Trying to write an objective biography of Michael Moore has got to be one of the toughest challenges going. The documentarian, long understood to be part comedian and part ersatz journalist, has done more than anyone else in recent history to both rally and divide the left, particularly the 30-and-under Daily Show contingent.
Schultz, a past editor of this publication now at the helm of Canadian activist rag This, has attempted to trace Moore’s lifelines in as open-minded a way as possible. Yet Schultz’s main thrust seems too balanced on selected and carefully arranged tidbits rather than strict reportage. Maybe we wouldn’t want it any other way, since Moore has an undeniable charisma, even, it seems, to those who loathe him. Yet it’s difficult to feel Schultz has told a full story through what seems to be an over-reliance on the scattered sources from Moore’s life that happened to want to talk a whole lot.
Where Schultz does succeed is in culling the wide range of media reactions to both Moore’s body of work and his persona, and finding the commonalities that cross party lines and link both his fans and his detractors. Schultz ultimately nails the primary problem with Moore: that in challenging the definition of a documentary, as well as that of a documentarian, Moore has put himself in the starring role of the controversy of his own life. The same methods that allowed him to be heard by so many have called into question his validity as both a media and a political figure. Sympathetically ambivalent, Schultz’s view through the lens of Moore’s life serves as a worthy musing on the blurry, often biased lines between art and fact, story and storyteller. (Liz Clayton)
by Emily Schultz, $29,95, 245 pgs, ECW Press, 2120 Queen Street East, Suite 200, Toronto, ON, M4E 1E2, ecwpress.com