Sunday, January 15, 2012

Michael Moore, Insane or Thinking with his Wallet

Alfred Einstein's infamous definition of Insanity is "doing the same thing over and over, and expecting a different result". One-percenter Michael Moore has saw fit to do an interview in which he proceeds to tell President Obama to basically "Do what we ( disgruntled liberals)tell you, or we'll vote third party to prove a point".

If this sounds familiar coming from Moore, it's because he pretty much did the exact same thing in 2000 when it came to Ralph Nader.

The same Ralph Nader he would then literally beg on his knees on national television to NOT RUN in 2004.

So now we have Moore pushing for third-party in 2000, begging for no third-party in 2004, and now full circle to pushing for third-party in 2012. This make me think one of two things:

1) Michael Moore didn't learn a damn thing from the 2000 debable that gave America one of the worst presidency in American history (if not the worse as the jury is still out on this one). In other words, he's "Insane"...

or

2) Michael Moore has an agenda that stands to gain significantly if a republican wins back the White House.

What do I mean by #2, you ask? Well it's no secret the larger "Progressive" blog sites made very good revenue during the Bush years. Outrage generates cash (via ad revenue and fund-raising), and there was more than enough outrage to talk about in the era of the most morally corrupt and incompetent presidential administration in recent history.

Then a Democrat, Obama, won the White House and things changed. Every single major "Progressive" blog site has reported losing viewership, and thus ad revenue. Outrage didn't come naturally, thus in many cases it had to be manufactured just to generate "hits" to their site. Long story short, we now have some of these "Progressive" blog sites with a vested monetary interest in seeing a Republican return to power.

"But wait, LT", you may ask, "Moore is not a blogger, he's a film maker". True. So the question we have to ask is did Michael Moore suffer from having a Democrat in white house when it came to his films? Well check this out:

Let's look at 'Fahrenheit 9/11". Yes, Moore did make films prior to this one, but none of those movies had nearly the production budget nor did they have the notoriety that "F9/11" had. As we know, "F9/11" (released Summer 2004) can be best argued as a case against the Bush administration, and it was no secret that it was designed to sway voters to not re-elect Bush.

Needless to say that the film failed in that regard as George W. Bush went on to win a second term. But what it did succeed in doing was making Michael Moore a very wealthy man. With a production and marketing budget of around $12 million, "Fahrenheit 9/11" went to gross over $220 million in domestic and foreign gross revenue. As director, writer, and basically star of the movie, we can confidently say that at least $60 million of that $220 million went into Moore's personal bank account. Not only that, "F9/11" made Moore a power player in Hollywood.

Which is why, his next film "Sicko" had a significantly larger production and marketing budget (around $15 - $16 million). "Sicko" was released Summer 2007 and went on to generate a total domestic and foreign gross revenue of over $36 million . While not the blockbuster of the previous "Fahrenheit 9/11", "Sicko" still was a success critically and financially with about $5 million going into Moore's personal bank account.

While "Fahrenheit 9/11" and "Sicko" dealt with different subject matter, the films have two unique things in common. Both were financial successes and both were released during the Bush presidency.

Now we are 3 years into the Obama presidency. So far, Moore has only released one film during this time, which is "Capitalism: A Love Story". With a Fall 2009 release and a production budget of $20 million, "Capitalism" is Moore's biggest film endeavor to date. The natural question to ask, of course, is how successful was this film?

Short answer? Not very.

To this date, "C:ALS" has a domestic and foreign box office gross of around $17 million. While there's definitely a possibility money was made up in Home DVD sales, for the most part "Capitalism" was a box office bomb and the first of Moore's 20 year long film making career.

Now one can fairly argue coincidence, but between his recent the above interview and his antics over the past couple of years, to argue coincidence would mean having to acknowledge that Michael Moore is, in fact, insane. And by that I mean totally divorced himself from reality.

But we now know that Moore is hawking a new book, and he's gambling to coming out against Obama will result in better book sales. As I see it, Moore needs to heed his own advice about "the road best taken", because I see a serious fall in the making.

1 comment:

Shazza said...

Thanks for this. I see MM is making the rounds to discourage people from voting this year too. He was with Tavis bitching about PBO. i want people to realize that if-God Forbid- we get a Republican in the house, MM and all the other 'Progessives' out there will be fine, they're rich.