Months and months after everybody else, I finally saw Bowling for Columbine, which I rented on DVD. I had heard so much about the movie and I had seen parts of it on tv or over the Internet, so I felt like it was a second viewing. Watching this documentary months after everybody else gave me a strange perspective on it. I couldn’t stop thinking that Michael Moore is a strange character. He obviously deeply cares about the subject of the movie and yet he cannot seem to help putting himself at the center of the stage, as if the whole thing was somehow about him in the end. As we watched this relatively young man struggle to carry his heavy frame around, Blork made an interesting observation. « This guy would be really daring if he made a movie about the American problem with obesity. »
There is one place where Moore happily took the backstage position: instead of doing the usual director’s audio commentary track, Moore chose to let the crew speak, particularly the people at so called low-level positions. Receptionists, production assistants and interns sat around in a recording studio and made comments about their experience while watching the movie.
The resulting soundtrack is hilarious yet scary. These young crew members don’t have much to say about the movie’s subject, which is surprising in itself. They hardly comment on the actual documentary, except to make fun of the people being interviewed. After 15 minutes or so, they completely let go of the movie to joke around about stealing office supplies (« You got a stapler? I got nothing! »), about the tedious tasks they had to do for the production, and about the fact that they didn’t know what it meant to be American (« That is so American. But what is an American? »). They even make admiring comments about some of the guns shown in the movie!
At one point, one of the crew members notes that maybe they should start commenting on the movie again. « Nobody is listening to this anyway », answers one of them. « Except maybe for the boss and a bunch of stoned college kids in a dorm, at 3am », replies another one. There’s a short silence followed by a burst of laughter.
I wonder what Michael Moore thought when he listened to that commentary track? Was he disappointed that he didn’t seem to have any influence on the young people who worked on his movie? Or was he simply cracking up while listening to the audio track?
