Bowling for Columbine, Punch-Drunk Love Both Winners
By Anne Negri

Taking aim. Michael Moore’s new movie Bowling for Columbine documents America’s obsession with guns. The movie recently opened in some Wisconsin theaters. Over fall break I had the opportunity to see some movies in Chicago. In the next couple of weeks they will also open in Milwaukee and Madison.

Of the films I saw, I found two of them, Bowling for Columbine and Punch-Drunk Love, most enjoyable because they defy the conventional norms of filmmaking. Both directors, Columbine's Michael Moore and Love's Paul Thomas Anderson are men with strong ideas who refuse to follow a set path. They push the envelope, creating films that are challenging and thought-provoking.

Bowling for Columbine is a documentary film that thoroughly investigates America's obsession with guns. However, with Michael Moore as our guide as writer and director, we investigate so much more-societal fears, the negative aspects of capitalism and big corporations and racism. He interviews a varied group of people: John Nichols (brother of the Oklahoma City bomber), Marilyn Manson, two young men who barely survived the Columbine shooting, Matt Stone and, for the grand finale, the president of the NRA, Charlton Heston.

This documentary made me laugh and at some points it brought me close to tears. Bowling for Columbine isn't a perfect film; sometimes Moore goes off on tangents that don't seem to connect well with his point. Michael Moore doesn't walk a middle line; he is highly intelligent and highly opinionated. It is quite clear that Moore supports the far left politically. Regardless of your opinion on gun ownership and control, regardless of your political leanings, and regardless of the film's imperfections, everyone should see this movie!

Bowling for Columbine will inspire debates, thoughts about your life, and the lives of others. Whether you agree with Moore or not, it is important for all of us, as human beings and Americans, to have an opinion and to explore all sides of a truly important issue.

The second film, Punch-Drunk Love, is Paul Thomas Anderson's fourth film, his first three being Hard Eight, Boogie Nights and Magonlia. Punch-Drunk Love's main character, Barry Egan (Adam Sandler), is a specialty toilet plunger wholesaler who has seven sisters who constantly harass and belittle him. His life takes a strange turn with the appearance of a mysterious harmonium and the appearance of a mysterious woman, Lana Leonard (Emily Watson). The plot only gets stranger-involving cartloads of chocolate pudding, a sudden trip to Hawaii and trouble with the operator of a phone sex line.

Any Anderson film that I've ever seen is weird: the plot, the dialogue, the characters, the relationships, everything.
Weird in a good way.

Punch-Drunk Love is no exception, but I found the weirdness quite lovely. At its core, it is a simple love story. Running an hour and a half, it's a tightly woven tale that never seems ponderous, unlike Anderson's interesting but lengthy Magnolia. Anderson's genius is particularly apparent in the scene in Barry's plunger warehouse-as Barry's troubles mount, the camera jumps are accompanied by a staccato piano.

Finally, I can't do a review of Punch-Drunk Love without discussing Adam Sandler. I used to hate him, but now I realize that he is a very smart man. He knows that he won't be able to play the silly boy-man of his earlier, sillier films forever, so Sandler, with Punch-Drunk Love, took a chance at something serious. His performance in this film is awesome. He brought a subtle sensitivity to Barry Egan that I found utterly endearing. While watching the film, I kept having to remind myself that that was really Adam Sandler. The character, Barry Egan, is a loner with anger management issues who wins the girl in the end. In some ways Egan is just like Billy Madison or Happy Gilmore, but in other ways Barry Egan and Sandler's performance are light-years away from them.
13 November 2002

Report from the Chicago International Film Festival: Bowling for Columbine
By Dean Katahira, Cinemaniacs Advisor

Bowling for Columbine was the first documentary film accepted into competition at the Cannes Film Festival in 46 years. In May 2002, the Cannes jury unanimously awarded Bowling for Columbine the 55th Anniversary Prize, and I put it on my list of films to see. Later in the year I learned it would be included in the 39th Annual Chicago International Film Festival program, so I made plans to be in Chicago to see the film.

I was able to attend the premiere of Michael Moore’s Bowling for Columbine on Saturday, October 5, 2002. The film was supposed start at 9:30 p.m. but, when I arrived at the Music Box Theater about 8:10 p.m. to pick up my ticket, the staff were saying things were running about 30 minutes behind schedule. As customary with popular films at Festival, both scheduled showings of Bowling for Columbine at the Festival were sold out. Tickets were available five days ahead (when I reserved mine), but some people were saying they were scarce by mid week. Ticket in hand I thought that I would have time to have a coffee while looking over the festival schedule, but a line was already forming. With an hour and 45 minutes before show time, I opted to wait in the line that was already about 60 feet long.

I was pleased to learn from people in line that Michael Moore would be at the screening. The evening was a little cool and the long wait in line provided an opportunity to people watch. At first glance it seemed that the people in line were typical Chicagoans, but on further consideration the typical Saturday night movie-goer doesn’t show up an hour ahead of the show time to see the film. I had no idea how far down Southport Avenue the line stretched, but during my wait there was a steady stream of people heading toward the end of the line. A man walked along the line passing out flyers that urged people to “Take the Pledge of Resistance” and join the protest tomorrow at the Tribune Plaza on the first anniversary of U.S. bombing of Afghanistan. Other people handed out ads for a local snack shop, and a new film. At about 10 p.m. the line began to move.

The main theater of the Music Box has the evening sky painted on its ceiling. The “stars” in the form of tiny lights in the ceiling have shone down on many Chicago International Film Festival presentations, and that evening they shone upon a full house. The film festival staff repeated that the performance is “absolutely sold out” and to raise your hand if there is an empty seat next to you. After a long period of seating people, the audience rose and cheered as Michael Moore and some festival staff made their way down Aisle 4 of the theater. As he passed the theater organ he tried to play something on it, but it didn’t appear to be on. Moore tried to get the audience to quiet down by saying, “It is so generous of you!” Enthusiastically he said that we are the first true American audience to see Bowling for Columbine. It did show at Telluride, but exclusive nature of that festival to Moore did not reflect a the kind of person he was trying to reach. “They’ll look like they are from Flint,” was how Moore envisioned the Chicago audience. The film was many years in the making. In 1968, as Moore was leaving Mass, word of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King came over the radio. No only was that news disturbing, but that some people cheered the news intensified Moore’s interest in gun violence in this country.

Before the film started, Moore repeated that one of the important messages of Bowling for Columbine is that in thinking about and understanding violence in this country, “you are not alone.”

One aspect of seeing a film at a theater is that you get a sense of the audience reaction to what’s on the screen. This was apparent from the start. There were some hisses when logos of sponsors appeared before the film (American Airlines, Mercedes Benz, Showtime, AT&T Broadband). Moore’s film is pitched to an audience who has thought about gun violence and wants to analyze it beyond what is presented by the evening television news . . . okay, that’s not suggesting too much with respect to depth, but unfortunately for many people, perspectives on really important issues end with the evening news. (The news industry knows that more analysis would not make for happy viewers and when ratings trump all else, you know what happens.) Expanding this analysis is what Moore’s film does successfully. The film is not a doctoral thesis on the subject. Its structure is not formulaic. Instead the structure depends on the director’s intuition to create coherence among, in this case, the very wide range of ideas involved in the topic.
Moore’s intuition is on the mark in this film because it maintains a level of entertainment balanced with fact and discovery. The many humorous sections of the film are linked with deeper insights. We are shown a humorous, but biting, animated, mini-history of the relationship between people and firearms in the U.S. It has a playful cartoon style, but ends disturbingly when history reveals the KKK and the NRA formed at the same period in time. A similar revelation occurs in an excerpt from comedian Chris Rock’s lively routine about bullets. Rock begins with the humorous hypothesis that bullets should be banned because “bullets kill people!” Then he develops this idea to include the seemingly absurd suggestion that each bullet should cost $5000. He then pretends to be someone considering murder by a firearm and says, “I would kill you if I could afford it.” That statement when taken out the context from Rock’s comedy routine, and when “afford” has reference to moral and emotional costs instead of a monetary one, becomes suddenly sobering. How can anyone afford to take another’s life?

One of Moore’s skills is the unexpected juxtaposition of ideas. In his interview with the Marilyn Manson, whose music was accused as a contributing factor in the actions of the Columbine killers, Manson’s remarks would come across as perfectly rational if we did not see how outrageous his appearance was. A bank is usually thought of as an orderly, safe place. Moore finds one that uses rifles as promotionals for its services. “You do a CD and we’ll give you a gun,” cheerfully says one of the bank’s staff.

Moore casts his net far to try and capture possible causes of violence employing guns. He interviews James Nichols brother of convicted Oklahoma City bombing accomplice Terry Nichols. Later he meets with Charlton Heston to ask him why he took part in NRA rallies in Littleton (Columbine High) and Flint (where a 6-year old shot a classmate) shortly after the tragedies occurred. He goes to Canada where people have just as many guns but where deaths from guns is about 1.5% that occurring in the U.S. He considers the role of department stores like K-Mart where ammunition for automatic weapons is sold. He looks absence of formal social and economic support and how that may have caused the shooting death of a 6-year old.

Perhaps the most moving part of the film occurs when Charlton Heston announces the interview is over and walks out of the room. At that point Moore takes out a photo of the 6-year old girl fatally shot by her classmate and tries to show it to Heston who continues to walk out. As he leaves Heston’s home Moore silently places the photo near an entrance. Although not shown, I wondered what Heston’s reaction to finding the photo would be.
(My additional editorial comments.)

This morning I heard reports of yet another victim of the D.C. area sniper. This story has fueled the media and been on the minds of everyone. No doubt much time and resources will be spent “solving” this case. But like many things, a better solution will probably evade us until we analyze the problem from a variety of perspectives with open minds. Bowling for Columbine is a good starting point for a perhaps a national analysis and discussion by people in the U.S. of this kind of violence.

15 October 2002