Moore outrage: He taps anger over 'Sicko' health care system

Susan Whitall / The Detroit News

PETOSKEY -- The man dressed in artfully disheveled black looks out of place in the parking lot of the Petoskey Cinema, a sleepy cineplex in this northern Michigan resort town of 6,000. The Michael Moore staffer has flown in on the red-eye flight from Los Angeles via New York with a print of Moore's new documentary film "Sicko" that he and his director boss must scan for errors.

They call it an answer print, the first print struck from a negative, and Moore is amused that his studio can't understand why he insists on having the print flown in to a popcorn-scented theater in Petoskey and not a professional screening room in New York or Los Angeles.

"This is the kind of place where people will see my film," says Moore, who's just stepped out of his everyman Chrysler minivan wearing a Michigan State ball cap and black Ray-Bans. "I want to see it the way they will."

"Sicko," which opens nationally June 29, is Moore's jaundiced look at the American health care system, which he declares not just broken but wrong-headed at its very core. Health care, he argues, should not be for profit any more than public education, firefighting or any other vital public service.

"I used to say 'Sicko' is a comedy about the 50 million people who don't have health insurance," Moore says, "but it's really about the people who do have health insurance."

Moore is the unlikeliest of intellectual firebrands, a native Michigan son who went from terrorizing the nuns at a Catholic school in Flint to becoming, at age 53, an international icon for a new style of documentary film, grossing $119,194,771 domestically for "Fahrenheit 9/11" and becoming a national byword for injecting new life into the documentary form.

"Sicko" kicks off with a Mooreian flourish; a real-life President Bush malapropism about OB/GYNs not being able to love women anymore. ("I only have Bush in there to get a laugh. He has to earn his way in," Moore quips), but while humor abounds, the film is more earnest in its do-gooder aspect than his past work.

There are heart-rending tales -- of the child who died because her health insurer said she wasn't at the right hospital; of the man who has to choose which fingertip he can afford to have reattached; and the story of the Sept. 11 rescue workers who weren't covered by the city of New York health insurance.

Moore is gleeful that the U.S. premiere for "Sicko" will be held not in New York or Hollywood, but in tiny Bellaire on June 16 to benefit the Antrim County Democratic Party.

"I did it at my wife's request," Moore says. Kathleen Glynn is vice chairwoman of the Antrim County Democrats.

Dems sprouting up north

In the past, you'd have to go to a hippie music festival like Blissfest to find a Democrat in northern Michigan. But after being almost underground in this bastion of pickups, luxury cottages and Republicans, the Democrats have grown from less than 30 members in 2003 to 250 active members today, said party Chairman Jim McKimmey.

Encouraged by the Moores, the party also has become more proactive about community outreach, helping fund local food pantries, dispensing Christmas gifts and financial help throughout Antrim County. To offset any criticism from Republicans, Moore says he's also offering "Sicko" for Republican fundraisers as well, if they can show him that they are doing similar community service.

When asked about all the Democratic hoopla over the "Sicko" premiere, Antrim County Republican Party Co-Chairwoman Carol Perrin said, "I'd rather not comment."

Moore is eager to move people to action with the film, but he also is mindful that a Michael Moore film is now a high-stakes, international entertainment phenomenon.

According to Box Office Mojo, "Roger and Me," which documented a devastated, post-General Motors Flint in 1989, grossed $6,707,368. "Bowling for Columbine" earned $21,576,018; then there was the quantum leap to "Fahrenheit 9/11," which is the top-grossing documentary.

Moore knows "Sicko" is expected to open more like a blockbuster than a documentary."It's a Michael Moore film. You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll get mad -- not at me!" Moore chortles.

"I set out first and foremost to make an entertaining movie you'll go to on Friday night, not to make a political statement."

His critics agree that he's blown up the traditional church and state boundaries of documentary filmmaking.

"They're polemics more than anything else," says pop culture historian Michael Marsden. "He doesn't make any bones about it. He's not doing balanced coverage, but then neither is Fox News. But then, 'Roger and Me' was startling because it was so different, so remarkable in terms of how he approached it."

Oscar-winning Michigan documentarian Sue Marx echoes that, but she "can't fault him. He's a really smart guy and the scope of his work is remarkable," Marx says.

"I don't necessarily agree with some of the tactics he uses, but he has pushed documentary films into the forefront and given them a boost."

There are no confrontations in "Sicko," although there is a funny scene when he sails into Guantanamo Bay wearing the Spartan ball cap, yelling "Give these 9/11 workers the same health care you're giving al-Qaida!"

Moore argues passionately that "Sicko" is a nonpartisan film.

"Not everybody has a son in Iraq, not everybody worked for General Motors, but everybody has had some problem with health insurance, either they or somebody they know," Moore says.

"We should not have a liberal/conservative debate on this. We should all find some common ground on this issue, and say, 'every American should be covered, now how can we do it?' "

Of course, there's no getting around the fact that this is Michael Moore, the demon of the conservative talk show circuit, although he says in public he's now greeted with applause, "like in a Jimmy Stewart movie," a direct turnaround from the days just after his infamous anti-Bush rant at the 2003 Academy Awards.

'A spiritual place'

At the Petoskey Cinema, a gaggle of Antrim County Democrats has viewed the film with Moore.

"I didn't know who he was until after 9/11 and the Oscars," says the cinema manager Chris Thompson. "He went out there and did the most unpopular thing at the time, denounce President Bush. I was among the typical Americans at the time who said, 'Oh, my God, how could he do that?' Then I met him.

"Anyone who comes in here who's famous, they all sneak away. I've never seen Mr. Moore decline to talk to someone. Half the time he misses the beginning of the movie because he's talking to people who want to shake his hand."

Movie-going is one of Moore's favorite hobbies, and he pops up in Gaylord, Petoskey and Bellaire. Pressed for other favorite activities, he says: "We like to read. I walk. It's pretty sedate."

He and Glynn will go to the brewpub Short's in Bellaire, although he doesn't drink. "I regret that, because I would be a great drinker," Moore jokes. " Never drank beer, never did any drugs, never smoked cigarettes."

He does try to get over to St. Luke's Catholic Church as much as he can when he's in town.

Moore's Catholic boyhood helped shape the core values that are on display in "Sicko," he says. On Thursday, he was in the minivan driving to Kalamazoo, where he would screen "Sicko" privately for the retired nuns who taught him at St. Joseph's in Davison.

"This film comes from a spiritual place," Moore says, "so I wanted to go to the headquarters of the sisters who taught me in my early years. They had a profound impact on me."

The idea that it's about "the we, not the me," came from the nuns. "Instead of calling it 'socialized medicine,' it should be called 'Christianized medicine.' "

"This was one of the ground rules that was laid down by Jesus. He said, 'I'm going to ask you a bunch of questions when you get to the pearly gates. When I was hungry did you feed me? When I was homeless, did you give me shelter? When I was sick, did you take care of me? And if you didn't do these things, and you didn't do these for the least of my people, then I'm going to have to say that you can't come in the big house.' "

You can reach Susan Whitall at (313) 222-2156 or swhitall@detnews.com.