognize that I’m asking you to leave the house on a Friday or Saturday night, get a babysitter, drive to the theater, spend money, spend outrageous amounts of money on popcorn and soda, and sit in the dark with 200 other strangers. I really want you, at the end of those two hours, to walk out of the theater saying to whoever you’re there with, “That was really—that was a good way to spend two hours. I learned something. I laughed my ass off. I cried.”

And I think this movie provides a range of not just emotions, but also really solid information and a number of exposés of things that have not been discussed in the media, or if they have been, they get brought up quickly and then are rejected, and nobody talks about them again. So I show you a number of things in the film. I think, you know, early audiences I’ve seen it with are fairly shocked at some of the stories that I presented. ...........(more)

The complete piece, in video, audio and transcript formats, is at: http://www.democracynow.org/2009/9/24/after_20_years_of_filmmaking_on

Johnny Rotten's last words on stage as the Sex Pistol's American tour collapsed.
Will this movie wake people up to the fact that they have been cheated, that they are now actively being cheated by a system designed with the sole purpose of cheating them?

:hi:

til the clock ran out.

Funny.

He said, "well, I am a heterosexual..." (or something like that).

I think he was looking for a snappy funny answer --- but also wanting to avoid labels (which suck anyway wtf IS a socialist anyway? Depends on who you ask, my view)

But I just heard the show and that cracked me up...