Co-directors Rick Caine and Debbie Melnyk turn the tables on documentary filmmaker Michael Moore by making him the subject of Manufacturing Dissent, a revealing and critical documentary which has its Canadian Premiere April 22nd at the 2007 Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival.  Filmmaker Caine recently participated in the following e-mail interview about the film.

Question: Some people think Michael Moore's ego is out of control. What is your opinion?

Caine: There is someone in our film, A.M. Riddle, who says just that. But he is an old friend of Michael Moore's and has earned his right to hold that belief and express it. There are others who think Michael Moore's ego is out of control, among them many citizens, organizers and auto workers from Flint, Michigan, who watched Michael Moore co-opt their grassroots movement in resisting GM's tax cuts and abatements and feel he took the word we and turned it into me, specifically  in Roger & Me. We also encountered many who have worked with and spent a great deal of time with Michael Moore in the past, and they also almost universally felt Moore's ego was more a problem than a solution. We discovered that even some in Hollywood, the original land of massive egos, feel Moore's ego is out of control. When you can bring studio flunkies to tears over your demanding diva-like behavior, then that's saying something. What we hadn't known going into this was that this was kind of an open secret within the film community, but, hey, who are they to be judgmental of one's treatment of the "little people"? From our point of view, when one's own ego begins to hurt the cause, even inadvertently, it's a good time to take a step back.

Question: Do you think Michael Moore is a uniter or a divider?

Caine: Both. And we still believe there is an effective role for the screaming cheerleader. As in motivating the base, agitating for the cause and getting people sufficiently pissed off to go vote. Because in a society where in a close, hotly contested election where only half of the people vote there is an continuous level of apathy that needs to be addressed. Now the flip side of this coin is of course there are members of the media, and Michael Moore is but one of many, who continually use divisive tactics for their own exploitative purposes, usually for political benefit and financial gain. From our point of view people like Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly and even that horrific Ann Coulter come to mind. And, yes, even though he's on our "team," Michael Moore also fits this description. A friend once told me that Michael Moore targets young people for the same reason corporations do: high disposable income and they are more easily manipulated.

Question:  If Michael Moore had granted your request for a sit-down interview, what are some of the things you would ask or confront him with?

Caine:  Confront is a little strong term in terms of who we are and why we do it. We're not all Mike Wallace, nor do we want to be, we still think civility can enable debate and discussion rather than shutting it off. Having said that, we're still anxious to hear him address his role in some of the things that have followed in his wake, specifically the devastating unintended consequences such as his support for Ralph Nader in the 2000 election where, Republicans stealing the election aside (which is an issue and that has forever changed and hardened the US democratic process), Nader got 92,000 votes in Florida.

We'd love to hear him address things like his private foundation's stock holdings in military contractors (Halliburton, Honeywell, etc) and health care providers and various other corporations…Maybe he has a justification for the fact that the damage these corporations are doing is outweighed by the benefit to be derived from investing in them. But this is something Bill Gates and Warren Buffett find indefensible. It's one thing to be an outspoken critic of General Motors; it's entirely another matter to be a Ford shareholder while you're doing it. These are but a few of numerous examples of the kinds of things we'd still like to discuss with him.

Question:  Why do you think Michael Moore went out of his way to make completing your film extremely difficult?

Caine: We don't know. But if you ever get a chance to ask him, please do -- we'd like to know. Again complete speculation here but it could be as simple as he didn't know who we were and where we were coming from (although we put it all in a letter to his lawyer when we asked for an interview) or he didn't believe us (which from our point of view sort of says more about him then us) or maybe he got bad PR advice like Roger Smith or maybe he refuses to cooperate in anything he doesn't have complete control over. But I find it hard to imagine that Michael Moore wants to live in a world with no unauthorized biographies.

Question: Do you think Michael Moore is holding onto some deep dark secret about himself that he feared might be revealed in your film? 

Caine: You might be right. We had no idea there are as many skeletons in the closet as we discovered. Ironically, much of what we uncovered we weren't even looking for -- so, yes, the mind races at the possibilities.

Question: Has Michael Moore fabricated certain elements of his films or manipulated the truth -- and, if so, why?

Caine:  In our opinion, he's done it with the specific intent of heightening the drama, strengthening the story, stretching the yarn and using it for political effect on his audience. He is not alone in this regard of course (listen to Fox News, Rush Limbaugh or Ann Coulter for just a couple of minutes any day and it's also immediately evident.) Manipulative, yes. Effective, you bet. Does that make it right or justified? That is of course a moral judgment, but I think most of us can agree that lying is crossing the line.

(Manufacturing Dissent screens on April 22 and April 24 at the 2007 Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival. For tickets, call the festival box office at 416.588.8362 or go to www.hotdocs.ca.)