At the culmination of his last muckraking documentary, 2009's "Capitalism: A Love Story," Michael Moore says he was not going to make another film until someone else -- a group, a movement, an individual, anyone -- stepped up with their own dissonant voice.
The controversial filmmaker seems to have gotten exactly what he wanted with the emergence of the Occupy Wall Street movement.
TheWrap's Steve Pond caught up with the documentarian earlier this week to discuss the protest and what he thinks they mean.
On your website a couple of days ago, you put up the sentence, "You are about to witness the end of 'Capitalism: A Love Story.'" Did you make the connection with that film right away?
I was instantly thrilled that there was finally a response. Not to the movie, but to the greed and corruption of the captains of industry who have overplayed their hands in the last few years.
The first time I went down there, somebody tweeted, "I saw Michael Moore, and there was so much joy on his face that if somebody took a picture, the caption should read, 'Finally!'" And I have been kind of giddy about the grassroots nature of this, and how it's just sprung up out of seemingly nowhere, without organization, without dues-paying members, without political leaders.
Also read: Occupy Wall Street Swarms Rupert Murdoch's Home on 'Millionaire's March'
At the end of "Capitalism: A Love Story," the last scene is me by myself wrapping crime-scene tape around the New York Stock Exchange, and pulling a Brinks truck up to Goldman Sachs to get our money back.
And I say at the end of the movie, "I'm tired of being alone and sticking my neck out, and I'm not gonna do this anymore. I'm not gonna make another documentary until I see other people doing things." And I've stuck to my word.
Why?
It really doesn’t do me or other people any good for me to be the poster boy for Fox News or Rush Limbaugh. It's harder for them to attack a movement, and it's harder for them to attack me if there are a million Michael Moores or a million Joe Blows or whoever. Whose picture are they going to put on the screen to bring out the hate?
But this has happened in ways that I never would have imagined. I would have been happy for just a small response, but this has just exploded. And not just here in New York, but across the country. I mean, I get things every day from people every day from the smallest towns saying "We've started an occupy movement in our little town."
In "Capitalism," there's a scene where Wallace Shawn says, "There are little hints that the unimaginable could occur, which is that people could actually become angry at the wealthy." Did it seem unimaginable at that time?
Yes.
