Bowling for Columbine

Plot synopsis:
In Michael Moore's discussions with various figures, including South Park co-creator Matt Stone, the National Rifle Association's then-president Charlton Heston, and musician Marilyn Manson, he seeks to explain why the Columbine massacre occurred and why the United States has a high violent crime rate (especially crimes involving guns).The film title originates from the story that Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, the two Colorado high school students who were responsible for the Columbine High School massacre/shooting spree on April 20, 1999, attended a school bowling class early that morning, at 6:00 a.m., before they committed the attacks at school starting at 11:19 a.m. Later investigation showed the bowling session was based on mistaken recollections, and Glenn Moore of the Golden Police Department concluded that they were absent from school on the day of the attack.Nevertheless, Michael Moore incorporates the bowling theme into his documentary. For example, Moore films men of the Michigan militia using bowling pins for their target practice. When interviewing former classmates of the two boys, Moore notes that the students took a bowling class in place of physical education. When he notes that this might have very little educational value; the girls he interviews generally agree. They note how Harris and Klebold led a very introverted lifestyle and had a very careless attitude toward the game, and that nobody thought twice about it. Moore asks if the school system is responding to the real needs of their students or if they are reinforcing fear. Moore also interviews two young residents of Oscoda, Michigan in a local bowling alley, and learns that guns are relatively easy to come by in the small town. Eric Harris spent some of his early years in Oscoda while his father was serving in the U.S. Air Force.Moore compares gun ownership and gun violence in other countries with that in the United States and concludes that there is no connection between gun ownership and gun violence. In search of the reason for the United States' trigger mania, Moore discovers a culture of fear nurtured by the government and the media. He says that fear leads Americans to arm themselves, to gun manufacturers' advantage. Moore suggests sarcastically that bowling could have been just as responsible for the attacks on the school as could have Marilyn Manson; or even Bill Clinton, who launched bombing attacks on several countries around that time."Free gun for opening a bank account"An early scene depicts how Moore discovered a bank in Michigan that would give customers a free hunting rifle when they made a deposit of a certain size into a time deposit account. The film follows Moore as he goes to the bank, makes his deposit, fills out the forms, and awaits the result of a background check before walking out of the bank carrying a brand new Weatherby hunting rifle. Just before leaving the bank, Moore jokingly asks, "Do you think it's a little dangerous handing out guns at bank?"About 20 minutes into the film, The Beatles song "Happiness Is a Warm Gun" plays during a montage in which the following footage is shown:People buying guns; residents of Virgin, Utah, a town that passed a law requiring all residents to own guns; people firing rifles at carnivals and shooting ranges; footage of Denise Ames operating an assault rifle; footage of Carey McWilliams, a visually impaired gun enthusiast; footage of Gary Plauche killing Jeff Doucet, a man who had kidnapped his son and molested him; the suicide of Budd Dwyer; a 1993 murder wherein Emilio Nuñez shot his ex-wife Maritza Martin to death during an interview on the Telemundo program Ocurrió Asi; the suicide of Daniel V. Jones; a man who takes his shirt off and is shot during a riot."Weapons of mass destruction"Moore links the violent behavior of the Columbine shooters to the presence in Littleton to a large defense establishment manufacturing rocket technology. It is implied that the presence of this facility within the community, and the acceptance of institutionalized violence as a solution to conflict, contributed to the mindset that led to the massacre. Moore conducts an interview with Evan McCollum, Director of Communications at a Lockheed Martin plant near Columbine, and asks him:"So you don't think our kids say to themselves, 'Dad goes off to the factory every day, he builds missiles of mass destruction. What's the difference between that mass destruction and the mass destruction over at Columbine High School?'"McCollum responded: "I guess I don't see that specific connection because the missiles that you're talking about were built and designed to defend us from somebody else who would be aggressors against us.""What a Wonderful World" (montage)
The film then cuts to a montage of rather treacherous American foreign policy decisions, with the delibrate intent of proving wrong McCollum's statement by citing examples of how the United States has frequently been the aggressor nation. This montage is set to the song "What a Wonderful World" performed by Louis Armstrong. The following is a transcript of the onscreen text in the Wonderful World segment:1953: U.S. overthrows Prime Minister Mohammed Mosaddeq of Iran. U.S. installs Shah as dictator.1954: U.S. overthrows democratically-elected President Arbenz of Guatemala. 200,000 civilians killed.1963: U.S. backs assassination of South Vietnamese President Diem.1963-1975: American military kills 4 million people in Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War.September 11, 1973: U.S. stages 1973 Chilean coup d'état in Chile. Democratically-elected President Salvador Allende assassinated. Dictator Augusto Pinochet installed. 5,000 Chileans murdered.1977: U.S. backs military rulers of El Salvador. 70,000 Salvadorans and four American nuns killed.1980s: U.S. trains Osama bin Laden and fellow terrorists to kill Soviets. CIA gives them $3 billion.1981: Reagan administration trains and funds the Contras. 30,000 Nicaraguans die.1982: U.S. provides billions of dollars in aid to Saddam Hussein for weapons to kill Iranians.1983: The White House secretly gives Iran weapons to kill Iraqis.1989: CIA agent Manuel Noriega (also serving as President of Panama) disobeys orders from Washington. U.S. invades Panama and removes Noriega. 3,000 Panamanian civilian casualties.1990: Iraq invades Kuwait with weapons from U.S.1991: U.S. enters Iraq. Bush reinstates dictator of Kuwait.1998: Clinton bombs possible weapons factory in Sudan. Factory turns out to be making aspirin.1991 to present: American planes bomb Iraq on a weekly basis. U.N. estimates 500,000 Iraqi children die from bombing and sanctions.2000-2001: U.S. gives Taliban-ruled Afghanistan $245 million in aid.Sept. 11, 2001: Osama bin Laden uses his expert CIA training to murder 3,000 people.The montage then ends with handheld-camera footage of the second WTC plane crash, the audio consisting solely of the hysterical reactions of the witnesses, recorded by the camera's microphone."Climate of Fear"Moore attempts to contrast this with the attitude prevailing in Canada, where (he states) gun ownership is at similar levels to the U.S. He illustrates his thesis by visiting neighborhoods in Canada near the Canada-U.S. border, where he finds front doors unlocked and much less concern over crime and security.In this section, a montage of possible causes for gun violence are stated by several social pundits. Many claim links with violence in television, cinema, and computer games; toward the end of the montage, however, a series of statements all claim Marilyn Manson's responsibility. Following this is an interview between Moore and Manson backstage in Manson's dressing room after a concert. Manson shares his views about the United States' climate with Moore, stating that he believes U.S. society is based on "fear and consumption", citing Colgate commercials that promise "if you have bad breath, people are not going to talk to you" and other commercials containing fear-based messages, and that the media would rather point at him as the one responsible for the killings instead of the President, who ordered more bombings on Kosovo that specific day than any other. When Moore asks Manson what he would say to the students at Columbine, Manson replies, "I wouldn't say a single word to them; I would listen to what they have to say, and that's what no one did.""Statistics"Moore follows up his climate of fear thesis by exploring the popular explanations as to why gun violence is so high in the United States. He examines Marilyn Manson as a cause, but states that Germany listens to more Marilyn Manson and has a greater Goth population than does the United States, with less gun violence (Germany: 381 incidents per year). He examines violent movies, but notes that they have the same violent movies in other countries, showing The Matrix with French subtitles (France: 255 incidents per year). He also examines video games, but states that violent video games come from Japan (Japan: 39 incidents per year). He concludes his comparisons with the suggestion that the United States' violent history is the cause, yet negating that with the violent histories of Germany, France, and the United Kingdom (UK: 68 incidents per year), Moore ends his segment with gun-related deaths-per-year statistics of a few major countries.United States - 11,127 (3.601/100,000) Germany 381 (0.466/100,000) France 255 (0.389/100,000) Canada 165 (0.484/100,000) United Kingdom 68 (0.109/100,000) Australia 65 (0.292/100,000) Japan 39 (0.030/100,000)"K-Mart refund"Moore takes two Columbine victims, Mark Taylor and Richard Castaldo, to the American superstore K-Mart headquarters in Troy, Michigan, ostensibly to claim a refund on the bullets still lodged in their bodies. After a number of attempts to evade the issue, a K-Mart spokesperson says that the firm will change its policy and phase out the sale of handgun ammunition; this comes after Moore and the victims go to the nearest K-Mart store, purchase all of their ammunition, and return the next day with several members of the media. "We've won," says Moore, in disbelief. "That was more than we asked for.""Charlton Heston and Me" (The Charlton Heston interview)At the climax, Moore visits actor and current National Rifle Association chair Charlton Heston in his Hollywood home for an up-close and personal interview where Moore asks him about American firearm violence. Heston's long response includes the suggestion that the United States has a "history of violence" and more "mixed ethnicity" than other countries, which he claims contributes to the skyrocketing violent crime. Moore then asks Heston if he'd like to apologize for leading NRA rallies in Flint after the Buell Elementary School shooting and in Littleton after the Columbine shooting. Heston (caught off-guard and slightly angered) tells Moore that neither he nor the NRA are responsible for the gun violence in America and claims that guns don't kill people... the wrong people who have guns do. Heston claims that it's every American's right to bear arms. When Moore begins asking more abrasive questions about his role in NRA rallies and support of gun ownership and Heston's opposition to handgun control laws to limit or make illegal sales of all firearms, Heston walks out of the interview and firmly tells Moore and his film crew to leave his house.

Tags: brainwashing, violence, satire, murder, stupid

Review:
It's nearby, they speak English almost indistinguishable from standard American, it feels `lighter over there,' you get government health care, there are plenty of guns but very little killing, and you don't even have to lock your doors.The fundamental question `Bowling for Columbine' asks is:  What's responsible for the exceptionally high level of killing in America?
Two things, according to Moore, are primary causes:  the US media, which, as he shows, fans up fear constantly among the American populace; and the government in Washington, which solves everything by bombing people somewhere.
The result of this lethal combination delineated by Moore, particularly since 9/11, is that Americans aren't very happy people: they live in a constant state of rage, perturbation, and fear, when they're not disolved in tears for the dead who're falling in the houses and streets and schools of the country on a daily basis.`Bowling for Columbine' isn't ultimately very cheery or uplifting stuff.
Because of its significance to Americans on both personal and national levels, "Bowling for Columbine" has to be considered the most important (and it's becoming the most watched) US documentary film in many a year.
His methods have not radically changed, but they've modulated into something subtler and less self-serving, such that he has an ability to talk more easily with potential adversaries --  bank employees giving out rifles with new accounts; Michigan militiamen; even Charlton Heston, the haughty President of the National Rifle Association, who invites Moore into his house to film a conversation.
For credibility among US gun-toters like Heston, Moore has an ace in the hole:  he's an expert marksman and a lifetime member of the NRA.Heston walks out because he hasn't good answers; in fact he really hasn't any answers at all.
That's what nobody has been doing.'  In between telling interviews, Moore has various ways of documenting contexts:  an animation, recited statistics with images, and astonishing film clips like the Fifties one of cops admiring how realistic some kids' toy guns are, and the one from a metal-detector company pushing for dress codes in schools, showing a boy with baggy pants unloading a whole arsenal.
And typical of the "head-stuck-in- the-sand" mentality of the far right, they are angry for his work, not at the facts.This movie is well done and if you're left, right, in-between, gun nut, or responsible gun owner it is definitely worth viewing.I suspect most of the negative comments posted about this movie at IMDB and similar sites are by people who haven't seen the movie.
Documentary by Michael Moore about the NRA and America's fascination with guns.
It all culminates in an interview with the head of the NRA Charlton Heston.Riveting, chilling, hilarious and absolutely incredible movie despite what your views are on the gun issue.
I have two main complaints regarding this movie: First, I felt that Michael Moore sometimes crossed lines in his interviews that in no way seemed to further his cause or drive his point home.
It appears that americans have lost perspective, not noticing the real dangers of life: pollution, traffic, e.t.c. With TV-channels telling stories only about violence and terrorism and populistic politicians scaring people to vote for them Americans trust only in themselves.Michael Moore tries with this movie to make the Americans consider and think for themselves being rationals, and to tell the rest of the world how the American society works.
Also Moore inserted a shot of Heston waving a gun over his head that was taped at a NRA function a year later in some other location and then cut in so it looked like it was part of his speech in Denver after the Columbine shooting.
Moore traveled the country to talk to all those that make up the spectrum of the American society, he traveled to the scenes of some of the more recent American tragedies, made impromptu stops in corporations such as Kmart (where the boys from Columbine bought the ammunition used in the shooting), and traveled to Canada to get an outside or foreign opinion.
The idea was to move away from the documentary style of `talking heads'; he wanted a film that would not only touch a chord with the American people but one that would also be readily watched.
I thought it was a brilliant documentary and that its presentation of the facts was spot on.However, the scene where Moore talks about a bomber on display in the desert and the army plaque beneath it always made me wonder exactly how honest he was being, since what he claimed the plaque said sounded too outrageous to me.
It kept on grating me until about a year later I began to actually research his film and found that nearly every single thing Moore presents in BFC is either heavily manipulated facts or bald-faced deceptions.Take the scene of him getting a gun for opening an account at a bank.
Talk about complete deception from every angle.What's worse is that he is even hypocritical in how he talks about America's culture of fear and how the media tries to instill fear in the population, and yet that is EXACTLY what BFC is: a film that presents manipulated facts in order to create fear.
Probably the best refutation of BFC one can find is the in-depth article by Dave Kopel called "Bowling Truths" that literally shreds BFC from beginning to end, showing it to be -- as he puts it -- more of a 'mockumentary' in the vein of "This is Spinal Tap" than a serious documentary outlining anything close to reality.In terms of gun control issues, if you really want an intelligent look at the problems of gun control, check out the episode of Penn & Teller's Bullsh*t on gun control.
Okay people prepare to be educated Moore sets himself up as some working class intellectual but the gist of this documentary is based on stats , half truths and most importantly of all - Points that seem to have been missed out on purpose For example BOWLING FOR COLUMBINE centres around " America's astronomical murder rate " insinuating that the murder rate in that country is head and above any other country when it's not .
In fact, he has several conservative moments, including one where he doffs his lifetime NRA membership card before Charlton Heston.Moore is quick to point out the paranoid American blame cycle that is the stain on our collective carpet.
Moore Bowls Gutter Balls in Columbine Filmby Ari ArmstrongWhat are we to make of a documentary that claims to discuss violence in America, but fails to even mention a policy responsible for raising U.S. homicide rates at least 25%?At the end of his film Bowling for Columbine, director Michael Moore bowls a strike.
Scapegoating is precisely what Moore does, only his victim is the American gun owner rather than Marilyn Manson.At one point, Moore places a picture of the young victim of the Buell school shooting against a ledge of Charlton Heston's house.
Moore told us he was filming a movie about guns in America.
His adventures take him from Littleton, CO, the site of the 1999 Columbine shooting, to Canada, to Flint, and finally to NRA President Charlton Heston's home for a climatic interview.Moore seemed able to control his leftist view on life at various points during the movie but his overwhelming pathos in life permeates the entire film.
Moore, like many Liberals who live in the big cities have three truths in life (1) the rich screw everyone, (2) the government only cares for the rich and the military, and last but not least (3) America would be a better place if white Americans were not so racist.
Moore then demands to know why the NRA is so insensitive as to hold a pro-gun rally in Denver only ten days after Columbine and one in Flint eight months after the Buell shooting.
Two cameras were involved, but for one angle the cameraman would have had to race ahead of Heston to film Moore holding the picture.Is Bowling for Columbine manipulative and biased in the director's point of view?
One distracting point is where Moore idiotically implies that the CIA gave millions to the billionaire bin-Laden and taught al-Qaeda how to fly planes into buildings, but if you can get past his leftist social agenda, Moore has created a very thoughtful film that is not as anti-gun as it is anti-violence but with a little anti-military and pro-socialist health care thrown in as well..
I will not completely revoke the fact that Michael Moore's movie Bowling for Columbine had some interesting, and funny parts.
He would have been better served by speaking with college sociology and political science professors, policemen, and gun owners, who might have provided intelligent discourse on the nature of American violence, rather than celebrities, such as Marylin Manson and Charlton Heston, or the brother of Oklahoma City bomber Terry Nichols.This movie is not all bad.
His style of editing is quite entertaining, as is the clip of Chris Rock commenting on gun violence.If you understand that Moore has an extremely blatant political agenda, by all means watch this movie.
I am generally in support of an armed citizenry, and I have never liked Michael Moore, yet I aim to criticize "Bowling for Columbine" apart from these general views, in the sense that it fails as a documentary by not encouraging much real curiosity or real reflective sympathy.To begin with, his framing of the central questions is way off the mark, juxtaposing rare events involving children against an imposing number of American murders that reflects very different phenomena.
My point here is not to argue against him (which is precisely what I would want a documentary to inspire), but to illustrate the serious lack of thought that underlies this film.The one person who comes off worse than Moore is Charlton Heston, who quite simply seems like a ghoul.
Whether Moore or Heston has more to blame, very little of the substantive pro-gun view is raised in the film.The people that come off extremely well are Trey Parker (or is is the other one?) and Marilyn Manson, both of whom show the kind of deep human sympathy that Moore fakes badly to cover his obnoxiously self-righteous viciousness.
Michael Moore's Bowling for Columbine is a documentary that is both extremely funny and depressing.
Observing that we relish urban legends meant to make us scared of strangers, Moore observes how TV news concentrates on local violence and says that while the murder rate is down 20 percent in America, TV coverage of violent crime is up 600 percent.This vital and stimulating documentary is rated R, so that the Columbine killers would have been guarded from the violent images, mainly of themselves.
Heston is just as ineffective when asked if he believes it was admirable or decent for him to speak at an NRA rally in Denver 10 days after Columbine.Bowling for Columbine thinks we have way too many guns, don't require them, and are shooting each other at senseless proportions.
The reason I say Mike is a sell-out is because after watching this film the only conclusion one can draw is the reason we're such a violent prone country is because of the violent movies and violent video games we're bombarded with but instead of going after Hollywood Moore goes after the Government because after all, if he had gone after Hollywood he would have had a really tough time finding a distributor.
His vision is so relentlessly dark that it could be the set of an action adventure screenplay--one where "the system" doesn't work, the "bad guys" are the source of everyone's problems, and showing bravado will win the day.This is what makes the high marks coming from European reviewers somewhat intriguing, particularly when it is claimed that this film shows America "as it really is." It may be that parts of this film reflect questions that Europeans wish America would ask of itself, but I suspect at least some of the support comes from confirmations of expectations formed by watching American television and movies.
I think that while Bowling for Columbine raises many good questions, it ultimately hurt liberals more than it helped because it makes all of their arguments--many of which I agree with--look like arrogant whining.
If he wanted to make a true documentary, he should have had people that could participate in an intellectual debate instead of making all NRA members, Littleton residents, and censorship protestors look like rednecks and hillbillies.Also in the middle of the movie, Michael Moore pounds into our brain that we should have a national health insurance plan.
What does this have to do with violence in America?Overall, I am disgusted that something as biased and full of propaganda as this movie won the Academy Award for best documentary..
As to Michael Moore's integrity, if you care to research his "facts" you will find that a lot of the movie is deliberately false and/or misleading.
Ultimately, Bowling for Columbine fills the viewer with misleading information, opinions presented as fact, and fails to offer any solid reasons for America's problems nor suggests any solutions.
I wish he could have made this film without all of the things he didn't need to put in: exploitation of the Columbine tragedy, use of made-up facts, a few interviews which are dubious at best, and the cheap-shotting of Charleton Heston (an old man with Alsheimers) and a few others.
I don't care what Michael Moores politics are, but if he can't make an argument without splicing speeches out of order and out of context, inventing statistics, lying about timelines, stating myths as fact, or any of the other stupidities in this film, he obviously has no argument to make and that puts him on the same level with the NRAs, Ann Coulters, and Rush Limbaughs of the world..
I get the feeling a lot of these people who claimed to really like the movie agreed with Michael's stance on gun control.
But Moore, as is the case with most film makers, looks through the camera with only his left eye and makes damn sure we all know he intends for us to see it his way.His little animated bullet cartoon is the worst of it.
Moore lies and stages scenes throughout this film, which is fine if it was identified as a work of fiction but to call this a documentary is misleading at best.
This movie works as a comedy (the scenes at the bank and the cartoon are good examples) but flops as a documentary (almost everything Moore says is at least distorted if not completely untrue).
This movie is not a documentary, it is an anti NRA, anti Gun, anti American, anti Capitalism, anti Freedom propaganda film made by a man from the far left who is out of touch with his own country.
This is not a boring film, Moore knows how to entertain his audience and if you are a self hating American liberal or an anti American European you will love this movie.
If you want to see a movie about how to assassinate somebody's character, or using editing techniques to distort what people are saying to get your message across, then this is the film for you.Michael Moore is brilliant at distorting facts to promote his message.
There are no two ways about this film: Michael Moore sets out to mislead impressionable people, and he does.
Let me start by saying that I mostly agree with the opinions that Michael Moore puts forward in this movie: it's ridiculously easy to get guns in America, and guns probably cause a lot more harm than they prevent: people accidentally shooting each other, fights getting out of hand, people snapping and going on killing sprees etc.
And let's be fair, a fair share of the people interviewed/ridiculed by Moore in this movie are fairly arrogant hypocrites who deserve to be put into place.That being said, as a documentary "Bowling for Columbine" really isn't up to much.
This film is very misleading, showing scenes cut together from different dates, thousands of miles apart, made to appear as if they are all filmed on the same date at the same time.It is very successful for what it is:  Michael Moore's personal vendetta against the "conservative Establishment" and the NRA.This film is a good example of why "political correctness" is so vogue in our society and why common sense is such a rare commodity.Whatever your politics or your opinions about gun control, anyone who knows the facts behind how and why this film was made, should understand that manipulating half-truths into very polished propaganda should be reserved for fascists like Hitler, not so-called 'progressives' or 'liberals' like Moore..
I don't hate all of his movies, 'Canadian Bacon' was hilarious; but much like 'Fahrenheit 9/11,' 'Bowling for Columbine' shares the same media paranoia that Moore blames on all of the problems with America.
This is not necessarily a bad thing insofar as he does not claim to be otherwise, as far as I know, but "Bowling for Columbine" is no more a true documentary than are the works Leni Riefenstahl made for the German Nazi Party during the 1930s.Moore is clearly passionate about his subject, or more accurately what he pretends the subject to be -- what he and others perceive to be the subculture of fear, violence, and firearms in American society.
It's rather naive of those who have reviewed the film to claim Moore isn't anti-gun because of his NRA history.
I thought that Moore would have something to say, but he doesn't and the way he puts this film together it seems that he doesn't want to find the answer.Moore likes to interview and ask people why there is violence in America.
What's the point of making a film so liberal that only people who already agree with you will sit through it?It's genuinely funny to watch some of the gun advocates stumble when Michael Moore interviews them.