[HPFGU-OTChatter] Amanda --->Cold dead hands (or a lawyer), was Bowling for Columbine

[Kathryn Cawte]

~Amanda
 
There is some serious inquiry called Bowling for Columbine? Really? Just
when you think life can't get any weirder.
 
Me -

While Michael Moore has a kind of humorous approach to his film making it is
a documentary not a comedy show. He uses humour (such as my comment about
him opening the bank account and then when he had his hands on the gun
asking the bank manager if he thought it was maybe a little dangerous to be
handing out guns in a bank) but he does not make jokes. The title comes from
the fact that various media types have sought to blame the massacre at
Columbine High on Marilyn Manson music, on Hollywood blockbusters, on video
games, and even on the fact that the kids involved liked wearing black
clothing (as in people have blamed it on each of those thing not them all
lumped together), without ever really investigating their motives. All these
things were just convenient handles to hang blame on. The last activity the
kids took part in before they went home, loaded up on guns and started
shooting at their schoolmates was bowling class - so it makes just as much
sense to blame it on bowling.

Incidentally he spoke with some of the survivors of the event and got them
to go with him and get KMart to ban all non-hunting ammunition from their
stores since the bullets (including the ones still in the young people he
was with) came from KMart. So he even managed to have some actual concrete
results from his film - unfortunately they didn't include getting Charlton
Heston to admit that turning up with an NRA convention just down the road
from somewhere that has experienced a school shooting only days or weeks
later was even slightly tactless let alone get an apology out of him.

Incidentally the film was shown at Cannes at the request of the judges (even
though they don't normally do documentaries) and won the oscar for best
documentary (or factual film or whatever it's called) so no it is not in
anyway a comedy.

K