Michael Moore wants you to download his new movie Sicko illegally. Or at least he doesn’t mind if you do it.
It’s already been in the news that high quality copies of Sicko have leaked out onto the internet early. In response to that, and the good buzz the film has been getting, The Weinstein Company decided to release it a week earlier on June 22nd instead of June 29th. Till now, Michael Moore has been too busy fighting the US government to comment much on the state of his movie and piracy, but yesterday at a press junket Coming Soon caught him answering the piracy question.
After blaming the US government for leaking the film (get real dude) Moore says, “I'm glad that people were able to see my movie.” He then adds, “I'm not a big believer in our copyright laws. I think they're way too restrictive.” I’m right there with you man. Copyright laws were a good idea when they were invented, but they’ve been stretched way beyond their original intention and these days seem to exist only to protect big, all-powerful corporations.
To Moore’s credit, he puts his money where his mouth is. Not only is he none too happy with the current overbearing, unreasonable restrictiveness of copyright law, he was willing to come out and give the okay to people illegally downloading his movie. He says, “I've never supported this concept of going after Napster. I think the rock bands who fought this were wrong. I think filmmakers are wrong about this. I think sharing's a good thing. I remember the first time I received a cassette tape of a band called The Clash. I became an instant fan of the Clash and then bought their albums after that and went to their concerts and gave them my money… but I first got it for free. C'mon. Everyone in here's either young or were young, and that's how it happens, right?” Finally, someone who gets it. Anyone else smell a ripe topic for Michael Moore’s next movie?
That’s not to say watching it on your computer is the way he’d prefer everyone to see his film. He continues, “I made this film to be seen on a 40-foot screen. I don't even like DVDs. Honest to God, in my lifetime, I might have rented a dozen DVDs, literally gone into a video store and rented a dozen DVDs in my lifetime, because I don't like to see movies that way. I like to see them on the big screen. That's how the filmmaker intended them to be seen, and I really hope people go see this movie on the big screen and sit there on opening weekend with 300 of your fellow Americans, yelling, jeering, cheering, screaming, laughing, crying and leaving the theatre like, 'Woah. Let's have a drink and talk about this.' That's the communal experience and that's why movies never die. They said television would kill the movies, it didn't. They said VCRs would kill the movies, it didn't. Now they're saying this is going to kill the movies. It won't. People want to get out of the house and go to the movies! Nothing's ever going to kill that, and I really hope people will do that on opening weekend.”
Goddamn man. Between this and the brilliance of Sicko, I’m on the verge of forgetting what a ridiculous piece of propaganda F-9/11 was and hopping back on the Michael Moore bandwagon. Maybe that genius social satirist from ‘TV Nation’ isn’t dead after all. Of course he then goes right back to his wacko conspiracy theories about the government and I’m reminded who it is that’s talking. If you want to read the rest of the interview in which Moore starts blaming the United States government for leaking his movie, visit CS here. Even when you agree with him, Michael Moore is tough to take.
