Interview: Michael Moore - 'Capitalism doesn't control the greed, it encourages the greed, and that is why we need a different system that isn't based on that'

Published on Tuesday 23 February 2010 18:08

MICHAEL MOORE has been attacking American capitalism by degrees ever since his first documentary, Roger & Me. With his latest film, Capitalism: A Love Story, he is taking a shock and awe approach.

• Picture: Getty

Putting to work his trademark mixture of humour, outrage and grandstanding, Moore blasts away at bankers, politicians, corporate fat cats and Wall Street, while revealing the devastating impact of the current financial crisis and the economic system that he believes is not just undemocratic and unjust,

At the end of the film, he urges Americans to join him in trying to reclaim their country, because, right now, he admits wearily when we meet, he is tired of going it alone. This is an exaggeration, of course. But you sense that the constant attacks on him personally, and on the veracity of his work – even his supporters sometimes accuse him of omitting inconvenient truths – are starting to wear Moore down.

"If people aren't going to do anything, I have a screenplay I am working on and the next film will be fiction," he says. "But if people are starting to rise up and become citizens in their democracy, then I will participate in that too and make more (documentary] films."

Frankly, the idea of Moore giving up documentaries seems unlikely. His only fiction feature, 1995's Canadian Bacon, flopped at the box office. On the other hand, his last film, Sicko, almost tripled its $9 million budget in the US alone.

Such returns, Moore says, keep corporations backing his films, even when, like Capitalism: A Love Story, they are against everything they, as corporate entities, represent. "Capitalists will sell you the rope to hang themselves with if you can make a buck off it," he laughs. "So because I make the studios money, that puts me in a very desirable position."

Even so, he claims these are tough times for non-fiction in the cinema. While the form is doing well on television, in the shape of reality shows, for instance, and in books, Moore says the number of distributors handling documentary films is falling, because there are fewer cinemas that will screen them. "So this is another subject I want to tackle some day, because I think it's odd that when it comes to films, non-fiction is treated like this pariah. I do invest in and encourage others to do this," he adds. "But I know it's a tough road for them to take, and on some level I wouldn't wish it on anyone to go through what I've personally had to go through. I'm not whining. I'm just a human being."

Though it missed out on an Oscar nomination, Capitalism: A Love Story has garnered Moore some of his best reviews – the Huffington Post called it "the most important and urgent political film of our time" – and the second best US opening of his career, after Fahrenheit 9/11. According to Moore, the director Larry Charles (Borat), who knows a thing or two about provocation himself, told him it was his "most dangerous film" yet – something which seems to have both pleased and discomfited the film-maker.

In the film Moore argues, with the help of religious figures, that capitalism in America today is undemocratic and un-Christian. A practising Catholic who once planned on becoming a priest, he poses the simple question: "Is capitalism a sin?" and asks: "Would Jesus be a capitalist?" Unsurprisingly, the answers are a resounding yes and no respectively.

Moore insists he is not against profit. That would be a bit rich coming from a millionaire, after all. Nor, apparently, is he against capitalism as it was once practised. "There used to be a merchant class, like the shop owners, and every town had their shoe store, ice cream store, whatever," he says. "But people who say they want capitalism (today] really don't believe in free enterprise. They don't want competition. They want to be the only shoe store. They want to be the only drug store. So you can't define (capitalism] the way it was 100 or 150 years ago. It's defined by the way it exists now."

The film traces the roots of today's financial crisis back to Reagan and Milton Friedman, and their emphasis on de-regulation and, as Moore puts it, the "free market, free enterprise, let the wolves loose, let them do whatever they want to do". The situation worsened under Bush, Moore says, with Joe Public feeling the pinch long before the collapse of Lehman Brothers. "The shocked look on the mainstream media's face on 15 September, 2008, was stunning. Either they're extremely good actors or they're really stupid. And I would like to believe they're not stupid." Moore is getting angry. "We've been on a 30-year decline as a result of those policies and people have suffered greatly as a result. And that's why I started 21 years ago with Roger & Me, because my home town, Flint, Michigan, had been pretty well beaten down at that point, after about eight years of Ronald Reagan."

Part of the problem, he says, is innate human greed. "When it comes to making a buck, we're human beings. Greed is amongst all of us, and it's a bad, dark side in all of us. Capitalism doesn't control the greed, it enhances and encourages the greed, and that is why we need a different system that isn't based on that." A point frequently made by Moore's critics is that neither he nor the film defines how an alternative system would operate – though he does give examples in the movie of people who are making money in co-operatives and non-profit companies, without exploiting anyone.

"What I'm suggesting is that we have a democratic economy that we, the people, have a say in," he says rather nebulously. "I'm not opposed to somebody having a business, working hard, doing well, earning more for yourself and your family. But that isn't what capitalism is these days."

People portrayed as victims of capitalism in the film include working and middle-class families facing foreclosure on their mortgages, low-paid airline pilots on food stamps, and teenagers who were put in a private detention home by a judge receiving kickbacks from its owners.

Most sickening are the grotesquely named Dead Peasants insurance policies secretly taken out by corporations on employees. Companies can make millions of dollars from the death of a worker, while the bereaved families don't see a cent.

He suggests Capitalism: A Love Story should be a cautionary tale for other countries. "The more you try to act like us, the more you're going to look like us. And I don't just mean getting the jazz and the rock 'n' roll and the jeans. As you turn yourself more into us, you have more violence, you get more guns, you have more illiterate people, you have more people that just become stupid – STOP!"

In America, it is Moore that some people want stopped. He will not discuss the threats he and his family have received over the years, or the personal cost of doing his job. But it clearly concerns him. "At times I have asked myself, 'If I had it to do over again, would I do all this? Would I make all these movies?' I'm being honest, I don't know; because of what I've had to go through, because of what my family's had to go through." He points to two security men standing nearby. "I make movies. I live in a free country. Why should I ever have to worry like this?"

On the plus side, the success of his films and books means that he now has enough money in the bank to never have to worry about upsetting a studio and not being able to work. "Basically, it gives you a chance to say, 'F*** you. I'm going to be who I want to be, do what I want to do, and you can't hold money out there as a whip against me.'"

&#149 Capitalism: A Love Story is in cinemas from Friday.