grey gardens, moore and pizza.

Responding...
1. In certain circumstances, I think it's important to be transparent about the filmmakers. It can be hard to do, though, as we found with even Grey Gardens - they didn't want narrative (I think most of us agree we want to stay away from that, too), so they had to use the newspaper clips and pictures of the brothers. One thing that can get dangerous with this, though, is parading the filmmakers instead of just revealing him/her/them... Michael Moore is a perfect example of this, actually. There are scenes where he's yelling at someone or trying to make a statement and get someone's attention, so much so that it takes away from the story. When the filmmaker gets too involved (TV/Radio broadcast people call this "riding the elephant"), it botches the whole thing either because the agenda of the film is rendered too obvious or the filmmaker looks like he/she is more concerned with experiencing the event/issue than teaching people about it. Ugh.

2. Michael Moore... hmmm. It's pretty safe to say that he's more about the drama than he is about showing the facts. That's not to say he doesn't have good facts or that his arguments aren't legit... but isn't it interesting that when he puts out a film, the discussion is largely more about his role in the film than the actual topic itself? He distracts from what should be more important - the stories. And his methods are too obvious - it's hard for me to take anything he says or even portrays on camera at face value because of some of the ridiculous shit he tries to pull. I lost all respect and credibility for him when he chased after Dick Clark in "Bowling for Columbine" when he found out a waitress that works at the Clark's chain restaurant can't live off her minimum wage. C'mon... like the actor himself has anything to do with setting wages for his hundreds of employees? His name is on the billboard - that's about it. So chasing him around and saying things like "Oh, geeze" when the guy shuts the car door in his face... that only proves that Moore is an annoying asshole.

Agh! That was long! But here's something more interesting...
The Vagina Monologues are having a fundraiser at Shakespeare's Pizza on Tuesday - the day we have class! Since class is around dinner time, what would you guys think of going out for pizza after class or (Seth? This is me asking permission...) ordering pizza for class if we end up watching films?? Let me know! They'll donate 15% of proceeds to anti-violence groups on campus. Hooray!