Michael Moore: Documentaries Need More Exposure

Michael Moore – who sat behind me in the newly renovated State Theater in downtown Traverse City, Michigan last week – is mad as hell, and he’s not going to take it anymore. Somehow, that doesn’t surprise me. This time, he’s ticked that documentaries and foreign films are being shut out of mainstream theaters.

“My new year’s resolution is to sit down with the heads of exhibition chains and have them devote one screen in their multiplexes to nonfiction and foreign films,” Moore said during a break in the Sundance action.

The director of four of the 12 top-grossing docs of all time – “Fahrenheit 9/11,” “Roger and Me,” “Bowling for Columbine,” and the just-announced Oscar nominee “Sicko” – wants to use his influence to make it happen. “If not me, then who?” he said in a Hollywood Reporter story. “I’m the one who got through the door.” 

Moore has already taken action to bring docs and foreign films to light with his Traverse City Film Festival, where he helps promote fellow indie filmmakers. He says declining box office numbers of indie films is partly because they’re taken out of theaters before word-of-mouth buzz has a chance to generate interest.

“People want to see documentaries, but there’s a disconnect between that desire and the exhibitors out there,” adds Moore. “We’re not asking for charity. This could be on the 15th screen of a multiplex that would otherwise have the sixth showing of the new Harry Potter movie. Some of these films make $200 or $300 per screen.”

Moore says he’s spoken with marketers and publicists around the country who’ve agreed to help publicize the campaign, and plans to announce details of the initiative at a news conference timed around the Oscars. He hopes to break these films out of “the art house ghetto” by having them play in suburban theaters throughout Middle America.

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