Take Them Bowling

We rented Bowling for Columbine this week-end, and I would like to personally deliver it to each of your houses and watch it with you. Barring that, I guess I will just recommend that you rent it. We will probably end up buying it - I for one would like to watch it again. To blatantly steal a thought from a fictional movie, it makes me want to be a better (wo)man. It was depressing, it was uplifting, it made me laugh, and it made me cry. Who would expect that from a documentary? To some extent, it made me mad that Michael Moore went to the lengths he did in order to try and add some spice to the film - it would have stood on its own if he didn't, for example, track down Dick Clark in Hollywood and try and make him look like an asshole. He has a very meaningful interview with Charlton Heston until he decided that he needed to try and make him look bad. But for all these shortcomings (at least in my opinion), it makes a huge impact on the viewer. I believe it is to the movie's credit that it doesn't try and answer any of the questions it asks. Why are Americans so afraid? Of different races, of crime, of strangers, of the Orange Alert, of any number of things. WHEN PETS ATTACK, tonight on Fox. Now we're supposed to be afraid of our pets?

But I digress. The message I am taking away from the movie is to be involved, and not to buy into a culture of fear that is being preached to us from the media and the government. Also, to try and get other people to watch the movie. Grassroots, people, grassroots.