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By Ray Pride Pride@moviecitynews.com

Posted Sunday, July 22nd, 2007 - Comments Off on Michael Moore on copyright, communal experience and piracy
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Michael Moore on copyright, communal experience and piracy

In a Sunday afternoon barrage of questions and a handful of answers during an online chat at the Crooks & Liars website, Michael Moore again introduces, but does not fully explain his feelings about copyright and piracy. In fact, he only muddies the waters, while some later commenters in the thicket of replies do bring up some of the issues about eternal corporate control of copyright, which in its beginnings, was of much, much smaller duration. “As for downloading, I made this movie to be seen in a movie theater. If i wanted to make TV or internet movies for a small screen to be watched alone, that’s what I’d do. but i want them seen on the big screen. and you should see it with 200 other people in the theater. From all reports, it’s a powerful experience to see Sicko that way. Having said all that, I am in total disagreement with the copyright laws in this country and I believe that people should be able to share information and art..” A later query: “[W]ho do you think is behind placing a digital copy of the film on the net, and was this done to hurt grosses to make your film look like a failure?” Moore replies, “I think the answer to who was behind it is pretty clear. This is the MASTER digital copy that’s out there. Only people who had big bucks to pay someone off to obtain this could make that happen. I’ve read estimates that its been downloaded anywhere between 2 million and 20 million times around the world. Nonetheless, it is now in the top five grossing docs of all time and the Weinstein Company continue to put it in more and more theaters every weekend. I also believe that those who see it online tell others to go see it, and they do, so in the end it probably doesn’t hurt that much. But that was the intent. To try and kill the film. We will find out who paid to have this done.”


[Photo © 2007 Ray Pride.]

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It shows how out of it I was in trying to be in it, acknowledging that I was out of it to myself, and then thinking, “Okay, how do I stop being out of it? Well, I get some legitimate illogical narrative ideas” — some novel, you know?

So I decided on three writers that I might be able to option their material and get some producer, or myself as producer, and then get some writer to do a screenplay on it, and maybe make a movie.

And so the three projects were “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep,” “Naked Lunch” and a collection of Bukowski. Which, in 1975, forget it — I mean, that was nuts. Hollywood would not touch any of that, but I was looking for something commercial, and I thought that all of these things were coming.

There would be no Blade Runner if there was no Ray Bradbury. I couldn’t find Philip K. Dick. His agent didn’t even know where he was. And so I gave up.

I was walking down the street and I ran into Bradbury — he directed a play that I was going to do as an actor, so we know each other, but he yelled “hi” — and I’d forgot who he was.

So at my girlfriend Barbara Hershey’s urging — I was with her at that moment — she said, “Talk to him! That guy really wants to talk to you,” and I said “No, fuck him,” and keep walking.

But then I did, and then I realized who it was, and I thought, “Wait, he’s in that realm, maybe he knows Philip K. Dick.” I said, “You know a guy named—” “Yeah, sure — you want his phone number?”

My friend paid my rent for a year while I wrote, because it turned out we couldn’t get a writer. My friends kept on me about, well, if you can’t get a writer, then you write.”
~ Hampton Fancher

“That was the most disappointing thing to me in how this thing was played. Is that I’m on the phone with you now, after all that’s been said, and the fundamental distinction between what James is dealing with in these other cases is not actually brought to the fore. The fundamental difference is that James Franco didn’t seek to use his position to have sex with anyone. There’s not a case of that. He wasn’t using his position or status to try to solicit a sexual favor from anyone. If he had — if that were what the accusation involved — the show would not have gone on. We would have folded up shop and we would have not completed the show. Because then it would have been the same as Harvey Weinstein, or Les Moonves, or any of these cases that are fundamental to this new paradigm. Did you not notice that? Why did you not notice that? Is that not something notable to say, journalistically? Because nobody could find the voice to say it. I’m not just being rhetorical. Why is it that you and the other critics, none of you could find the voice to say, “You know, it’s not this, it’s that”? Because — let me go on and speak further to this. If you go back to the L.A. Times piece, that’s what it lacked. That’s what they were not able to deliver. The one example in the five that involved an issue of a sexual act was between James and a woman he was dating, who he was not working with. There was no professional dynamic in any capacity.

~ David Simon