Michael Moore's Bowling for Columbine: The Real History

by G. M.

A student essay from Dr. Elliot Neaman's History 210 class (historical methods - fall 2003)

Every year the Oscars are given out to the best in the entertainment business. They are a sign of achievement and honor. Each category is awarded for the best person, persons or film possible. The best actress is someone who shows true commitment to the role and truly embodies the character throughout the entire movie. She shows emotion and connects to each person who watches the movie. The best director is someone who has created a whole cinematic masterpiece. The director has the unique capability of empowering, enticing and moving the audience. The best in this field will be someone who makes a film for altruistic and pure purposes, not someone who creates a high budget studio picture simply for the money. The Academy also gives out similar awards for the best costumes, set designs, animation and documentary.

Over the years there has been controversy over the different awards, though mainly it was just difference of opinion and not a matter of the rules of the Academy itself. The Academy Awards are so important because they are a sign of prestige and acclimation in the entertainment world. They are supposed to award only the very best. Thus, in a non-fiction category, by their own rules, they should award a non-fiction documentary.

At the 75th Academy Awards, the movie Bowling for Columbine by Michael Moore was awarded best documentary. Michael Moore and the Academy received a lot of bad publicity for this decision. It would seem that the movie was more fiction than fact. Michael Moore created much of his documentary himself, using lies, misquotes and facts without reason. He misrepresents the NRA and its president Charlton Heston. He defames the victims from the Columbine High School shooting and the victim from the Buell School shooting. He puts forth racist viewpoints that are unacceptable in any film. He even lied while making the title to the movie.

By the Academy’s own definition of the category of Best Documentary, Michael Moore does not deserve this prestigious award. Rule 12 of the Academy’s eligibility form states:

“An eligible documentary film is defined as a theatrically released non-fiction motion picture dealing creatively with cultural, artistic, historical, social, scientific, economic or other subjects. It may be photographed in actual occurrence, or may employ partial re-enactment, stock footage, stills, animation, stop-motion or other techniques, as long as the emphasis is on fact and not on fiction.” (5)

It is easy to prove that Michael Moore’s “documentary” on the shooting at Columbine High School is a work of fiction and not based on all the facts. He should be held responsible for his defamation of the memory of the dead and his astonishing ability to take apart the facts and distort them to make his own point more vivid. When all the facts mentioned in the movie are added up, put together, and compared with the reality; it is easy to see why so many people are against the Academy’s decision. Moore is not a doucumentaryian, but a filmmaker out to make a dollar off the tragedy and emotions of others. With an in-depth look at the facts behind Bowling for Columbine anyone can see these “truths” don’t add up to the facts of what really happened.

Bowling for Columbine starts out easy enough with a nice montage of people getting up and going to work. Everyone is out and about, handling their own business. He is specifically referring to April 20th 1999. He claims, “two boys went bowling at six in the morning.” (1) Ending with the statement “ yes, it was a typical day in America.”  (1) Hence the title “Bowling for Columbine.” What is so entertaining about this title, and Moore’s claim that the Columbine boys were bowling is that they never were. Records of attendance that morning showed that neither boy was in the class. They never signed in; the teachers didn’t see them; and there were no scores next to their names. Moore lies before the movie even begins.

Before the movie can even get under way, Michael Moore is already lying to the audience. Moore is trying to show how easy it is to get a gun. There is a bank in Northern Michigan that offers a deal where, if you start a bank account, they hand you a gun. What Moore doesn’t show is the fact that it takes several weeks and two background checks to get his gun. It takes at least two weeks to get the gun he wants, and would require a deposit of about $5697. (4) There is also no gun inventory in the bank as Moore claims. There are several display products so the customer can look at what he is buying but there is no back stock. The client has to either order the gun to be delivered to the bank or, as the bank would prefer, pick the gun up at a gun shop instead of the bank. Within two minutes of the movie starting there is already a lie edited into the movie. If the very first scene has just this little lie in it how many other “mistakes” could Michael Moore have made through out the movie?

The whole point to the movie is seemingly gun control. Moore’s main enemy in the movie is the classic Hollywood actor Charlton Heston. Moore seems to attack Heston at every turn and uses him as a symbol for the NRA. Moore masterfully splices the movie together to make it seem that the NRA is the cause of all things evil, that they are insensitive extremists. He claims that the NRA gave no thought to the victims of Columbine or to the other school slayings, and that they are the associated with the KKK. Moore’s extreme views of this group show through out the movie. A movie that had started out as a simple argument in favor of gun control, turns out to be more about the people directly involved, particularly Moore, then about anything else. He seems to be parading himself around and yelling out at the top of his lungs his extreme leftist opinions. A documentary is supposed to be unbiased, and therefore this is not the right way to make a documentary. When watching the whole film at once and taking each part as a sentence or a fragment of Moore’s main point, it is easy to see that he is just making his own statements, covering up what people actually think and arriving at his own conclusions. In every interview in the movie it is obvious he is only using the part of the speech that he wants. Each one ends with a fragment of a sentence or just a few words from each person. Even when they try to express their own opinion it is covered by Moore’s loud voice.

Then there is the overwhelming fact that Moore purposefully edits out certain facts and manipulates the film to suit his own view of the situation. This is especially prominent in the footage of the NRA and their reaction to Columbine. Moore portrays the organization as unfeeling towards the victims and shows the annual convention being held 10 days after the shootings. He shows the speech that Heston gave to the audience and the protests that were taking place outside. But there is a lot that Moore does not show to the audience about the day when the NRA went to Denver.

First off, the most prominent images and controversial moment is the speech that Heston gives at the convention. Moore takes seven different sentences from five different parts of Heston’s speech and splices them together to create one speech. Not to mention the infamous line “from my cold dead hands.” This line was actually taken from a speech a year later when Heston was presented with a hand made musket, it was a sign of gratitude and appreciation not coldness towards the shootings. In fact Heston never used the term “from my cold dead hands” until that speech a year after Columbine.

When transcribed the speeches look much different. To cover up the difference in tonality and gestures Moore continually cuts to different shots of the crowd, to people outside, and to several other frames. The speech in Moore’s movie is as follows:

“Good Morning. Thank you all for coming, and thank you for supporting your organization. I also want to applaud your courage in coming here today." [Footage of protest outside] "I have a message from the Mayor, Mr. Wellington Webb, the Mayor of Denver. [picture of Webb, then back to Heston] He sent me this, and said 'don't come here. We don't want you here.' I said to the Mayor this is our country, as Americans we're free to travel wherever we want in our broad land. [cut to crowd cheering, then back to Heston] Don't come here? We're already here." (1)

Moore does not mention the other paragraphs in the speech. The paragraph about how the NRA has canceled all the activities and festivities surrounding the convention. Or the remorse Heston expresses in his speech about the tragic event. “I guess what saddens me the most is how that suggests complicity. It implies that you and I and 80 million honest gun owners are somehow to blame, that we don't care. We don't care as much as they do, or that we don't deserve to be as shocked and horrified as every other soul in America mourning for the people of Littleton.” (4)

His response to the mayor was much more complex then was indicated in the movie. Heston goes on for several paragraphs about how the NRA is made up of people and they are Americans, they are not coming out of disrespect but because this is where they are and this is their country too. “Don't come here? We're already here. This community is our home. Every community in America is our home.” (4) Heston states that NRA members are part of the community, not just in Denver or Littleton but also all over the country. Moore does not explain all this in the movie but puts the NRA into a black light and does not give the audience the whole speech.

In fact Heston says it himself at the end of the speech. “One more thing. Our words and our behavior will be scrutinized more than ever this morning. Those who are hostile towards us will lie in wait to seize on a sound bite out of context, ever searching for an embarrassing moment to ridicule us.” (4) It seems that if nothing else Moore has proven Heston right. There were people out there that day and today that would take what they say and show it in a negative light, and put their own bias into it. While it is true that all documentary and film making for that matter have a bias is there not a line between telling the truth and make the truth out of someone’s words?

Moore makes more claims based on this one instance. He infers that the NRA should never have held the meetings. Unfortunately for Moore they had no choice. They shut down all the expos and gatherings save for this one annual meeting. It was an annual meeting and therefore, according to New York law, had to be held. The place and time had been chosen long before the tragedy at Columbine and to be able to move the date they had to give 10 days notice, Columbine happened only 11 days before the scheduled conference.

This is not, however, the end of the NRA and Michael Moore. He goes on to use similar techniques when portraying the NRA’s response to the Mt. Morris shootings. A fellow classmate shot a little girl; they were only in first grade. Straight off, to begin with, it is important to mention that the little boy was not just accidentally carrying a gun around which accidentally went off. He had a previous history of violence. He had even fought with Kayla the day before. He had already stabbed one student with a pencil and then again after the murder of Kayla Rolland stabbed yet another student with a knife. The boy’s father was in jail for drug dealing and his infamous house was the local crack-house and was raided after the incident. Both his mother and grandmother were arrested for drug dealing and there are neighborhood accounts that this family and house was a mark on the community. This is the youngest school shooting in American recorded history. But once again Moore adds his own spin to the real story. A story that should be about school violence and the poor kids involved turns out to be a front for a welfare campaign of his own.

In this particular montage of footage, Moore is very clever. Though every event he mentions happened separately, he makes it all appear seamless. He narrates “Just as he did after the Columbine shooting, Charlton Heston showed up in Flint, to have a big pro-gun rally." In reality the footage Moore shows of Heston in Flint is from eight months after the school shooting. Not only was it long after Heston had left for a specific NRA convention, but, further, he was there as a supporter in the Bush election campaign.

Another interesting segment that has caught a lot of attention is the cartoon section where Moore claims that that KKK and the NRA are one in the same. This short cartoon of the “history of America” is animated like that of a South Park episode, but really the cartoon was not made by the people at South Park and was just an animator who is friends with Moore. He claims that the NRA started when the KKK was made illegal and that they are really just the same people. Moore shows a Klansmen and a NRA member both lighting a cross on fire, a rather dramatic statement to make. It is also a rather strange statement for a card carrying NRA member to make.

The KKK was founded in 1866 and was turned very quickly into a terrorist group. In 1871 the Klan Act and Enforcement Act were signed to make the KKK officially illegal. Ulysses S. Grant put this act into place. The Klan was operating illegally till that point and was still illegal after the act because of the new act on law enforcement. So really the KKK was never a legally recognized organization. Even though the NRA was formed the same year, 1871, by the New York legislature.

The KKK was never allowed as an actual organization. When Grant finally recognized it as a terrorist group, troops were sent out to arrest members of the Klan. Over 5,000 members were arrested though that didn’t stop the KKK from growing. Grant was elected as President of the NRA partly for his work against the KKK. Seeing as former Union officers formed the NRA is not difficult to see why the NRA did not support the terrorist organization. The NRA again took action against the KKK when General Philip Sheridan, president of the NRA after Grant, removed the governors of Texas and Louisiana for their failure to fight against the KKK. It seems that Moore is stretching the truth to make the NRA look like a racist group. He seems to forget that even during the 1950’s and 60’s chapters of the NRA were specially organized with African Americans in mind. These chapters were formed so that they could access firearms to fight off the Klansmen.

It would seem that Moore is purposefully leaving out the fact about the ethnic communities role in the American history. He seems almost to be blaming them. There is a while sequence where he talks about race and racism against African Americans. There is a minute long montage of just news casters say “The suspect: a black male.” Along with the footage from Cops and all sorts of other ethnically slanted shows. It is unclear why Moore wants to bring up these points, especially when his point is about gun control and the violence in schools.

He also gives a brief clip of an interview he had with the creator of Cops. He asks him why they can’t make a show that showed the background and the poverty and horrible conditions. The creator replied that it would be hard and he “wouldn’t know how to make that.” It would seem that a producer of a successful show would be able to make any theme work. In this case it is hard to see a serious show about the impoverious nature of the United States as being a success.

Moore also focuses in on race in his interview with Charlton Heston. Besides the fact that Moore asks him leading questions, leaves out two thirds on the interview, and answers most of the question for him, Moore forgets about Heston’s popular background. Heston was a Hollywood activist for the Civil Rights movement. Heston was on the forefront of the controversy. He was a leader in Hollywood by picketing restraunts and leading the actor’s component of the march in 1963. In the interview Heston is asked why he think there is so much more violence in America. He makes a remark about “mixed ethnicities” and “having enough problems with the civil rights movement.” Moore interprets this as an instance of Heston’s racism. The audience is meant to conclude that since Heston is the top representative of the NRA then all members are racist. But it seems that Moore is putting words into Heston’s mouth once again, for the third time in the movie.

The movie itself seems to be filled with misquotes and misinformation. One astonishing slight of hand is the figure Moore gives for the number of homicides in different countries around the world. He places Germany at 381, Australia at 65, and the US at an amazingly high 11,127. These numbers, however, are not the rates of homicides committed by guns. They are the number of homicides in the country over all. This is not to mention that all the countries he compares the United States to are smaller then the U.S. If the number 381, the number of murders in Germany, were applied to the US taking into account the population differences the rate of homicide for the US would be 5,715. According to the FBI the number for the US homicide rate is much lower then what Moore places it at. The FBI “reports gun homicides were 8,719 in 2001, 8,661 in 2000, 8,480 in 1999.” (4) There is one way to come up with Moore’s figure of 11,127. To calculate this number, the number of gun deaths reported by the police is disregarded. Take the number of gun deaths reported by doctors on death certificates and add the number of legally justified homicides, these include self-defense and police, and you will end up with 11,127. However, for the other countries mentioned in the movie Moore refers to and uses the numbers give out by the police and not the coroner’s office.

He also doesn’t take into account the rate of which homicides occur and at what rate homicides because of guns occur. According to the 1999 Center for Disease Control statistics, the source Moore used, gun homicides made up only .4% of the deaths that entire year, that is out of 2.39 million deaths. You are more likely to die from the flu then from a gun homicide. On a list of top 25 murdering countries in the world the US comes in 23rd, after Uruguay and Poland and before Bolivia and Armenia. Colombia stands at the top with 0.65 deaths per every 1000 people. (6)

There are also some other random, miscellaneous fabrications in Bowling for Columbine. In one scene Moore goes to Canada and is able to buy live ammunition without question. Canadian authorities say that the scene was faked and is illegal. A Canadian law established in 1998 requires anyone buying ammunition to show proper identification. A new law in January 2001 requires out of country buyers to show a borrowing or importation license.

One more lie is a shot of a B-52 bomber in the middle of an air base. Moore claims that the plaque underneath the plane "proudly proclaims that the plane killed Vietnamese people on Christmas Eve of 1972." In reality the plaque actually proclaims "Flying out of Utapao Royal Thai Naval Airfield in southeast Thailand, the crew of 'Diamond Lil' shot down a MIG northeast of Hanoi during 'Linebacker II' action on Christmas eve 1972." (4)

It would appear that Moore has done enough fabrication in this one movie alone to render him an unreliable source. This is just one of his movies, although it is the most popular, and it gets the most media coverage. Which of course brings up a good point as to Moore’s personal life and his goals. He is the filmmaker of the working class. Born and raised in a small Midwest town just like those he tries to make famous. He is the man who will speak up for the little people and to the best of his and his dollars’ ability show a skewed truth.

Moore lives on Manhattan Island. A rich upper class neighbor hood, whose rent checks are more then most people’s yearly salaries. “I'm a millionaire, I'm a multi-millionaire. I'm filthy rich. You know why I'm a multi-millionaire? 'Cause multi-millionaires like what I do. That's pretty good, isn't it? I walk among them. I live on the island of Manhattan, a three-mile-wide strip of land that is luxury home and corporate suite to America's elite. Those who run your life live in my neighborhood. I walk in the streets with them each day.” (3) His kids go to a private school, which some have mentioned that they are not even faced with the daily threats and woes of a real high school. He never even graduated from college. He is a self-professed genius and his opinions are not even backed up by a degree. He is not a specialist in anything, not history, politics or even home economics. It is too bad that his millions of dollars made off his books and movies have gone to rich causes instead of the people he is fighting for.

Even the boys in his own movie ridicule him for leading them on. Mark Taylor, the survivor of Columbine whom Moore recruited for his movie, says, "I am completely against him (Moore). He screwed me over. He completely used us to make a buck. I had no idea what Moore's agenda was. And he had an agenda. He had it all planned out, completely," (8) This does not sound like the voice a member of the Bowling cast should have. In the movie, Moore portrays himself as trying to help the students and listen to their cause. But even in the footage anyone can see how unhappy the kids were. Mark did not even want K-mart to stop selling ammunition; he only wanted it to be regulated. He was also told that Moore guaranteed face time with a representative from the company. Mark is pro-gun and is now at odds with fellow NRA members because of Moore’s unrealistic portrayal of him.

Mark Taylor is not the only one deceived by Moore and Bowling for Columbine. Moore tried to get the parents of the Columbine victims involved. When a victim’s mother, Ann M. Ketcher, was asked if she had seen the movie she replied “absolutely not.” Apparently Moore had invited all the parents and family of the Columbine victims to a private showing of the film. Mrs. Ketcher said that, “Our family and others considered attending because we were genuinely interested in his message to the public regarding gun control and school violence. However, once we discovered he was going to charge us admission we refrained from doing so.” She concludes with a statement that, “It's laughable that Moore attempts to portray himself as an anti-establishment liberal who is the voice of the common folk, when in fact he is no better than the greedy capitalists he shuns.” (8)

There is yet another cast member of Bowling that is upset with the message portrayed. One of the first few scenes there is footage of a dog dressed up like a hunter and the rifle accidentally goes off and shoots the owner. Not only did Moore put this stupid footage into the movie, he asked the sheriff of the town is the dog was held responsible. That alone should show Moore’s strange comedic technique to get the audience to relax. The sheriff however did not find the footage or the movie funny. As an ex CIA officer he took great offense to the movie saying it was “disrespectful to this country and our leaders.” (8) He was particularly upset with the sequence that showed the airplanes crashing into the World Trade Center with the caption underneath displaying "Sept. 11, 2001: Osama bin Laden uses his expert CIA training to murder 3,000 people." (1)

This is not the first or the last time Michael Moore has used September 11th as a focus for his lies. Most recently, during his stay in England, he made the joke that the people on the planes of 9/11 were “scardy cats.” Needless to say this has created a lot of controversy over his position and his opinions of that day. His claim was that they were “scardy cats” because they were mostly white and "If the passengers had included black men, he claimed, those killers, with their puny bodies and unimpressive small knives, would have been crushed by the dudes, who as we all know take no disrespect from anybody." (7) This was not met lightly even in the English Theater.

Beyond his comments made about September 11th, which he goes on about in more detail in “Dude, Where’s My Country,” Moore left more behind in England than this. He was in a one-man show for several months on the day before the last performance he is said to have had thrown a fit. He verbally attacked the stagehands, calling them common and useless. After insulting the entire backstage of the theater he went out and did the same to the audience. His main complaint was that was not getting enough money for his appearances, he was being paid $750 a night. This is nothing compared to the asking price for speaking at colleges around the country. Cornell was charged $10,000, University of Texas was only $25,000, Penn state was asked to pay somewhere between $15,000 to $20,000, and Moore asked for more then $30,000 from Kansas University. (7) It seems that while Moore yells out against Capitalism, it has done a great deal of good for him personally.

He also seems to want to ridicule the very crowd that is paying him and supporting him as is evident by the acceptance speech he gave at the Academy Awards. In an emotionally delivered speech, Moore ridiculed the nation that was praising him. He gave a speech denouncing the nation and claiming we live in “fictitious” times. He ended by blaming President G.W. Bush and was met with resounding boos. “We live in the time where we have fictitious election results that elects a fictitious president. We live in a time where we have a man sending us to war for fictitious reasons. Whether it's the fictition of duct tape or fictition of orange alerts we are against this war, Mr. Bush. Shame on you, Mr. Bush, shame on you.” (5) While the country is on the question of Iraq most would agree this was a black cloud that lurked over the awards that night.

Bowling for Columbine continues to gain controversy and fame. It is a skyrocketing film that every one wants a piece of. Michael Moore, however, seems to get the biggest piece of the pie, he has made more money off this one movie then any thing else he has done. The millions of dollars were easily raked in, and everyone believed what they saw on the 50-foot screen. Moore successfully made his money and got out his own biased opinion at very little cost to himself. Now there seems to be a world of Michael Moore lies out in the media, particularly the internet, with very few to disagree with him. He has spliced together footage in an unethical way and has defamed the memory of the dead. It is not that Michael Moore does not have to right to his own thoughts and his own freedom of speech but that he should not be awarded and put into Hollywood fame for the lies he has created. Our society should not reward these kinds of misinterpretations and feeling of hatred towards our country and everyone in it. Moore proves beyond any reasonable doubt that he is against the United States, he is for the use and ownership of guns, contrary to the initial point of his film, he is a capitalist and he is prejudice against certain groups, affiliations and ethnicities. In his own words Moore puts his opinions the best: "(Americans) are possibly the dumbest people on the planet ... in thrall to conniving, thieving, smug pr*cks. We Americans suffer from an enforced ignorance. We don’t know about anything that’s happening outside our country. Our stupidity is embarrassing.” (8) Someone who harbors such angry feelings and thoughts should not be presented with a respectable award and should not be an icon or an established source of the truth.

Works Citied

(1) “Bowling for Columbine”; Michael Moore, released 2002, MGM United Artists and Alliance Atlantis

(2) Dude, Where’s My Country?; Michael Moore, Warner Books Inc., New York, NY; 2003

(3) Stupid White Men; Michael Moore, Regan Books, 2002

(4) http://www.hardylaw.net/Truth_About_Bowling.html, David T. Hardy, April 2003

(5) http://www.oscars.org/75academyawards/rules/index_text.html, Academy Awards 2002 Rules and Regulations

(6) http://www.nationmaster.com/graph-T/cri_mur_cap;
nationmaster.com, copyrights 2000

(7) http://www.worldnetdaily.com, “Michael Moore’s Oscar Targeted,” “Michael Moore likes the US to some extent,” “Michael Moore Booed trashing Bush at Oscars,” “Michael Moore: 9/11 Passengers Scaredy Cats,”

(8) http://www.bowlingfortruth.com/; Richard Bushnell, Reporter, Editorialist, and owner of "Richwatch.com"; copyright 1999-2002