Manufacturing Dissent

Manufacturing Dissent: Uncovering Michael Moore is a 2007 documentary film. It puts forward that filmmaker Michael Moore has used misleading tactics, primarily using on-camera statements by interviewees with personal grievances against Moore as proof. The documentary attempts to expose what the creators say are Moore's misleading tactics and mimics Moore's style of small documentary makers seeking and badgering their target for an interview to receive answers to their charges. The film was made over the course of two years by Canadians Debbie Melnyk and Rick Caine after they viewed Fahrenheit 9/11, Moore's controversial film that attacked the Bush administration and its policies. Melnyk and Caine have stated that when they first sought to make a film about Moore, they held great admiration for what he had done for the documentary genre and set out to make a biography of him. During the course of their research, they became disenchanted with Moore's tactics. The title is a parody of the book Manufacturing Consent by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky, and the film it inspired. In June 2007, Liberation Entertainment Inc. signed an exclusive deal with the filmmakers for all video and theatrical rights in the US & UK. Criticisms of Moore While Moore depicted an evasive Roger Smith, then Chairman of General Motors, in his breakout documentary Roger & Me, the filmmakers of Manufacturing Dissent allege that Moore spoke with Smith twice. Moore had a lengthy exchange with Smith at a May 1987 GM shareholders meeting yet never included it in his piece. The filmmakers found this shocking, as it appeared to contradict what they say is one of the central premises of Moore's film, that corporate CEOs refuse to answer questions or acknowledge any wrongdoing. Another one of their assertions is that in Moore's Academy Award winning film Bowling for Columbine, Moore misleads the audience in describing the safety Canadians feel in their homes. In the film, Moore goes door-to-door in Sarnia, Ontario testing to see if the front doors are locked or unlocked. Moore edits the film to show every home he tries with an unlocked door. According to Manufacturing Dissent'''s filmmakers (but not the film itself), Moore's producer for the segment told them that in reality about 40 percent of the homes had unlocked doors. The film also presents extended footage of the Al Smith annual memorial dinner from which Moore, in Fahrenheit 9/11, took a clip of President George W.