I also saw "Sicko" this weekend ... and noticed a similar phenomenon in my Georgia (metro-Atlanta) location. Everyone was talking about what they could do to fix this problem.
From a diary on Kos after a showing in Maine:
What was of interest was what happened afterward: first the applause, but then the number of people that milled around the theatre to talk about it, some literally just outside the theatre door.
Anecdotal evidence, interesting nevertheless.
What this implies carries over to a broader point. Circumstances in the US have made support for a national healthcare system a minority, partisan, Left position. The healthcare companies who have gotten fat, rich, and happy under the current scheme have been able to control debate. Anyone in the US who isn't a fool or a tool knows the US healthcare system is non-responsive as everyone has either had a run-in with the system or knows someone who has had a run-in with the system.
Mr. Moore was able to counter decades of corporate propaganda with one film. With his film he successfully communicated to the audience, "You're not alone in your experience."
This is a powerful message.
A famous social-psychology experiment found when a person thinks their assessment of reality is not supported by other people their stress level: doubt and self-questioning (stress,) spikes. The stress leads to anomie undercutting the psychological underpinnings of the social and political mass movement necessary to take on the companies.
Staying within the broader point, the success of the film (attendence is rising and the film is being shown in more theaters, unheard of in the US for a documentary) indicates the Left is being defeated in political debate because we don't use all the tools to engage in debate.
The budget for Sicko was $9 million (US.) That's a lot of money but it's nothing for a mass-distribution, 'Hollywood' film. With the recent advances in digital film equipment the production costs of making a film have plummetted. It would be nice to know if Mr. Moore used 'old' or 'new' technology to make Sicko and how much of that $9 million was used for advertising and distribution.
Me know nuthin' 'bout film making. Oh, I know you point the camera at what you want the audience to see but methinks it's a wee tad more complicated than that. (I have been given to understand it greatly helps if the subject is in focus, for example.) But I do know film is the single best communication medium we have. To illustrate, from the viewer's perspective the communication is equal as it's one-to-one because of the way the brain processes information; from the film's perspective it's one-to-many and unequal as the exact same message is being transmitted to an audience.
Anyway, I think it's very encouraging to know it's not the message that's being defeated in the modern communication wars and when we 'show up,' as it were, we really can make a difference. A doo run-run-run, a doo run-run
As I've said here before, the new front line isn't the shop floor or the street protest, it's the media machine. So far the Left has been largely useless at doing anything about this. Blogs are a start, but they're no more than that - they're easy to marginalise and can be painted as being outside of the mainstream.
What changes hearts and minds is two things.
Mr. Moore made a film about a serious problem here in the US and the audience is responding. We don't know, at this point, if it will prove to be a spark igniting a fire, a turning point, or if it will be forgotten in 3 months. All that can be said now is it's a small victory. But it is a victory and I'll take it.
One guy can only do what one guy can do. It is my understanding it takes at least a year to bring a film to market and then another couple of months promoting it. Say a couple of months recover time and we're at 18 months per project. (I hope someone who knows what they're talking about will chime in! ;-) If this is accurate, and I have no reason to claim it is, we need 18 film-makers making films as fast as they can to have one film released per month.
There are other documentary film-makers working away but they don't get the publicity Mr. Moore does. Nor do they get their films screened. The normal documentary in the US shows on 10 to 15 screens before disappearing into DVD-land. Eugene Jarecki made an indictment of the US military-industrial-political system in 2005, Why We Fight. At the height of its run it showed on 64 screens (Whoopie) with a US gross of ~$1.5 million (Whoopie.) The reviews I've seen of the film are complimentary. Sony Classics picked-up the DVD rights so it should be rather good. I don't know. I haven't been able to see it. Has anyone on ET seen it? The winner of the Oscar for 2005 was March of the Penquins. March won the Oscar, grossed ~$78 million, was a huge success, and appeared - after winning the Oscar - at the highest point on 2,506 screens in the US. In my local outlet there are stacks and stacks of copies of the DVD.
I'm not going to cavail MotP was a success as it disseminated information about GW that certainly needed to be broadcast. But I do think the information contained in Why We Fight was, and is, more critical.
So I have to gloss my own argument by adding, those 18 film-makers required to release one film a month have to be really, really, good film-makers who don't stretch the audience too much.
Moral: If you're going to make a 'downer' film include cute fuzzy animals.
and keep the hard information in the background.
I've been focusing on documentaries since the same problems are even more critical in narrative film-making. (Correction requested!) Using the Warren Beatty film Reds as the prototype we discover the driving force, the foreground (?), of the film is the relationship between Jack Reed and Louis Bryant. That's where, if I'm not mistaken, the audience invests, emotionally. The political background, my main interest in the subject, is kept very much as background or stage-setting -- if those are the words I want.
All of the above was written so I could say: we need to encourage "our" film-makers and budding film-makers. Nothing is more discouraging than to shed your blood only to have 12 people show up to fill a 500 seat auditorium. We need to show them that if they tear their guts out making a film there is an audience who will come and be moved by their work. A doo run-run-run, a doo run-run
