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July 22, 2005Traverse City Film FestivalProfile: Moore on MichaelByRecord-Eagle staff writer TRAVERSE CITY - It took Michael Moore almost an hour-and-a-half to walk the distance of two storefronts on a hot summer Friday evening. Every time he took a step or two, someone came up to chat with him, shake his hand, have a picture taken with the kids. "People wonder why I can't lose more weight," he said, laughing. His personal assistant, Jason Pollock, said it happens wherever they go. Some people have volunteered for the festival because his name is connected with it. Les Dalgliesh, a conservative-turned-independent, said he's not among them, though he has been impressed upon meeting Moore. "He shook my hand and looked me in the eye," Dalgliesh said. "He seems like a great guy." There's no mistaking Moore, with his black-framed glasses and ever-present baseball cap, as he walks down Front Street. Moore, an Antrim County resident, has made a lot of trips down the street since early May, when he decided to stage the first Traverse City Film Festival, an event he hopes to continue on an annual basis. He's just come from a meeting with people who will work concessions for the festival, where they discussed the purchase of popcorn containers, how they'll sell pop, and the prices of souvenir T-shirts and baseball caps. "I don't think $20 for a ball cap is right," he says. When someone suggested they give the volunteers their T-shirts before the festival, Moore got in a good-natured jab at his home town, which was the subject of his first movie, "Roger & Me." "This is so Traverse City," he says, laughing. "We would never hand out the T-shirt first in Flint." Boys State The cap is as much a part of the Moore persona as his political views. When he appeared on the scene in 1989, producing his first film "Roger & Me" while earning $99 per week in unemployment, it was the Detroit Tigers' D. Later, it became the Michigan State University S. These days, as he makes arrangements for the film festival, he wears a BBC News cap, which a BBC crew gave him at the Republican National Convention last year. Is he forgetting his Michigan roots in his headgear? He says no. "I like the (Michigan) State hat," he said. "It's special to me." He didn't attend college there. His only college education was about a year-and-a-half at University of Michigan-Flint, he said. Yet in 1970, at age 16, he was chosen to attend Boys State, a program that teaches youth about government, at MSU. While there, he realized he wasn't interested in running for office and spent most of the time in his dorm room listening to Carole King, James Taylor and Simon & Garfunkel. One day, he went down to a vending machine for a bag of chips and saw a flier for a speech contest. The topic was the life of Abraham Lincoln and it was sponsored by the Elks Club. He remembered that his father had gotten an application for the Elks, but was offended when he saw that it said all members must be caucasian. "I thought, 'Isn't that ironic: A speech contest about the Great Emancipator sponsored by a club that doesn't allow blacks,'" he said. He entered the contest and, to his surprise, he won. It was judged by an English teacher rather than by Elks members. When he gave the winning speech to the 3,000 youths at Boys State, members of the Elks were "mortified," Moore said. The story made the state and national news, including the CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite, even though Moore declined an on-air interview by the network. "I said, 'There's not enough Clearasil in the world for me to go on TV,'" he said. Within six months, he said there were calls for congressional hearings on the discriminatory practices and the Elks Club changed its policy. "I was a 16-year-old kid and I was able to affect national change, all because I had the munchies," he said. The activist clown As Moore inched his way along Front Street in front of the State Theatre, one of the venues for the film festival, a teenage girl told him she goes to Davison High School, Moore's alma mater. He burst into the school's fight song and the girl joined in. Moore began to forget the words in the last strains. "Hey, it's been about 30 years," he said. When Moore graduated in 1972, his classmates voted him "class comic." Five days earlier, the citizens of the town voted him to the public school board at age 18. Moore said he's always blended his humor and politics and believes that's how he's become so successful as a documentary film maker. "What drives the right wing crazy is that they haven't figured out how to make an entertaining right-wing film," he said. "They've been led to believe I run around with a club in my hand, beating conservatives over the head with it." Yet he said he's on camera for as little as 10 minutes in some of his films. "It's always better to let the other side talk," he said. "And then I'd rather let the mother in Flint who lost her son in Iraq tell the story rather than me," he said, referring to scenes in his anti-Iraq War film "Fahrenheit 9-11." The common touch He also believes his blue-collar upbringing near Flint gives him a natural connection to the masses. He urged liberals to get in touch with blue-collar values and entertainment - like country music and TV sitcoms - in his 1997 book "Downsize This," though he comes by it naturally, he said. He is a fan of country music and lifelong Roman Catholic who attends mass every week, when possible. He attended a seminary in Saginaw for a short time, hoping to become a priest. That ended as he was just at an age where he was starting to notice girls. Certain Christian principles have guided his life. "My Irish-Catholic parents taught me that we will be judged by how we treat the least among us," he said. He and his wife of 24 years, Kathleen Glynn, have given to charities that help the poor, but he said he doesn't often talk about that. "I don't believe in wearing my religion on my sleeve," he said. Oscar opens doors Moore was a film buff as he was growing up. His grandfather, who lived down the street from him, usually went to two movies per week, a habit that Moore adopted. Moore has taken time out from producing his current movie project, a film about HMOs and the health-care system, to work on the festival. He expects the movie to be released in late 2006. He's gotten the projectionist from Robert Redford's Sundance Film Festival to work the event. He has also gotten some distributors to donate the movies shown, and will have some actors and directors attend. Those kinds of contacts have become easier since he won an Oscar for the 2002 movie "Bowling for Columbine." "I have a very easy way in Hollywood now, even though I'm not of Hollywood," he said. "I have wide acceptance and significant support for the work I want to do." The statue has been at his home and the homes of his parents and in-laws. It's now on a table of the apartment he owns in New York City, in which his and Kathleen's daughter Natalie lives. Still, he likes to be accessible to the fans he meets as he walks down the street, and keeps his self-deprecating humor, as well. As a man from Ohio has his daughters picture taken with him, Moore looks at the girls and says: "They're saying, 'Dad, who is this large man?'" he said.
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