Manufacturing Dissent

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Manufacturing Dissent
Promotional poster for Manufacturing Dissent
Directed by	Rick Caine Debbie Melnyk
Produced by	Rick Caine Debbie Melnyk
Written by	Rick Caine Debbie Melnyk
Starring	Rick Caine Debbie Melnyk Michael Moore Noam Chomsky Sean Hannity Al Franken
Release date(s)	March 10, 2007
Running time	96 min.
Language	English
IMDb profile

Manufacturing Dissent is a 2007 documentary that aims to expose the allegedly misleading tactics of filmmaker and polemicist Michael Moore. The documentary exposes what the creators say are Moore's misleading tactics and mimics Moore's style of small documentary makers seeking and badgering their target for an interview to receive answers to their charges. The film was made over the course of two years by Canadians Debbie Melnyk and Rick Caine after they viewed Fahrenheit 9/11, Moore's controversial film attacking the Bush administration and its policies.^[1] Melnyk and Caine have stated that when they first sought to make a film about Moore, they held great admiration for what he had done for the documentary genre and set out to make a biography of him. During the course of their research, however, they became disenchanted with Moore's tactics.^[2]

1 Criticisms of Moore
2 Moore's response
3 References
4 External links

[edit] Criticisms of Moore

One thing the filmmakers point out about Moore was that while Moore depicted an evasive Roger Smith, then-Chairman of General Motors, in his breakout documentary Roger and Me, Moore did actually speak with Smith twice, but chose to omit the footage from the film. Moore had a lengthy exchange with Smith at a May 1987 GM shareholders meeting yet never included it in his piece. Manufacturing Dissent shows the footage in its entirety.^[1] The filmmakers found this shocking as it negated Moore's central premise of the film that corporate CEOs exploit lower class workers and refuse to answer questions or acknowledge any wrongdoing.^[1]

Another one of their discoveries is that in Moore's Academy Award winning film Bowling for Columbine, Moore misleads the audience in describing the safety Canadians feel in their homes. In the film, Moore goes door-to-door in a Toronto suburb testing to see if the front doors are locked or unlocked. Moore edits the film to show every home he tries with an unlocked door. Caine and Melnyk report, however, that Moore's producer for the segment told them that in reality about 40 percent of the homes had unlocked doors, possibly somewhat discrediting Moore's thesis that Canadians feel safer because guns are more regulated in their country than in the Unites States.^[3]

The film also present extended footage of the Al Smith dinner from which Moore, in Fahrenheit 9/11, took a clip of President George W. Bush greeting the guests as the "haves and have-mores," insinuating that President Bush views the elite upper-class as his constituency, not the average American. The extended footage shows each speaker at the dinner poking fun at himself, including a clip of Al Gore joking that he invented the internet. The extended footage shows Moore's commission to take the quote from President Bush out of context.^[2]

[edit] Moore's response

See also: Michael Moore controversies

In the film the documentary makers were never able to land their sit-down interview with Moore, just as Moore was unable to have such an interview with Roger Smith. Their attempts to interview Moore were consistently dodged and obstructed by Moore and the people surrounding him.^[3] Moore has not responded to calls for comment from the Associated Press or other news agencies.^[1] His silence is similar to his response (or lack thereof) to other criticisms of his work; this was interpreted by Melnyk as a means by Moore to not draw any attention to the allegations made against him, and to not draw attention to the film itself.^[4]