Michael Moore and Me

Last night I got a chance to talk to my old friend Michael Moore again. For those who don't know, I appeared in Michael Moore's last film, Fahrenheit 9/11. In filming those scenes, I went to New York and conducted a long interview with Mike's archivist, Carl Deal, as we waited for Mike to show up. He never did. But a few weeks before 9/11 came out, I came back to New York to record some voice overs. I sat for hours with Mike in the recording studio and watched clips of the movie.

People ask me all the time what he's like. In my limited experience, I would have to say that he is a very genuine, honest, unassuming guy. He's funny and likes to laugh. And he's no phony. But the real brilliance of Michael Moore is the very simple way he approaches an issue. There is no ambiguity, no complexity. War is bad. Universal health care is good. I really like the guy. 

There is a scene in his upcoming film, "Sicko," that we talked about last night that sums up Mike's clear-headed logic. He interviews a doctor in the U.K., which has a universal health care system (derogatorily known in this country as "socialized medicine,"....oh the horror!) He asks the doctor how he gets compensated, and the doctor tells him that he gets bonuses based on how healthy his patients are each year. If he gets someone to lower their cholesterol, or quit smoking, he gets paid more. It's that simple. Moore doesn't complicate the matter by asking "Well, what if..." or saying "Yeah, but...". Say what you want about him, he's no cynic.

Here's the Q&A I did with him for MSN.com.

What freaked me out about the U.K. doctor's pay was how foreign that concept was to me. We're so warped in this country that the concept of paying doctors for doing their job better never occurred to us. That's just wrong.

Sicko is a great film. Far more mature than Moore's previous efforts. The argument is tight. The logic is clear. And the narrative arc is very elegant. Even the humor is more sophisticated: it's funnier. It's classic Moore in that it combines laughter with pathos to make a devastating point: a country as great as this deserves to have better health care.

The only issue I take with the film is that it opens with this well-worn clip:

Opening up with a gratuitous Bush-bashing clip does create a seamless transition from Moore's last film, but it also sets the whole thing up as a political debate. And as Moore told me explicitly, this should not be a political film, or even a political issue. But I think it was the only flaw in a mostly non-partisan dissection of America's health care woes.

One last thing Mike told me before we parted ways. And this really struck me. He said "I don't ever want to hear that we (America) don't have enough money to do something. If this war in Iraq proved anything, it's that when we want to do something, there's money."

The war has cost us nearly half a trillion dollars. Go to this site to see how that compares to other things we could have spent that money on. Imagine.

Comments

[Michael Fitzgerald]

Hi Dan,

There are efforts to create a pay-for-performance system here in the U.S., which are tied to the spread of digital tracking systems. For a look at some aspects of the discussion, circa 2006, see this piece I did wrote: http://www.cio.com/article/19677/Doctors_in_Small_and_Midsize_Business_Should_Have_Electronic_Medical_Records

[Felix]

Dan,

As the writer of two great books on the dangerous collusion between a war government and big business, I am sure you are familiar with John Perkins and his work.

The New York Times just published a mocking and derisive review of "The Secret History of the American Empire", a review I find to be irresponsible and infuriating!

I hope that as a true journalist, you find this as offensive and alarming as I did, and a prime example of the ongoing corporate/media disinformation campaign.

Please help by writing in to the editor of the NY Times as I did, thank you in advance!

books@nytimes.com

All the best,
Felix

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/15/books/review/Queenan-t.html?ref=books