Michael Moore Getty Images

By Adrienne Papp

For over 20 years Michael Moore has been examining one of my favorite topics, the horrific impacts corporate America and the credit system has on the everyday lives of Americans.  Passionately digging below the surface of the culprits, the American film-maker with an Irish background does not lose his temper when describing the evil of capitalism. Instead, he narrates with his great sense of humor, while taking the viewer into uncharted territories, asking taboo questions that evoke a sense of outrage, which I believe is long overdue.

Where did the American dream go?  It was originally sold to us based on the ideas of corporate America: banking, consumerism, politics.  Let’s take a longer look at the nightmarish price that families pay now by losing their jobs, their homes and their savings. It is like a sweet and promising love affair gone astray: lies, abuse, betrayal, inferior motives, various self serving agendas…and 14,000 jobs being lost every day.

Does history repeat itself? We know that to be a fact from history classes in school. “John Paul II. said after the Berlin wall came down: ‘Even after communism is gone, there is another system that has its evils,’ and he spoke against capitalism,” says Moore.

We teach about the Holocaust so that it would not get repeated again. But, something inhuman does not need to look like gas chambers. It can look like a love affair. Blinders on everyone, or human nature?

In his movie Michael Moore points out that in America the top one percent has more financial wealth than the 99 percent under them combined. Do you realize how crazy this will look to anthropologists and historians when they dig us up? That we allowed that to happen? They are going to go: Wow! One percent ran everything. And the other 99 percent ran around going: Look at us, we are free!  We live in a democracy!

Oh really? You know what they are going to call us? They are going to call us slaves. 400 years from now, that’s what they are going to call us. They will have a term for it, probably ‘Wage Slaves,’ says Moore.

“They thought they weren’t slaves, because they got a paycheck,” he continues. “The future historians will say: Wow, these people actually had the power and they ceded it to the one percent willingly. The one percent didn’t have to take it through violence. The percentage of Goldman Sachs’ income that went to taxes last year: one percent. It was 34 percent the year before.”

Thank God he has a sense of humor. It easies the spirit when you start thinking about the reality of the topic: Capitalism.

“That sounds like box-office death, doesn’t it? But that’s one of the reasons why I did it,” Moore says.  “Because I thought this is a challenge.  I believe that if you make a really good movie you could call it ‘Shit drying on the wall’ and people will go to see it, if they heard it was a good movie. Because people are always dying to see a good movie.

Humor is the absolute thing in order to survive. Humor is some way to alleviate the darkness. I think humor is a lethal political weapon.”

The Roosevelt footage in the movie is priceless. It makes Americans cry when they watch it, because we think about what could have been, that we could have had these things for 60 years.

“How many people in your country (referring to Europe where I was born) were evicted from their house, because they couldn’t afford to pay their doctor? Zero, of course. Just as in France or Canada or the UK. How many people were thrown out of their homes in America because of medical bills?  It’s the number one cause for foreclosures and bankruptcies.”

Despite the enormous success of his latest movie, in which Michael Moore is trying to arrest Wall Street CEOs and challenge the foundations of America’s economic system, he says he does not have any investments and never owned a share of stocks. I share this with him. Despite of being an economist myself, I never felt any high yield investment was transparent enough for me to even bother worrying. It was also an intuition that proved itself right in the end.

So, how can we change the mess we are in?

“I don’t believe in individual action. The only way we change anything is through collective action,” Moore concludes.

Isn’t it time we wake up and look behind the charms of a love story that we have been part of all along whether consciously or not? Maybe it is not too late!

______________

Share This Article:

Oliver Stone Getty Images

By Adrienne Papp

Oliver Stone is a household name. A master of controversial subjects in award winning movies, a legendary provocateur, a brilliant film-maker, director, writer and producer.  Somewhat of a rebel, an influential visionary and a prominent portrayer of uncensored contemporary political and cultural issues, he does not beat around the bush about any issue.  Why would he? He had his own battle fields to win not only as a war veteran who was awarded a Bronze Star for Gallantry and a Purple Heart, but also as a creative genius in Hollywood with a long list of films behind him, winning one Oscar after another.

His first win was for Midnight Express in 1978, but that was just the beginning of his expanding career and fame as a filmmaker.

In 1986 he directed the political film Salvador, starring Oscar-nominated James Woods. But his big hit was the Vietnam war film Platoon, starring Charlie Sheen, Willem Dafoe, Tom Berenger, and Francesco Quinn. Stone then followed up with the critically acclaimed Wall Street . The movie, starring Charlie Sheen and Michael Douglas, focused on the business world of tycoons and stock brokers. The film won an Oscar for Douglas’ portrayal of the villainous Gordon Gekko.

Stone then directed Tom Cruise in an Oscar-nominated role in Born on the Fourth of July for which Oliver Stone won an Academy Award for Directing, which was his third win to date. Later he took a hand in producing several movies, including the Academy Award-winning film Reversal of Fortune, which movie played a crucial role in my own life as well when I contacted Alan Dershowitz, a respected Professor of Law at Harvard University who represented Claus von Bülow (played by Jeremy Irons) on whose actual case the movie was based.

Oliver Stone then returned to the director’s chair in 1991, once again with two giant films in one year: Val KilmerJim Morrison starring as the legendary in Stone’s psychedelic film The Doors. The Doors was overshadowed by Stone’s colossal film JFK, which Stone himself considers the best of his films. In the film, Jim Garrison tackles the conspiracy behind the murder of America’s president John F. Kennedy. The large cast featured such well-known names as Kevin Costner, Tommy Lee Jones, John Candy, Joe Pesci, Donald Sutherland, and Walter Matthau.

Stone’s energy and commitment to his craft is extraordinary without a doubt. Besides the obvious wonder if the man ever sleeps, his list of movies whether as a producer, writer, or director seems endless. Or at least, endlessly successful continuing onto such films as Nixon and Natural Born Killers, both of which he directed. He then moved onto films such as The People vs. Larry Flynt, Any Given Sunday, The Day Reagan Was Shot, and the epic, Alexander, all of which he produced, in addition to South of the Border, a documentary about Hugo Chavez that Stone also directed.

Now he is shooting Wall Street 2. The cast includes Michael Douglas reprising his Gordon Gekko role 23 years later, Shia LaBeouf, Carrie Mulligan, Frank Langella, Josh Brolin and Susan Sarandon.

I first met Oliver Stone in person at a party in his Santa Monica apartment 13 years ago when I was young and naive, and pretty much intimidated by anything and everybody. I choked up in his charismatic, almost regal presence. He seems preoccupied with his thoughts, as most geniuses are, and burns a hole on your forehead with his eyes as he talks. Yet, there is something very humble and reserved about him, almost as if he just wanted to be left alone and away from the celebrity hype and work behind the scenes undisturbed.

Always controversial, Stone recently expressed his concerns about government, media and politics in an interview: “I’d like America to succeed. I get a little nervous about the country making it. The war in Afghanistan is a disaster. We make enemies. Our news media is terrible, they don’t analyze well. TV in America has reached the Babel-state. It’s all crap and bullshit. There’s no news in America, not even on the best channels. It’s superficial, the news is for profit, it’s selling entertainment.”

I take great joy in the fact that we hear this from Oliver Stone. I have been sickened about the news having been analyzed and interpreted by “experts” on TV who get paid handsomely for telling us what to think and how to interpret who said what and why. I find this offensive and outrageous! Not only the news is becoming opinionated and sensational entertainment, but they keep on discussing the stupidest things while the world is going down the drain faster than water can flow down the gutter. Newscast has become a control system more than anything by literally telling us what to think! Where is the integrity in all this?

And when asked about the current presidency Oliver Stone says,

“The question is: Is there a permanent government that makes people do things like go on with this “War on Terror” and “War on Drugs“? The thing is: We have to fix our own country; we’ve said this for years. How do we break gridlock? How do we get healthcare? How do we get anything done? I’m wondering.”

And, I am wondering too along with most Americans and the World!

The richest, most advanced country on Earth and we hardly do or say much anymore that makes any sense at all.

______________

Share This Article: