Documentaries And Michael Moore

[Seil]

THere's this pawn shop in town that has cheap flicks for sale - old movies, stuff that isn't selling... I've picked up a bunch of old 80's flicks like Rocky, Back To The Future and The Karate Kid. Anyway, I recently picked up Bowling For Columbine, a movie I hadn't seen in a long while.

Now, this was the first documentary I had seen of Moore's, I didn't really catch his show or read his books before that, but I knew that he was around. He's released Fahrenheit 9/11 and Sicko a bit afterwards, which I haven't seen. I've heard a lot of things about Michael Moore - that he skews the truth, that he show people in a bad light in order to make a point, and that's not the way to shoot a documentary.

From what I understand, shooting a documentary means a document of the truth. It's something that actually happened, re-done, or re-created. Michael Moore doesn't really do that, he cuts things together (He was both writer and director on Columbine) to state his opinion. It's good entertainment, and you get to see a lot that you wouldn't normally look into - something like this is always neat, too - and I will always go back to the Marilyn Manson interview. Though I wonder... I haven't really seen much documentaries...

I've seen my share of news, I've seen "mock-umentaries," but not a lot of documentaries. (Unless you count the IMAX ones.) Could Mr. Moore be forgiven for making some of his bits more entertaining so that they will be watched? He certainly puts a fair bit of work into them, and while he does offer an opinion, he backs it up - prompting others to look into matters themselves to attack his arguments. Could a film maker be forgiven for making a biased film which causes people to educate themselves?