Michael Moore

Using a fictional organization called "Abortionists for Buchanan," Michael Moore mailed a contribution to the "Pat Buchanan for President" organization. Here, he holds the cancelled check. (©1998 Miramax. All rights reserved.)

www.michaelmoore.com

(b. 1954) Documentary filmmaker who, after more than a decade of print journalism and National Public Radio commentaries, gained wide attention in 1989 with his film Roger and Me, a semi-autobiographical, unabashedly partisan piece of agitprop that took General Motors to task for the abandonment of its Flint, Michigan, birthplace.
    In the summer of 1994, Moore brought his guerrilla ethic to NBC with TV Nation, a crankier, hopped-up 60 Minutes out to score laughs at the expense of the rich and the Republican. The show moved to Fox the next year, bringing along a cast that included Janeane Garofalo and the Zen comedian Steven Wright (Fox didn't renew). Moore's first feature, Canadian Bacon (1995), was the last for the late John Candy, who died during filming of the cold-war satire.
    In 1996, Moore committed his corrosive sarcasm to print in the best-selling Downsize This!, which read like a collection of TV Nation outtakes--one stunt endeavored to have Representative Robert K. "B-1 Bob" Dornan committed to a mental institution (Moore filed a petition in Orange County that Dornan voters be declared "mentally unstable"). On his book tour, Moore earned the wrath of the Borders chain--the largest single vendor of his book--when he refused to cross a store employees' picket line.