'Capitalism' as Comedy and Tragedy Now Playing in NY and L.A.

Friends,

The time has arrived for, as Time magazine called it, my "magnum opus." I only had a year of Latin when I was in high school, so I'm not quite sure what that means, but I think it's good.

I've spent nearly two years on this new movie, "Capitalism: A Love Story," and have poured my heart and soul into this project. Many early critics and viewers have called it my "best film yet." That's a hard call for me to make as I'm proud of all of my films -- but I will tell you this: What you are about to see in "Capitalism" is going to stun you. It's going to make some of you angry and I believe it's going to give most of you a new sense of hope that we are going to turn the sick and twisted mess made by the last president around. Oh, and you're going to have a good laugh at the expense of all the banking and corporate criminals who've made out like bandits in the past year.

I'm gonna show you the stuff the nightly news will rarely show you. Ever meet a pilot for American Airlines on food stamps because his pay's been cut so low? Ever meet a judge who gets kickbacks for sending innocent kids to a private prison? Ever meet someone from the Wall Street Journal who bluntly states on camera that he doesn't much care for democracy and that capitalism should be our only ruling concern?

You'll meet all these guys in "Capitalism." You'll also meet a whistleblower who, with documents in hand, tells us about the million-dollar-plus sweetheart loans he approved for the head of Senate Banking Committee -- the very committee that was supposed to be regulating his lending institution! You'll hear from a bank regulator why Timothy Geithner has no business being our Treasury Secretary. And you'll learn, from the woman who heads up the congressional commission charged with keeping an eye on the bailout money, how Alan Greenspan & Co. schemed and connived the public into putting up their inflated valued homes as collateral -- thus causing the biggest foreclosure epidemic in our history.

There is now a foreclosure filed in the U.S. once every seven-and-half SECONDS.

None of this is an accident, and I name the names others seem to be afraid to name, the men who have ransacked the pensions of working people and plundered the future of our kids and grandkids. Somehow they thought they were going to get away with this, that we'd believe their Big Lie that this crash was caused by a bunch of low-income people who took out loans they couldn't afford. Much of the mainstream media bought this storyline. No wonder Wall Street thought they could pull this off.

Jeez, I guess they forgot about me and my crew. You'd think we would've made a better impression on these wealthy thieves by now. Guess not.

So here we come! It's all there, up on the silver screen, two hours of a tragicomedy crime story starring a bunch of vampires who just weren't satisfied with simply destroying Flint, Michigan -- they had to try and see if they could take down the whole damn country. So come see this cops and robbers movie! The robbers this time wear suits and ties, and the cops -- well, if you're willing to accept a guy in a ballcap with a high school education as a stand-in until the real deal shows up to haul 'em away, then I humbly request your presence at your local cinema this weekend in New York and Los Angeles (and next Friday, October 2nd, all across America).

In the meantime, you can catch us on some of the TV shows that have been brave enough to let me on in the past week or so:

- Nightline (as we take a stroll down Wall Street to Goldman Sachs)

- Good Morning America (where they let me talk about Disney employees who don't get medical benefits)

- The View (where the Republican co-host told everyone to go see it! Whoa!)

- The Colbert Report (this guy is a genius, seriously)

- Larry King (where a spokesperson for the Senator who got the sweetheart loans responds for the first time)

- Keith Olberman (where we both wonder just how long these media corps are going to let us get away with what we do)

- Wolf Blitzer (yes, he's back for more abuse - and lovin' it)

... And the amazing Jay Leno. This man called me after seeing the movie and asked me to be his only in-studio guest on the second night of his new prime-time show. I said, "Jay, shouldn't you be thinking of your ratings in the first week of the show? Are you sure you didn't misdial Tom Hanks' number (the area code where I live is 231; 213 is LA)?" He told me he was profoundly moved by this film. So I was the guest on his second show, and he told all of America it was my "best film" and to please go see "Capitalism: A Love Story." That was Jay Leno saying that, not Noam Chomsky or Jane Fonda (both of whom I love dearly). The audience responded enthusiastically and, after 20 years of filmmaking, it was a moment where I crossed over deep into the mainstream of middle America. Jay's bosses at General Electric musta been... well, let's just say I hope they didn't place a reprimand in his permanent record. He's one helluva guy (and following the example he set with his free concerts for the unemployed in Michigan and Ohio last spring, I've gotten permission from the studio to do the same with my film in ten of the hardest-hit cities in the U.S. next week).

Oh, and he made me sing! Prepare yourself!

Thanks everyone -- and see you at the movies!

Yours, Michael Moore [e-mail]
MichaelMoore.com
Twitter.com/MMFlint
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Comments

[CaScientist]

03:30 PM on 09/28/2009

I wish I shared your optimism about digging out of this nightmare. As the current administration has kept a lot of the same bad actors in their positions of power, its unfortunately just the same sad song, and in many ways, on an even grander scale. In the last administration, they gave corporate polluters a green-light to do whatever they wanted, and called it "Blue Skies"....this time around we get a program to force every man, woman and child to purchase private health insurance from an unregulated, broken and corrupt industry under threat of incarceration from the IRS whether we can afford it or not, and they call it "healthcare reform". Its going to take a whole lot of people to go all Jefferson on our government and demand that the ties between corporate profit and public service be severed before anything will get better.

[mjtaylor22]

02:21 PM on 09/28/2009

THANKS MIKE i BEEN WATCHIN YOU ESP SINCE FARENHIEGHT 9/11, YOU VOICE IS MUCH NEEDED, TOO MANY ARE COMPLICIT WITH THE ON GOINGS OF THIS CRONY CAPITALISM, instead of with the merits of a system where real products are made and sold at a real value,.
thank you mike for your conrinued hard work and investigation into the ills of our society

[Pippen]

12:36 PM on 09/28/2009

It's my very next cinema event ! My God Michael please investigate American Media outlets.

They are begging for a film about them. I dare you.

[believethelie]

09:10 AM on 09/28/2009

You keep making 'em Michael, and I'll keep going to see 'em.
I'm looking forward to this one.

[amt77]

12:07 PM on 09/27/2009

So great that you will do the free shows in the 10 hardest hit cities Michael!
I saw the film in Chicago Friday night and was just blown away! There were union workers from the film there, I'm sure they were comped too! It's a great film and deserves everyone's careful consideration!

[reelcobra]

07:30 AM on 09/27/2009

No doubt there is some supercomputer out in the middle of nowhere, calculating 24 hours a day, attempting to determine whether Michael Moore or Barack Obama use the word "I" more in their sentences.

The two incredibly self-referential towers of American "liberalism" errr- "progressivism" prove that narcissism is not an obstacle to getting to the summit of today's HuffPO left.

[Bongborg]

09:06 AM on 09/27/2009

Jesus, I love it when conservatives bitch about "narcissists".

[Melgal]

02:24 PM on 09/27/2009

Do conservatives ever have an original thought ? Seems that you guys just repeat your repug talking points over and over again.

How about some problem solving and critical thinking.

[SharonWantsToTalk]

03:11 AM on 09/27/2009

I was 25 years old, unemployed and looking for a job. As I settled into what I thought to be a comfortable night of TV viewing, I stumbled upon "Roger and ME". My emotions throughout the movie started from curious, moved towards really intrigued and settled with completely outraged. That's Micheal's MO and he does it beautifully. In Roger and Me, he exposed GM for closing plants in Michigan during record profits, only to move the work to Mexico. Being an out of work mom at the time, it resonated deeply. I looking forward to this movie.

[wonder6789]

01:05 AM on 09/27/2009

Michael, what you have done all these years is ... INCREDIBLE!

The voice of Justice and Truth, armed with Courage and Humor.

THANK YOU!!

[KayCo]

12:46 AM on 09/27/2009

Thank you Michael for speaking the truth. I was so moved by Fahrenheit 911, both the mixture of the tragic and the comedy and thought that it was a superb film

I look forward to seeing your new film

[AnotherMcIntosh]

12:13 AM on 09/27/2009

Thank you, Michael.

This may be your magnum opus.

But obviously there are many that hope that you have another movie or two, or more.

You're busy now. And you may be exhausted from this last important project. When you have recharged your batteries and have a little time, please consider a project to uncover what happened to the Fourth Estate. What happened to all the investigative journalists? Can you get anybody on camera, such as Dan Rather or others, to talk about how the changes were made to the detriment of the public as a whole?

Jon Stewart has his niche. And he kicks the MSM in the butt on a regular basis. It would be good, however, to see your unique approach applied to this.

Without a viable Fouth Estate, we will never see democracy returned to the United States.

[Laura McBride]

11:15 AM on 09/28/2009

Excellent. Yes, Michael Moore should investigate the demise of journalism. Partly, it was the Internet and the opportunity for citizen journalism that helped kill it off. But I'm sure there's more.

As for the Internet: The problem is, of course, that traditional journalism involves standards that are wildly unmet when incompetents are given space and allowed to post misleading headlines, and incestuously make reference only to their own previous articles. I'm not speaking of comments, like these. I'm speaking of one of the top aggregating websites hiring journalists, but not managing them. Having attempted to make a go of writing in that new world, after a 35-year career in traditional journalism, I have abandoned it. I do not wish to be in the same room, virtual though it may be, with rightwing zealots who inflame the uninformed with their dogma, without even the oversight of a copy editor looking for grammatical errors or a city editor demanding accuracy. That leaves me--and thousands and thousands of journalists like me--in a wasteland where our staff services are not needed in a dramatically downsized industry, and our freelance services are even less well paid (if that's possible) than before the Internet created citizen journalists.

Few publications are paying for investigative work. Investigative work requires not only a brain, but courage. No one is going to take the risks of investigative reporting without some corporate backing, legal protection and a decent paycheck...not for any depth of disgust.

[mjtaylor22]

02:24 PM on 09/28/2009

yes Michael, that is a good idea, though i don't know how many interviews it will garner you. if you report on the demise of intellignet journalism
and the rise of jerry springer news

[Nomccain]

11:44 PM on 09/26/2009

It's immoral when a country places a price on EVERYTHING.....even our citizens lives, and that's exactly what it's doing when people die because they have no health insurance!!!!!!!!!!! We're the only nation left that places profit ahead of human lives.....and it has to STOP! A certain amount of greed is good for the pure capitalistic society in order to achieve.........BUT...........when profits are never enough and greed and corruption is the PRIMARY basis for achievement, it stops working. That's what's happening in our country now! Our democratic form of government has been bought by special interests and big money and that's where the money stays. Our morals are gone, our compassion is gone, our REAL patriotism is gone, justice is gone and our laws are for sale just like our congress, and our success as a world leader is just about gone. When are the citizens of this country going to wake up...march on washington....and take our government back? It's probably already too late.

[jer9848]

11:27 PM on 09/26/2009

Ambition is not evil within limits. The struggle for success is not bad within limits. Hard work and fair rewards are good within limits. It is not good to take from the poor and give to the rich, and that's exactly what this country is doing today.....GREED

[CAPTAINSKIPPY]

11:00 PM on 09/26/2009

Our once honorable news media has become just another pawn of the corporatocracy that enjoys telling Joe Sixpack what to do at work, as it buys up the politicians that gives Wall Street gobs of money and favors courtesy of taxpayers and tax dollars, as it gains control of Washington from the comfortable suites of Wall Street. Thank you Michael Moore for giving us the all-too-rare, and unvarnished "that's the way it is" truth.

[themodernleader]

10:52 PM on 09/26/2009

The basic principle of a sound economy: giving as much as received, producing as much as used and consumed. The underlying values are selflessness, frugality, sacrifice for the family and future, sharing for the common good, combined with hard, intelligently driven labor equitabily distributed across the organization. All the fancy economic words and descriptions have no meaning except to herd gullible people into servitude and predictability and make them like it.

[themodernleader]

10:32 PM on 09/26/2009

If a guy like Michael Moore can have a hit movie by looking below the surface and reporting the facts, it says two things: First, Where are our reporters that uncover, write and share actions and events? If the movie is a hit it reveals that the Americans are awakening out of their dream of "Everything for nothing." This possibility gives me some hope that public scorn will force our leaders to begin doing what is right for our nation. However, if the President remains captive of unwonted wealth, nothing of consequence will develop or change our present decline.

[chelan]

01:25 AM on 10/03/2009

what are you talking about? Just what do you think is right for the country? Where is all this money going to come from when you kill capitalism wealth and jobs. Capitalism isn't perfect but its a hell of a lot better than alternative. Be grateful for what you have. who are u going to tax to pay for all the hand outs when business is gone and jobs are gone. Michael Moore needs a basic course in ecomonics and so do you

Captalism has pulled more people out of the mire than socialism or communism ever has or will
The institution that will have all the money is the government and they are terrible at creating wealth. As Abraham Lincoln said " you do not make the poor rich by making the rich poor it just makes everyone poor and never do for anyone what they can do for themselves" I think that may have something do do with not feeling like a looser and poor self esteem. Abraham was a republican by the way in case you didn't notice and Obama is trying to copy him in case you didn't notice. Liberals are a negative entity conservatives are positive entitiy. Liberals preach hate that is all they do they never have anything intelligent to say except Glen Beck is evil and the republicans are racist, and that is racist in itself so I say democrats are the real racists.