http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/20/movies/20head.html ----------------------------------------snip The event was the screening of Mr. Moore’s latest film, “Capitalism: A Love Story” at the Toronto International Film Festival and, as with most premieres, the sidewalk was packed with people waiting for the limousine doors to open.
But as the driver pulled the van close enough to the curb to clip the shoulder of a Toronto policeman holding back the surging crowd, it became evident that this crowd wanted more than autographs. There were picketers, homemade protest signs and people dressed as 19th-century robber barons. Even the miners, whom Mr. Moore invited to bring attention to their bitter two-month strike against the mining giant Vale Inco in Sudbury, Ontario, looked wide-eyed at the spectacle last Sunday. “Uh, oh,” Mr. Moore said, looking out the front-seat passenger window. “They’ve got pitchforks.” Mr. Moore, a veteran of political action and perhaps the most successful documentary filmmaker in history, had little reason to worry. Getting out of the van, he waded into the crowd and greeted the protesters, whose pitchforks were directed at the bankers and bureaucrats behind last year’s huge Wall Street bailout. He then entered the Elgin Theater and introduced the miners (wearing their full work gear) to the news media, the warm mood broken only slightly when a reporter from “Entertainment Tonight” asked sarcastically whether Mr. Moore had arrived in a Cadillac. “I don’t notice,” he said, asking if anyone knew the make. “Jeez, I think it was a Ford,” one of the miners said, squinting into the paparazzi flashes that lighted up his face. Canada has been friendly territory since 1989, when Mr. Moore came to the festival here to hawk his first film, a 16-millemeter documentary called “Roger & Me,” about how General Motors abandoned Flint, Mich. Still living on weekly unemployment checks of $98, Mr. Moore was a surprise winner of the festival’s People’s Choice Award and his unlikely career rise began. Since then, in films like “Fahrenheit 9/11,” “Bowling for Columbine” and “Sicko,” his hulking figure shambling toward company executives and bewildered security guards has become the postindustrial version of Chaplin’s Little Tramp. This year’s entry is not a sortie on a particular industry; it is a frontal assault on the very idea of American free enterprise — a beast, he called it in an address to the Toronto audience, “and you can’t tie it down with a flimsy piece of rope.” [...] -raghu. -- Never say, "Oops!"; always say, "Ah, interesting!" _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
