Guardian Unlimited Film | Cinema was soooo boring - until Michael Moore came along

Guardian Unlimited Film | Features | Cinema was soooo boring - until Michael Moore came along: "Being popular and being good are two different things, and cinema is about being popular. It's very simple. At the bottom of every big release there is a lot of money teetering at risk; typically $50-$100 million. To get this money back, the film studios will move heaven, earth and even the ending to make something which is as popular as possible. For most things in life, having products tailored to our desires works very well; it's the basis of marketing. Applied to the arts, though, it just means that Hollywood blockbusters stop being about what the film-maker wants and start being about what the 21 to 25-year-old Midlands male in the focus group wants. It's a bad shift of power.

For me, all cinema has become a vacuous drudge towards an obvious conclusion for I can't remember how long - something that works on the same level as OK! and Hello! magazines. It has ceased to be anything other than escapism. Surely fiction should be so much more potent than fact; with all the artifice, talent and pretty faces available. Hollywood should be able to come up with something that could give real life a run for its money.
Michael Moore, the director of Fahrenheit 9/11, doesn't look like a movie star - he looks quite like a frog, actually. Neither does he have any big budget production values. His secret weapon is his vision of truth. He's using the power of cinema to save the world! Hooray! "


Alex James
The Observer