TFF 29 Michael Moore and Christopher Hitchens Conversation

good morning uh ladies and gentlemen brothers and sisters i was addressing our our guest story directly and saying i hope i could have his consent to meet him for a few minutes just to force him to answer some very valuable tough leading incriminating yes or no questions is that okay does everybody knew that okay i force people to answer yes or no you don't want to be me chris you should stay i was wondering whether to emphasize what we had in common or what we had otherwise um in any case we had in common that we've both had confrontations with charlton hester during the gulf war i was on cnn with him and i asked him to name the um countries that boarded iraq and he couldn't do it at all he said uh he started with bahrain which is an island and he went on to the soviet union which has no common border with any other country anyway um i want to come back to that so that's what we have in common on the other hand as everyone knows the difference between us is that you and i are the people and i'm a snorland elitist which is like presumably part of why we agreed to do this they wanted us to do this today so i'll start just with a few everyone saw and everyone usually enjoyed your movie i just want to ask you a couple of things about it on the day of columbine or you say it was another normal day listen that was happening and the president had just formed another country the name which he couldn't pronounce right you said that whose name who that clinton can pronounce well who's name we we couldn't pronounce um and perhaps uh even mr bush could do it in fact i didn't see him doing it um [Laughter] um in the course of discussing or featuring kosovo um you have a clip from a television station covering the devastation of bombing and the voice voiceover of this is um says that these these buildings this hospital or this office was targeted uh that they the aim of the bombing was to get this hospital and the accident um on this voiceover was unclear to me but was it serbian yes it was yes should you put that that's what it was it was on the face of it you were repeating their claim no i just assumed that most people even though disagree on how to pronounce the name knows that kosovo doesn't have their own network they look like tv to me all the surf tv i see yeah it looked like it's me too but i wasn't sure because i didn't i didn't want it to be thought i'm sure you wouldn't wait you thought that you would simply pass on unedited the claims of mr osage in other words that the real war crimes in the balkans will be committed by the west that isn't your view is it oh no no no so i was just if you had to do over again would you no would you try to release that impression no you like it the way it is yeah and that could change an echo chamber no it just it's just it just is what it was that that was third td covering you know it's possible that um not impossible but actually happened that most of the committed war crimes it's also possible when it actually happened that we bombed elementary schools and hospitals it's certainly that those such buildings were hit but the claim that was uh deliberately intentional doesn't matter that that was that's what said there in tv news that's not my claim my if you want my own personal position or that it doesn't matter to me whether it was intentional or unintentional bombs that i helped to pay for killed children and innocent people and if we collectively decide that we need to use military force to stop war crimes or other crimes against humanity that we better do our damnedest to make sure that um innocent people don't die and i just don't accept the theory of collateral damage in the way that it's pronounced these days well there are lots of horrible ways of saying that but um since your your film is all about you the very important question of who kills people is it people or is it weapons and it seems to me that a lot of people could walk away from the film with the impression that you were you were fairly orthodox supporter of gun control i i also i got the question that you're not so i'd love to hear how you reason the gun control question what do you say to the chocolate yeah you're a member of the nra you're not doing that for effect are you no um i won the nra marksman award when i was a teenager i went hunting the neighborhood kids uh when i was a kid um i started the film with the attitude that the solution to our problem is that we needed more gun control laws and somewhere in the process of making the movie probably when we went to canada i became very uncomfortable with that position because the office of canadian statistics in ottawa says that the um there are seven million guns that are owned by private citizens in canada there's about 10 million households in canada um it just really kind of pissed me off that the canadians could have that many guns laying around and not not kill each other i mean it's like last year there were 165 gun murders half of those were committed with guns from the us um and so really it made me question the sort of base the the traditional liberal you know viewpoint of if we just had more gun control and i didn't put this in the film but i was also exploring the whole swiss concept of uh you know the law in switzerland is there's supposed to be a gun in every home because they don't have a standing army so in order to they need to form a militia can you hear me okay um no okay i'm sorry i'll just do this is that [Applause] better um so there's so there's supposedly a gun in every home in switzerland last year they had 75 gun murders so even the swiss as despicable as they are don't [Music] shoot each the feeling inside of me became very uh and uncomfortably close to essentially the nra position which is guns don't kill people people kill people um but but the one i guess the one the way that i would alter that a bit is that guns don't kill people americans kill people because we seem to be the one country that that cannot have guns in the house uh and not use them on each other and now um i've noticed in other work with yourself canada seems to bring out the best in you i don't know how this is but um well i grew up well i'll tell you i grew up on the border uh in michigan and um as a kid as a teenager uh you'd flip over to channel nine in windsor to watch the cbc news and you learned the truth about vietnam uh you'd switch the american channel especially in the early years and you would not be watching the truth and it was amazing just to make that switch from channel 7 to channel 9 channel 7 to detroit channel 9 in windsor and see an entirely different viewpoint and so i i've from a very early age from the time when my buddies and i in high school would make our dry runs across the blue water bridge in port huron for if we got a high lottery number in the draft um what would you know how we were going to essentially get out of here and where would we go live in canada so uh i i do admit to uh a fine candidate and kind of did take thousands of american drug resistance tens of thousands that's correct well i thought here's what i really want to ask you at that point when you say you you tick off things it can't be it can't be because of guns it can't be because of unemployment it can't be because of this it can't be because of that i thought that was that was absolutely fabulous bit of the film was really we've been in a lot of other places in the film you leave it open and i'm wondering if you're if the purpose just to let the audience decide well a part of it is um because part because a lot of it is that i don't have the answer because by then you see you've implicitly answered the or given an answer to two of your opening scenes in other words it can't be because of the bombing of kosovo or because it can't be that right and it can't be because of lockheed martin's plants either that's right there's not a there's not a direct a to b correlation between the fact that the number one employer in littleton is the largest weapons maker in the country and the fact that these two kids that did this killing um you know none of us really know the answer to this it was the emergency industrial complex we wouldn't we wouldn't have enough cemeteries to vary that's correct the people were being shot what happened if it was tv violence that's correct and the same by the way if it was kmart that's correct absolutely yeah and and i said you're shooting slightly you're making your songs you're missing it you're aiming occasionally for your own foot that's correct it was intentional no it is because i because you know what look i control the the scissors in the editing so i can i can choose to make a film that makes it look like i have it all together and got this all figured out and i will now tell you the masses what we need to do or i can be honest and say i started this film with one set of of ideas uh those ideas were challenged and some of them i thought were then completely wrong and headed down a different road and and thought i hadn't figured out then and then was challenged again because ultimately think about what you bring up kmart if i'm saying it's not the guns and the bullets then why did we bother to go and get the bullets banned at kmart and i guess i guess if i guess the i guess if i came to any kind of conclusion in the film it's that because we all have this shared national problem mentally you know that we until we correct that uh it's probably best to put the guns and the bullets away and then when we when we start behaving correctly we have our guns back and and like other countries the guns can be there and uh and we won't commit these acts of violence against ourselves stuff with lockheed and the other the the the military part of the film is just to point out that that's just one piece of of this overall acceptance of using violence as a means to an end and never really questioning it on any level whether it's a very personal level where you go to reach for the gun in the house because you're in an argument with your boyfriend or girlfriend um or um a decision to go and invade other countries or assassinate leaders that are democratically elected of other countries or whatever well whatever right you know somebody's also i just want one more of these things and then i'll shift but i can't be um what mother's throwing off well if they're either can't well it can't be mothers throwing off welfare either can it because that happens it's not just that even but that is an act of state-sponsored violence that's an act of state-sponsored terrorism to beat up on the poor over and over and over again and when you do that occasionally and sadly in the poor communities of this country more than just occasionally you're going to have these acts of violence you're going to have these tragedies and and um and i'm sick and tired of this ignoring it and ignoring the racial underpinnings that fuel uh this this these what i call the state acts of you about the welfare i violence to say i mean about the the miserable uh attitude that was exposed by clinton in picking on um the underclass and saying well at least that's it's it's it's boring from the importance of being earnest i think where lady bragging says really one doesn't know what to say about the morals of the poor i mean if they if the poor would set us a good example what on earth is the use of um with um with this whole argument there's a problem in the statistics are not kept on things that don't happen uh so we don't know how many times weapons are used to stop crimes being committed or used to defend people who would otherwise be injured but you don't touch on that at all have you never heard of anybody in the united states using a weapon a privately owned weapon to as it's happened several times prevent someone's brain yes um you don't give that any air time at all right because because i could provide the statistics that the nra offers in terms of how many times a gun is used that's prevented a crime and saved someone's life and the statistics that the brady group and the gun control people use to show how you know uh that number compared to having the gun in the house and how many times that increases the chance of an unnecessary uh tragedy occurring uh i just i didn't want to make that film i did not want to i it wasn't just as heston didn't understand that i was not there to debate the gun control issue with him but to talk to him on a different level and um and so uh so that that's just not my film okay that's what that was going to be my next question was we've both had some fun at mr hessen's expense and i think both of us probably had quite a number of jokes about um ronald reagan's fitness to be president um uh physical mental as well as moral and political fitness presence i mean but you wouldn't tease reagan now for being amnesiac would you uh i mean from back then or not we wouldn't see i mean now you wouldn't i wouldn't now make a joke about ronald reagan being back in 1982 no no no i wouldn't you wouldn't i would not do that but everyone knows since you shot that at that moment in um beverly hills everyone knows for a fact what is painfully obvious from watching it right which is the guy's desperately sick i didn't feel that way you did am i the only person watching that who was extremely embarrassed and wincing throughout don't tell me i was which what i didn't claim to be super sensitive i thought it was a moment of are you talking about whether you were watching the way he was speaking when he was speaking everything he was quite clearly a very sick guy no i didn't think so not at all no i no i thought i was very well i'll give you my opinion but um but you're you're making reference to what his recent announcement yes i am which was what that he has he doesn't have all sounds see that's i mean that's the beauty of manipulation of something some very severe cognitive loss condition at any rate yes i don't think i don't care if it's what else it's commonly called no that's not what he said two weeks ago that's not what he said did anybody see his yes i did did you see the tape the video tape yeah yeah he said the doctors told him that he has alzheimer like symptoms and and that they said it wasn't alzheimer's uh and that he's fine he's going to continue as president of the nra he's going to campaign this fall for republican candidates to make sure that bush has control of both the house and the senate for the next two years and um uh he's in pre-production on his next film um so you know he had just had hip replacement surgery before i did the interview with him uh so he's walking not as steadily uh as as he had been before but frankly i'll give you the i mean i'm not a doctor so i don't know but i'll give you my my opinion he didn't even play one on tv no opinion of myself and the crew that were in the room felt that his answers and and the way that he uh maybe either at times wasn't connecting to what i was asking him or because he just kept repeating well the second amendment gives me that right and the second time he gives that right he keeps going on that i felt more like and you know this you should know this enough by now that that uh when you're talking to some actors uh uh if if they don't have a script um it's very very difficult for them to function verbally and i did a thing on my tv show uh uh once uh and and uh asked uh tim robinson called me up and said uh i want to do something on tv nation yeah great and the time came to do something and uh told him where to show up and he said well where are you gonna send over the script i said there's no script this is a non-fiction tv show he's all you got to have a script so even like really smart good guys like tim robbins i mean these are actors and and i think when reagan is on the stage holding up the gun from my cold dead hands you know he's in his moment and uh and uh when he's there with me thinking he's going to debate gun control when i'm not there really to talk about that uh he's he's confused uh because there are no lines to give so we only so he goes back to the lines that he knows and the our cameraman said to be on the way out he said uh i do you think that he's just a paid spokesman for the nra that it's not really coming from some real personal you know political place that that he's a paid spokesman so when he's a paid spokesman he he he functions well in that role but he wasn't in that role on that day i don't know i don't know why he didn't call the nra or maybe he did then he had a whole night and an afternoon to call them and say i had been there and uh i was coming back the next morning and we we never expected to go through those gates after we were told to come back the next morning so i don't know but okay but i think that's that's i like that about you that you felt bad for him no i mean that seriously i think that that's that's a good play that i wish more of us would start with that assumption that that this you know just forget about casting politically just as a human being uh that and i hope he doesn't have or or develop alzheimer's and and i hope he's healthy and well and i hope all the republicans that he's working for right now while we're sitting here will be defeated in november um i think the time has come for me to be i never know whether it's ventriloquist or ventriloquist dummy that the role that one performs but um there'll be some very good questions passed up here i've thrown away the boring and the mad ones this is from karen leroy who uh i was i was going to ask this myself and she puts it better i thought there was one one excellent moment in the heston exchange where he just reassociates and says well maybe it's because of mixed ethnicity and she asks what i i think i know the answer to because i thought that by then you become aware of your own embarrassment but um she asked why didn't you press heston harder on that comment well i've asked myself that a lot and there was even one point they had a room where i thought well i'm not going to put that in i don't look too good there i should have really gone in you know for the then i thought well but that's what happened you know and maybe it's just because i'm a white guy that the first the first response is you all know when you go to the thanksgiving dinner and there's the uncle i'm talking to the white people here which would just be most uh you know who makes the racist uh remark right and what what really do most of us do sit there silently cringe inside right don't want to start a fight at the thanksgiving dinner and and just hope it passes right you want to believe it's not 2002 you didn't really hear that you know and and i chris if you i mean the first thing when he said that and i couldn't believe he said i said i mean i just couldn't believe he said and he couldn't believe it because you can see him immediately starting to pull back yes well it's not really that we had we had enough problems with civil rights and uh and i i just was like civil rights was bad enough and now this [Laughter] now this [ __ ] and i just i thought and i and i i have to admit but again i think if i were black i i don't think i'd feel this way i i i i maybe i'm wrong i don't just guessing but i just i i just i i felt i just i looked later he was like having his al campanis moment you know and and it was like it was like i'm not going probably that thing in my head at the point is i'm not going to take advantage of this horrible thing he just said on camera he said it it'll it'll be there and people will make up their own minds and feel whatever way they want to feel about what he said but i'm not going to you know like uh the sort of the ahad uh you know journalist or filmmaker or whatever you know oh he just said it you know uh it's just like he said it and people can judge for themselves you know what he meant by it but i think that's how it felt to me you know okay i've got a quite different question from philip getz who wants to know um how do you secure the rights to show uh at moments like the one with dick clark how do how do you get rights to the gorilla which rights uh i mean the actual show him in the film yes well he's a public figure we have a first amendment and i have a right to uh approach him um what had happened there was we had pulled up to his production office in burbank and i had um told the crew just to wait in the van i was going to go in and see if he talked to me on on camera um it's it's very rare that and you know that and i think it might be the only time in the film where we're doing one of those old 60 minutes kind of you know run and ambush you know the guy um anyways as i was walking toward the building he walked out with his entourage to the van and so the crew saw this and then they came out with their camera and we figured well this is the only time we're going to get them and so i just thought i'd try and ask him right there and and i always felt pretty decent about the clark he's one of the you know first people he went through a lot to into the network sensors to let black kids and white kids dance uh together on on television and i have i've no bad feelings toward him whatsoever and i in fact i thought he probably doesn't even know this is going on and if i had a chance to tell him about it maybe he would join with me and do something um to correct uh the situation in michigan so so we don't have this we don't you know we don't have this right he's we don't have a sign thing from him uh we try to get permission from most people it just it just reduces the number of lawsuits that i have to go through which if you've ever sat through that position you never want to go through one of those again so um so i try to i try to and i've had less and less lawsuits since roger me i had like 20 lawsuits on roger me and and in the last couple things we did we've had no lawsuits so i find i realize i'd quite like to see your version of bleak house but um this is from jake who wants to know do you believe war is ever justified wow wow well when i had to um when i had to go down and register for the draft for the lottery i registered as a conscience objector so i guess that answers the question so that's interesting i i guess but i don't but i also i'm not an absolutist person and i'm continually as i said about my ideas about this film i'm continually challenging myself and finding myself wrong on many occasions and and and believing that there's an exception to just about anything that could be said including that statement i just made so um well i'm glad because um as if you weren't in enough trouble there are lots of questions i'll synthesize them we want to know whether you think um you have an answer to the question what is the cause of violence in the middle east and also just to pour it on whether you have a solution as well there's something wrong when you're asking guys like me for answers i mean questions just really shows how how much we've devolved in this country i was thinking the other day is this a great country or what well no but look at the founding fathers like one of them like discovered electricity you know like george washington discovered some new way to farm that was like revolutionary i mean these were like geniuses scientists really like big thinkers and intelligent white men and now yeah as good as it got for white guys at that time that's you know where it was and but look what we look now we've got this guy in the oval office it's like it's just i mean it we i mean it's entertainment for ourselves but what we know the dane the risk of this level of entertainment is is very high you know and uh so did i answer the question about the middle east the answer oh the answer to the question about the middle east you were getting near i could feel it getting nearer that uh after the germans uh exterminated 12 million people over six million of whom were jews uh uh uh the germans uh should have been removed uh from germany um to the desert uh uh to be surrounded by hostile uh enemies and the jews should have been given bavaria which is a beautiful part of the world it's like lush natural resources and just got a lot going for it you know views like this a great great destination uh uh the views in israel i mean i i've been there a couple times it's just it's amazing what they've done with irrigation but it's uh it's uh it just seemed like such a uh if i were you know king of the world in 1946 uh 47 i would have uh maybe structured things a bit differently and uh punish the real culprits it's so sad that uh that uh that those uh who uh were uh persecuted and nearly annihilated on that level uh then uh found themselves in this situation um and um um you know it's just and and with all that we've been going through this country since september 11th we really haven't paid that much attention to what's going on with the israelis and the palestinians and i think everybody knows the solution to that problem i think the israelis and the palestinians know the eventual solution to that problem the answer is clear this documentary is on pbs the other night the the israeli journalist said uh all that's the only thing we don't know yet is the body count that's all that's not over how many more people are going to die because we know what the eventual solution is that there's going to be two countries it's it's going to it's going to like he said in this documentary it's going to be like a divorce it's not going to be a very friendly divorce there's going to be a border and uh and and they're going to leave each other alone uh but but they're going to be able to determine um uh you know their own uh you know well-being in their own state so i don't know if that makes any sense but um is that does that answer the question uh for me it does yes but um i think it's very i think it's nice announcement um you mentioned the september events of last year um and i i've noticed in the film that the probably the the american overseas intervention that you objected to the least it seemed was probably the most recent one in afghanistan was i writing thinking that you don't regard that in the same light as the overthrow of the government of chile for example uh no it's not it's not on the same level as that yet um uh but i do object uh to what we've done in the way we've done it in afghanistan um uh bush said that we were going to go over there hunt down osama bin laden in london like a dog and kill that was the mission mission unaccomplished all right that's not what we did and um whether he's alive or dead i don't know um but it seems as if if he and his group were the ones who did this uh then they should be tracked down captured and brought to justice um do you mind if i break in and say yeah ask you what is the if doing in that sentence what's the who what's the if doing in that last sentence well all people are innocent and proven guilty in this country so you have no uh let's say [Applause] um you regard it as an open question the the responsibility of the sounds if anyone is convicted of any crime no matter how horrific the crime they are innocent until proven guilty and as americans no i don't know what i ask you position that's not what i ask you i don't know what else do by the way if that was true um neither of us would be able to operate in the way that we do as journalists which is often to make the presumption of guilt which we're free to make because we're not jurors and we're not judges right but so i can't i don't think i think you're counting my personal opinion i think open-mindedness would be pushed hard if by anyone who said i'm not sure who is behind the bombings of the world no but i said in the film last night it's in it's in type right up on the world trade center but you said if now so i was just holding you to it i said in what context did i say today you said if it's true that's what simon london did just now i that's why i asked you what the [ __ ] was doing not to be productive well no it's really just on the question you know what it's just an instinctual thing as a citizen of this democracy to put that word in there but if you want my i'd buy that music it's okay i'm just talking to myself no i mean bad habit shall i buy that even well even george w bush is uh uh innocent now of uh the way that he made a profit from insider training uh when he was on the board of directors of of harkin oil uh uh but if you ask my personal opinion of what i think went on there uh i think he made awesome well since i've got you and it's you i'm talking to you yeah i'll settle for that all right but now we just wasted three minutes on the word if you don't know as you know there's nobody but it's just it's just it's just an instinctual thing it's just like the word please or thank you you know it's it's just uh you understand it doesn't it didn't come from a political place huh so it's so badly it's just the eagle scout in me i'm just so milan's claims of responsibility striking as the ravings of the clown okay fine osama bin laden i would you know i listen i don't know if i were president i would have look you got to take this back this will piss you off uh not again well no you just but you were i loved watching you because you were so wound on clinton and his sex thing you know and uh uh not the sex thing and the lying about the sex no the bombing about the sex i think you showed the aspirin for yourself oh okay well i mean it's the only time we know for sure that an american president has overruled the cia or the joint chiefs to bomb something because something has to be bombed that day and that's because mr lewinsky is going back to the grand jury i agree with you it's the most that's the worst moment yet that's right okay all right and he wasn't a stupid guy right he was not sleeping so that's not the problem there either no i forgot what i was gonna say about clinton oh that's okay i'll i can fill in for you though [Laughter] no just at one point there were 200 fbi agents devoted to the whole you know lewinsky and all these spokes that came off of that off on that matter and i i've often thought since september 11th what if those 200 fbi agents in the late 90s have been doing their real job of protecting the american people from acts of murder potential actions you know yeah what would where would we have been maybe wouldn't have prevented anything you know but but maybe returning a few calls from the local agents about weirdness going on at flight training schools you know whereas whereas there was a woman in wisconsin the other day did you see a grandmother who had taken a bicycling holiday in cuba without asking for permission and they got her they really nailed her they were on they knew every movement she'd made well i've already asked the question is this a great country or what so i won't waste any more time um he wasn't lying about the sex by the way since you said it was the lying about the women as well as the bombing of upset he defamed and morally blackmailed and uh slandered the women all of whom returned truth there is that um right i just think if we hadn't been so distracted as a country on on something that to me was was not a primary issue that we should have been focusing on maybe we wouldn't find ourselves in the situation we were in and that we're in now and now that we're in the situation i think that we're never going to get to the truth of september 11th uh because when you've got 15 of the 19 hijackers being from saudi arabia you know 15 of the 19 hijackers are from cuba what what country do you think america would bomb you know we wouldn't bomb uruguay all right we bombed cuba all right 15 to the 19 from saudi arabia we bomb afghanistan well they were harboring al-qaeda true okay well since when does the government ever go after the landlord on the people's behalf you know i mean it just it just has never the thing has stumped from the beginning to me in terms of the the bin laden money that's been in the bush family since 1979 uh the saudi connections to the bushes uh uh uh uh you know the the the help to get the bin ladens out of the country in the week after september 11th all that stuff that went on just very weird strange stuff and it's a can of worms we probably don't want to open uh because if this was not just a a separate terrorist group doing this but perhaps elements within the saudi government itself behind this act we can't bomb our oil supply you know right and 25 right now i think comes from saudi arabia so we you know we can't go there so let's let's keep distracted and let's let's you know keep bin laden alive if we can because we need to you know we need him and uh we don't need what's really behind him you know we don't want to go there i don't feel the need for him particularly strongly myself but um if suppose it to be true i mean as i think you're you're nearly right in saying that these people were were grown on the sponge of the national security apparatus the pakistani secret police the saudi ruling class the cia and so forth who gave them their head start wouldn't that make you all the more want to see them uh crushed i mean if they're so bad that they used to be uh supported by the cia surely you must hate them which ones the al-qaeda if they if they're so bad that as you said in your film they used to be on our payroll then there can't really be any objection to shooting them up can they well i think there's other ways to stop them than just shooting them up that's i don't go there first you know self-defense using violence as a means to self-defense should be the absolute last resort and never the first means to to achieve our ends i just i don't believe that i'll tell you look i i just it was the last thing look they let them get this close the television blow up four embassies and a destroyer that's right and they let them nearly take over pakistan yeah they didn't at the same time at the same time that was going on the taliban you go to the bbc website and look this up type in the key words taliban in texas uh two of my favorite key words together and you're operating on the presumption of innocence here and oh yeah in my head but then there's the other part of me that you know is that crucial other part well but that's just the human part you know it's just you know i believe bush is guilty of x y and z but he does deserve a fair trial and i shouldn't be on the jury you know um but uh the taliban well you're not one of his peers thank god the taliban the taliban leadership went to houston in the late 90s to have a number of meetings with oil company executives there to build a pipeline for unical across afghanistan who was going to help build the pipeline halliburton who did the feasibility study for the pipeline and ron this is when bush was governor of texas these meetings were taking place uh you know and i'd like to know what happened to that deal and why did the deal go south you know and what's the connection to all this as i said you know in the airport there in denver bin laden and the hijacker bin laden this is this wasn't a peasant rising up from the third world to attack the great saint that has oppressed the world this was a multi-millionaire who participated and organized and helped you know this this murder this mass murder and the people who are the hijackers were uh people who had gone to university who came from the middle class or from middle class engineering degrees and etc etc so so i think there's more to this than we've been told i think we're being lied to on a daily basis about this i think we're being distracted and to get back to the point of the film this this the way the news media works this summer it's the abducted child you know there are less children abducted this year than last year and there were less last year than the year before it's been declining every year but you wouldn't know it if you turn on the tv set because they constantly want you to be in this constant state of of nervous [ __ ] [ __ ] fear and and when you can keep a population down like that where they stay behind their closed doors they lock the doors and they sit in front of that tube night after night after night that is the perfect way to get them to vote for right wing or fashion candidates because because their natural their natural human instinct is to want to survive which there's nothing wrong with that and there's nothing wrong with fear fear is a good thing we need fear we need fear that's that as we needed that from the very beginning when the animals were bigger than us and were eating us the you know the fight-or-flight mechanism that was within us and and fear saved us in many ways and allowed us to continue as a species and we like to go to scary movies we like to get that old thing that's in us from thousands of years ago uh juiced up and it because it's not activated on a normal level on a daily basis it's abnormally activated through this lying and this manipulation to keep us afraid of all the wrong things and and and and then you have people going out and buying a quarter billion guns which is how many guns we've got in our homes and over 90 of those are in the white communities so we have everything to fear including fear itself well you know he was right about that what um i can't find the actual card or the lady who asked enough but there's someone who wants to know as i guess i do myself what did happen to the rabbit lady and what did she say and do after the snake had its lunch it's a loose end there i thought we might as well tie up you know what it's uh 13 years ago since i graduated here and this is the obvious reference i think most people get and i'm i i always ask about the bunny lady about that scene in the film or either people were so shocked at that little bunny rabbit being killed or you know what's happened to the bunny lady about a minute and a half to two minutes later in the film in roger me there's a black guy who shot on camera by the flint police not once in 13 years have i been asked what happened to the black guy that was shot in the middle of the street or oh my god can you believe that they shot the black guy i couldn't i had to turn away i couldn't stand watching yet i've never heard that chris you know but the little bunny rabbit i have just i still get mail on this and it's like and i thought about this and i you know we've become we've become used to this image we've accepted it all we we're not horrified by it oh the black guy he's getting shot okay you know past the salt you know that's i mean it's just it's just there constantly and and the image of it is there and it's been with us since we were kids and so now we're not horrified by it anymore and it's just you know another black guy getting shot do you remember the do you remember the dog in the napalm does anyone here remember this the dog in the what the dog in the napalm during the very hot years of the anti-war movement there was a group somewhere um some of the united states i forget where it was now they announced that um on the following monday in the town square they were going to cover a dog with petroleum and set fire to it and the idea was that people would care more about that they'd care about the use of napalm on civilians and it was one of those blowback things in propaganda right everybody did care a lot more about this random so they did they did prove their own point that's her name and uh last i talked to her she was working at walmart the black guy lived and [Music] [Applause] but sadly he thought he was superman or he can't he called himself captain uh dada which i thought had kind of a nice artistic captain daughter he um hospital didn't know they had ranks in dada i think we can go much further with that now a lot of people also want to know what you think about the impending hostilities in mesopotamia i'm so biblical i'm synthesizing the question synthesizing several questions the the future the future the distraction for the november election we've been through this before there's nothing new about this and uh i i hope he doesn't do it if he does i hope he doesn't get away with it and um um and it won't work for those of you who believe uh that it should work uh it won't work and um that's what i think about it um i'll ask you this then because it's inclined some of the questions nothing you don't fancy that was saying scary at all do you think beautiful how do you make that conclusion from the fact that i don't believe we should carpet i don't i just wondered what a priority what you thought about everyone agrees he's not a good guy all those in favor okay um only five hands went out by the way that's high um this is from claire claire boulanger i hope i hope i'm frantifying it correctly she says your films may win awards but do you feel they accomplish social change uh well they don't they don't win awards do i hope i hope i hope they i hope it's a small contribution on my part to helping people think about some things that are going on to question what's going on um and to generate a discussion in the debate uh i don't know if any one movie can affect social change i get a lot of great letters from kids and high school students who watch roger me in school and uh i i'm very happy for those teachers who show it and get these kids thinking about uh the economic system that we have and um and it's um evil nature um early on so um so i'm happy for that uh but it's very hard chris to get my stuff uh out there i mean i just went through this thing with my book uh the publisher had printed the first 50 000 copies and they were going to shred the book they printed on september 10th so after september 11th they weren't going to distribute to the stores they were going to shred the all 50 000 copies just to kill the book and i had to really fight to get this thing released and um um and and now you know with this film uh you know i i know even this won't be an easy road uh to get this to get this movie out there and unfortunately we've got a great distributor and united artists here in this uh in this country uh and bingham ray who's the head of united artists uh has been behind a lot of great independent films over the years so so i've got good people on my side to try and get this thing out there but uh um you know well i hope so uh you know i know bingham doesn't want me to say this but uh you know we are we got the word in in can that the largest theater chain in the united states uh uh said that they will not show this film in any of their theaters so um uh so we may have the first amendment but we have this corporate control of getting our free speech out there and so it's uh it i i don't i don't really expect the easiest uh uh you know path for this uh if that's the first indication of what we're up against um tomorrow the great distribution of france though yeah so does jerry lewis he was a genius does it worry at all you do do you even suspect let yourself spread that the people in cannes might have thought here's a film that shows everything we already thought about how crazy and vulgar and nasty americans are you mean with the europeans yeah i think that yeah that plays to a certain uh gallery in oh yeah yeah no that you know yeah but uh um they're also right though they're right about a lot of that about a lot of what we do around the world is is pretty damn despicable and uh thank god they're standing up to bush on this iraq thing and hopefully they won't back down and you know and the french deserve to laugh too and you know if it's in us right good people uh tomorrow's first wants to know uh what did you cut from the final version oh wow um a lot um i one of the reasons i i bought the lifetime membership for the nra uh was because i was going to run against heston uh for the presidency and so i started down that road at one point and uh that i just didn't feel like running the nra i had this wild idea that they have four million members right they represent a minority position in the country the majority of americans don't believe in what they believe in so i figured could i find at least 5 million americans out of 280 million that would agree with me you know pay the least amount for membership and then get me elected so i could disband the organization and it was then that the shot came from the rooftop it was amazing chris was untouched you know i have um i could i was there to tell you right he was laughing about it he just started laughing about it and then like three days later i have a i have a friend who's investigated this very minutely and who's concluded that uh lee harvey oswald was trying to kill governor connolly of texas with whom he had a terrific beef because he thought connolly was behind the yanking of his honorable discharge from the marines so he waited till the governor was driving through town i liked that one and he hit it he hit him too and he hit him but there was all this collateral damage um i'll ask you mr jay norman from chicago's question because i think i may know the answer to it but he says do you feel that the argument more guns less crime has any marriage no not at all no do you think the second amendment i'll ask you this should be in the bill of rights yes yes the way that it's written that states have a right to form a militia for the common defense yes i believe that is correct and don't i don't think we should ever go in even if we don't like that one that much if some of you don't i just don't think it's a bad idea ever to go into the bill of rights and say let's let's start tinkering with it because there's too many people that i think don't unders we would lose a lot of our rights if we went down that road so uh let's let's fight let's fight the nra and these people on on on a different battleground than than getting rid of the second amendment because i have some libertarian friends nra types who say that there's a problem which is that it's it's to do with your fear point that people who imagine themselves liberals and in favor of gun control they'll vote for gun control but even in liberal voting areas like new york or california because they they weren't they don't believe in using weapons themselves or having weapons to their own defense they'll vote for extraordinary powers for the police and for the courts and for the state mandatory sentencing three strikes and you're out will warrant the searches in public housing all this kind of thing all the while sure that they're being liberals and so that the argument for a citizen a police citizen type police he's part of the argument of the second amendment right except the citizens have have to decide who's going to be that police and the the nra position is that it's it's every man uh for himself and uh that's i don't want to live in that kind of country uh you know we're all in the same boat here part of our problem in terms of the state-sponsored violence and why we don't have national health care and why we have this welfare to work program and these things is because we have the american attitude is me me me my my mind protect you know look out for myself get what i can get you know um i remember when roger me came out a lot of liberals uh uh were uncomfortable and didn't like the film because i was bringing up something very uncomfortable to them which was during the reagan years uh a lot of liberals uh made out like bandits in the stock market and uh and i was there to show them here's here's the result of how you got you got to have your your wealth or your trust fund or whatever off the bats and suffering with the people in places like flint michigan and sadly in the 90s then the working class was convinced that the way to survive was to get into the stock market and and and those with the money and the power knowing what they were doing built these people took their money and now of course and now they've lost you know their retirement and and uh you know because they they thought they were going to get a fair shake in the rich man's game wall street is not a democracy you don't have an equal say in this and you don't control it you don't run it you don't have the insider information and uh actually so many friends and family uh back in back home in michigan lose so much money in the last uh a couple of years because they thought you know after losing everything in the 80s a little bit they were able to cobble together in the 90s from from new work this is how they were going to be able to survive and and and do well and um it's just now the tragedy repeats itself and as you see in the film flint is even even worse shape than um it was when i made roger me that one particular school district where 87 of the kids lived below the official poverty line 87 that is an act of state-sponsored terrorism against its own people and that must be opposed and and people uh must stand up against this it's it's immoral to ignore it or complicit if we do i i i'm sorry i don't need to sound so uh angry about it but i'm i'm um i'm angry about it you're excused and they can even be asked questions about their sex life if they want to get on with them yeah that's right um linda from your nearby you in dearborn wants to ask you a personal question but it's okay uh she wants to know how did you maintain your values while growing up in an atmosphere this is in quotes enforced ignorance i don't know if it's a quote from you but now i'm wondering her quiz that's the exact opposite i didn't grow up in an answer of ignorance i grew up in the most radical intelligent city in america i have to live in new york city now it's like i have to now i've i'm living in this backward you know in place of enforced ignorance you know um you know seriously i mean i i come from a city that where the modern day union movement got its start with a sit-down strike in 3637 uh in flint and and that created the middle class and allowed working-class people for the first time in the history of whenever to be able to own their own homes to be able to to send their kids to college to be able to do all these things that working-class people were never able to do before that started in flint michigan that's where i'm from i come from the city they have the first black mayor in the united states before carl stokes in 1966 when the city was 70 percent white that's where i come from i don't come from a place i'm surprised anybody from dearborn would would say that uh uh you know i i i was raised by irish catholic parents who who taught us that we would be judged by how we treat the least among us and that the rich man will have a harder time getting into heaven than a campbell will going through the eye of the needle that's what we were taught and and that is not enforced ignorance that is something that i live with to this day and i'm very proud of being from there and from the family i'm from and from the neighbors and the people that i grew up with and and i miss it terribly because now you know coming from us from we discussed the other day i come from the state the first state in the country that got rid of the death penalty in 1850 you know where you know now i live in a state with a death penalty i live in a city with a republican mayor there's not i don't know when the last time a republican was ever elected in flint michigan there are no republicans you know i know i'm seriously i left i left a move to new york but i've never i've never seen so many republicans uh it's a republican governor republican mayor a death penalty uh a corporate crooks uh running the place uh you know in michigan you get 10 cents on your bottle return you know uh the the highways are clean you know look on your you know where it says michigan 10 you know how it always says that you know it's like it's a it's it's an environmental state it's a state where also you know we for the last 100 years have built the machines that will bring about the end of the planet good good jobs and good wages great wages free dental free there's no co-pay on the medical care our parents get free lawyers you get a free lawyer if you're a uaw member free lawyer no you pay no you want to get a lawyer for something free lawyer you know free glasses free you know of course it's not free because they busted their ass and they fought those battles with the union and and they made it so that us kids had a good life and semi-straight teeth one more thing because uh i'm sorry no no i feel [Applause] if anything you you understand it's this will have to be our last point i think but if anything you understand it's it's duties because capital punishment is actually outlawed in the state constitution that's correct um which is interesting because if you compare michigan to the nearest comparable most which would be annoying i think there's no question that there's less murder fewer murders i should say to be more grammatical um in michigan than in illinois i once tried the same thought experiment as you've been going through about why it is the united states alone among comparable countries continues the fetish of human sacrifice of the death penalty um really seems to need it and practices it a lot whereas no no comparable society does do this they've all abolished it and i thought well one of the reasons it can't be the violent past because there's a lot of violent past in europe and it's much more recent um it can't be the memory of the frontier because that's also present in a lot of countries that have abolished it it can't be the civil war because of ireland and spain and greece all have had civil wars this century and all of the [ __ ] it can't be this it can't be that it's certainly not deterrence because the states that don't have it have fewer murders than the ones that do it's obviously got something to do with racism which would also have in common with but there must be something else and i worked out what it was which is the united states is the most christian of the societies [Applause] how that resonates with the eye of the needle um i told i told uh we were talking about this in the airport and i told bingham that you had said that and uh he said is he going to say that on the stage mike don't don't repeat it he says you didn't have to say anything i was i i never thought i'd never thought of that angle i mean i'm always uh uh i'm always amazed at uh christianity's ability uh uh to not follow its own beliefs and well you can't have christianity without capital consciousness can you well you know i'm only asked yeah i uh the the pope has said that uh uh capital punishment is a sin uh and that it's murder and state-sponsored murder um and that's the way i was raised to believe uh that's an act of murder it's not an act of self-defense native self-defense is putting somebody behind bars who may harm other people the pope also said and i'm not a huge fan of this pope by the way but um he also said that capitalism is a sin uh that it's an economic system that is set up to benefit the few at the expense of the many um and so uh those of us who i guess are ill and the way we were raised that's that's the kind of so you know so-called christian we never used the word christian if you're if you were raised in the catholic right we don't use that word do we you know because because the christians us as catholics in the neighborhood you know where my mom and my grandparents tell us how the ku klux klan in the 20s would burn crosses on the catholic lawns and um um and so they uh uh we never really thought of the christians as people that feel that safe around um kitty as soon as look at you but i like the idea of people going to confessional and saying how much capitalism they've committed since their last question all right well you know [Applause] there might be a movie in it but look i'm getting i would love to i would love to see that can i close with something here yeah please i was about to say i've i've got nowhere else to go and i'd be happy but i'm told we have to wind okay um i'll i'll just i just want to i'll just aside from all the politics i just wanted to say something about uh just filmmaking for a second um uh we touched on this you know briefly with the uh the bit about uh not you know sometimes not knowing where you're going and i like i like that kind of filmmaking i don't like going to movies that uh are so clear you can see what's gonna happen in the next scene and i like being challenged and surprised and um and i think as a director i i'd like you to go on that same journey with me because i think it'll be more interesting and more entertaining as a film and and i don't think making just a polemical film that just has you know my my little sermon or rant in it is very interesting entertainment and and so if i want to do that if i want to give a political speech i'd run for political office or if i wanted to make a sermon i'd uh you know go back to the seminary so um um i'm making a movie and so i'm making it primarily so you can come there and enjoy it and be entertained and eat popcorn and if you leave there thinking a little bit about what's going on in the world all the better if a few of you just a few of you it doesn't take a lot to actually do something uh it'll be great and we'll live in a better country as a result of it but i was thinking you know when i went to i didn't go to littleton colorado with the preconceived notion that i'm going to draw this parallel between the military-industrial complex of lockheed martin and and columbine i go there and i'm just i just asked an innocent question of somebody you know so what's who's the main employer here lockheed martin this is where they built the mx missiles when they were building mx muscles and just when you when those moments happen you're just kind of struck by the um you know not that not that oh that's why those kids did it that i think personal opinion those kids did it because the way people have always done it throughout history people go insane people go crazy and then bad things happen but your kid has a three times greater chance of being hit by lightning than by being shot at school you know school shootings are not really a the crisis that the television and satellite trucks make it out to be and so and so i i think it's i think that for those of you who are interested in film or who are just making your own films uh uh that it's it's best not to start with two with your feet too much in cement and allow yourself to explore and allow your all your uh preconceived notions to be uh challenged i'll let me tell you just i'll end with this help this is how we got heston how the hess to me ended up in the film i tried for two years to get an interview with him went through the nra went through his publicist went through his agent went through his manager um they all said no we showed up at places where he was speaking couldn't get near him so we had pretty much bailed on the idea that we're hesitant's not going to be in this film fine it's fine um we're out in l.a we're shooting um some other stuff for the film there we've packed up we've checked out of the hotel we're driving down sunset uh to the 405 and we pass through beverly hills where those signs say the star maps and some kid one of the pas in the van says let's get a star map and see if we can find where heston uh lived and i said uh oh man we gotta hear where the plane is leaving in an hour no let's get this started and then they all everybody's gonna stand there and i'm like i'm the old guy i'm going to check it early in my window seat there's a lot of questions to answer so so just to like shut them up i pulled the van over you know there's one up the road here we'll get in and we pull all right i'm telling you these things are worthless they're [ __ ] man it's not where these people live i go out i get the star map i bring it back in the van i open up the star map and say okay clue number one here's the home of andre agassi and brook shields there is no andre augustine brook shields they're divorced this is [ __ ] no here's heston right here let's go there oh geez it's all right all right we go up the hill you know to the address on the star map you know and i'm just i think you can tell let's look at the scene the camera we don't wipe off the windshield the camera guy doesn't get out of the fan you know i still don't want to do this i want to get to the airport you know say there's a windshield dirty that's not in focus you know i just go up and ring the buzzer you know so they'll all think yeah mike's still got it you [Applause] [Music] the thing know you know and all of a sudden out of this little box comes the voice of moses yes [Applause] i [ __ ] my pants i was like mr hessen yes if you see the movie again or if you're seeing it for the first time you'll hear listen to my voice i'm shaking i'm not prepared for this i don't know what i'm going to do and and it's it's just the weird serendipity of moments like that if you will allow it to happen it's in the mistakes and the flaws that that sometimes the truth you know is revealed and allows itself to happen so that's my you know little filmmaking record well thank you very much thank you you

Channel: Peadar O'Maoileoin

Views: 76,696

Keywords: Christopher Hitchens, Michael Moore

Id: b9Q-lh42_Co

Length: 71min 56sec (4316 seconds)

Published: Sun Dec 27 2020