Michael Moore gets sued for documentary

Before this even gets started, let us remind everyone that political discussions are not allowed on DVXUser. In fact, it was Michael Moore discussions that led to the implementation of the rule.

So -- if you want to discuss this from a filmmaking aspect, and the very real issue of a filmmaker getting sued by someone who appears in a filmmaker's film, that's fine.

If you want to talk about Moore personally, or his motivations, or the subjects of his films, or the accusations made in his films, those are subjects for a different message board entirely.
 
thank god for that, I so tire of the MM discussions.

thank god for that, I so tire of the MM discussions.

I skimmed the article. Looks like the footage was shot for something else on NBC and they accuired a license from NBC for it, so it looks like no case to me. The guy is upset because the ol' editors wit makes him look anti-war, but he agreed to the NBC thing it was shot for and NBC sold it's license to MM. That movie made a lot of money so it seems like he must've figured he could get a cut or something. Sure his footage was used to send a certain message, but not his own message- someone elses. If he's getting flack from people he should tell them just that. Sucks for him, but it's just too bad, however you may feel about MM, he did what he had to do legally to use footage that would send his message the way he wanted to, so that he wouldn't have to worry about just this sort of thing.
 
But that could very tell take it out of the realm of documentary and into fiction, which is a whole other kettle of fish.

Gotsta be careful making documenatries....if too many people play too many games we could very well lose some of the rights we have in making them (copyright fair use, et al.).
 
Yeah, ethics need to be kept in mind when in the editing room. I understand a point was trying to be made, but lets call a horse a horse.
 
Well, MM could always sue Fox News for their editing to take his movie clip out of context. In the end it would be a null sum gain for MM. :)

http://movies.crooksandliars.com/MM-Cavuto-1.wmv
http://movies.crooksandliars.com/MM-Cavuto.wmv

These cuts seem somehow different... :happy:

When someone sits down for an on-camera interview, they put their words in the hands of the producers. Editing is just part of process. If a filmmaker distorts his subject's intent, the producer's reputation is ruined and that is it. A lawsuit won't gain anything but provide negative publicity for the filmmaker, which all I think this guy (and his lawyer with strong right wing ties) is trying to do. No lawyer thinks there is an actual winable case here.

How many times have we heard someone complain their words were taken out of context and the meaning distorted? While some people in the media certainly do this with malicious intent, if people could successfully sue for this, nothing would ever get reported. We are protected by libel and slander laws but taking a persons words out of context without actualy lying or slandering the person is completely legal. Did we see any libel or slander in those clips? Just a guy complaining about the pain of his injuries. Nothing was said about this guy's beliefs, stance on the war, or feelings about the President.

For the record, "infliction of emotional distress" is exactly what Jerry Falwell sued Larry Flint over and the Supreme Court ruled against (obviously it is more complicated then that but one can review the case to better understand the ruling).

Without getting into the politics of MM, we all know his reputation (rightly or wrongly) has been tarnished since Bowling for Columbine. Honestly, if nothing else is has opened a lot of people's eyes to the power of editing.

NBC might not have obtained the paperwork consent from this guy and in that he MIGHT have a case against them. Getting that written permission in most cases is not a big deal but this might a case where it burns NBC. Consider that a lesson learned for all the up-and-coming documentary/news producers.

Cheers
 
wabbit said:
How many times have we heard someone complain their words were taken out of context and the meaning distorted? While some people in the media certainly do this with malicious intent, if people could successfully sue for this, nothing would ever get reported.
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No, things would get reported, not distorted/editorialized. We probable need more suits. Maybe get some honesty percolating in there.

What a concept. :)

Maybe not a entertaining....but I'd prefer entertainment be left in other hands.
 
This was not a suggestion to intentionally change the speakers words. The point is, editing is necessary. Once you edit, a person can claim you changed their intent. You know, "what the meaning of "is" is"

Of course any sane person thinks the reporting/editing should be fair and honest but anytime you sit down for an interview, written or on camera, your words will get edited by someone who has only .their interpretation of what you said.

We trust that this person will in good faith try to demonstrate our original meaning or at least their inteligent take on what they heard come out of our mouth. But since all of this can be so ambiguous, there is little room in our justice system for the courts to be deciding, "this is clearly what this person meant to say and you altered it." Of course there are extreme cases like where someone takes a sentence like "I do not like cake" and removes the "not". This clearly shows intent to slander this person's reputation among the cake loving community.

What happens in cases like MM or Fox News is their reputation becomes damaged to the point where they are not taken seriously anymore (again to keep this out of the political, I am not suggesting that either one of those two are guilty or not). Trust; that is the price they pay and the capital they spend when they dance around accurate reporting. In the marketplace of public trust, they are passing around Monopoly money. :)

Granted, everyone in the media pays the price a little when others do this but what else can we do?

Cheers
 
GenJerDan said:
But that could very tell take it out of the realm of documentary and into fiction, which is a whole other kettle of fish.
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Exactly. And MM doesn't call his film a "documentary", he calls it an "op-ed piece." In essence, it's an editorial.

No matter how you slice it though, using someone's words against them, or making them say something that they didn't (by using creative editing etc) is just plain wrong.
 
to me this just stinks of a $$$ making oportunity -

"The complaint seeks compensatory damages of $25 million, punitive damages of $75 million and additional damages of $75 million." pheww... um.. because he appeared in an antiwar film? jeeze.. come on.

IMO- there is always the possibility that what you say may be taken out of context and if you dont like it then don't ****ing allow a film crew to interview you..
 
To be clear on this, I am not trying to debate if it's ok to intentional alter someone's meaning. The point I am discussing is if this is something for our courts to be involved in.

Flip it around and say anyone who has been quoted in print or on-camera can sue (successfully or not) if the entire discussion is not reported (no editing). How will anyone get anything reported? Everything is just a lawsuit waiting to happen. Anyone with money and power can crush free speech and press thru lawsuits (alla "The Insider" and how big tobacco squashed the CBS story).

So in order to keep our courts functioning, our press free, and people’s reputations intact we have libel and slander laws. Everything else is up to us as consumers to listen, investigate, and believe or not.

MM is certainly not in the same category as Dan Rather and when he blew it his trust was lost and his career ended.

Cheers
 
I think the court (as much as I hate lawyers) is the place to handle this. The problem is the amount of money involved. I don't know much about the story because I personally see MM as a non-entity and pay no attention to him. But it seems that too many people use the court system as a lottery ticket. Cap what lawyers can receive from a case and the awards will go down. Is that good? On the surface, yes. But what about the egregious acts by perpetrators with LARGE sums of money. They'll take a quick look and do a damage assessment. Will they make more money from what they are doing or will law suits kill them? If the award is too small, it will have little effect on their actions. Not an easy answer to this but we've become such a litigious society because we have more lawyers than can be supported in legitimate ventures.
 
For being in the military myself, I do see a problem in having a soldier in an anti war documentary without their permission. You personal image can be destroyed very quickly especially knowing that a lot of people will now see you as a traitor and possibility have your life in danger if you live in a conservative environment. You can imagine the nasty emails that the soldier is getting every day. But then again suing Michael Moore for over 100 millions dollars is not a good idea either. I don’t think Michael Moore realized the problems the soldier was going to be in for using his words out of context. Hopefully Michael Moore has already at least apologized to the guy. I wonder how much the soldier’s lawyer is getting out of this case.

I remember when soldiers was deploying to Iraq I was tasked to put atropine into the pockets of soldiers and news journalists that was being embedded with the soldiers. This was mainly because all of their hands were full and the whole process is quicker if the person handing out the stuff puts it into the pockets. After a few days I got so used to it I became so good that it took me only 2 seconds to put it into the people’s pockets. At one point I turned around and saw at least 3 or 4 Journalists videotaping me more that the other soldiers that was also putting atropine into the pockets. Since I was doing it quite aggressively, seeing me on TV you would think that I am a mean soldier when it’s the other way around. I can imagine suing the TV stations for over 100 million dollars for making me look mean. I’m still wondering how the TV stations made me to look because I haven’t seen any of the footage yet.

The soldier has a right to sue for "defamation of character” because Michael Moore did destroy his image but suing to get Michael Moore to go bankrupt is going to far. 3 to 5 million dollars should be enough.

 
The only way to get anything for "infliction of emotional distress" the first part of the suit must be proved; defamation, which falls under libel law (not a lawyer). To prove that you must prove slander with intent. I can certainly see in either clip from above that you would "feel" this guy was taking an anti-war stance BUT nowhere in the movie is this guy said to anything but a solider in a lot of pain. The two guys before him SEEM to have a viewpoint on the topic but even they are not labeled as anything ani-war. Where is the libel?

And that is the point. For the courts to be involved we have to have some libel here, i.e. a caption under him saying "wounded anti-war vet".

I don't deny that he is probably very upset by the use of his image but our civil court system is not (suppose to be) based on hurt feelings.

From what I see, that is all he has as a case (again, maybe NBC did not get the right paperwork). Not much chance of MM paying this guy off and there is very litttle chance the case is going anywhere. IMHO, this whole thing is just about making MM look bad. If the case gets thrown out tomorrow, it's very unlikely you will hear about it. At that point it's not exciting news. 3 years from now the general public will just remember a case where MM was sued for doing something wrong, lying, ect (and assume it must have some legitimacy).

Personally, I think MM was wrong (from a documentary perspective, not legally) to use this guy's clip. It was clearly used for the shock value of showing this guy with no arms. For the purposes of what the movie was trying to say, he should have gone out and got film of wounded soliders who did have a real story to tell. I am sure with the time pressure for the movie and many soliders too scared to appear on-camera speaking negatively about the war it would have been difficult at best to get this footage. This was a shortcut and something that had "good shock value" but if it was me, I would not have done it. Just my personal opinion.

Cheers
 
wabbit said:
If the case gets thrown out tomorrow, it's very unlikely you will hear about it. At that point it's not exciting news. 3 years from now the general public will just remember a case where MM was sued for doing something wrong, lying, ect (and assume it must have some legitimacy).
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Trying to stay apolitical here but isn't that the problem with all sensational news stories aimed at ANY political point of view. You hear the smear because it's report on the front page. IF (chances are slim) there is a retraction or the story is somehow proved false, it is buried in small print on some back page.

Don't the media have the same responsibility to clear up mistakes or rushes to judgement?
 
Blaine said:
Don't the media have the same responsibility to clear up mistakes or rushes to judgement?
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Apparently not. :happy:

The whole discussion of what the media/press should be doing to serve the public interest compared to what they do is a whole other thing that probably ventures too close to the no politics policy we have here.
 
Blaine said:
Don't the media have the same responsibility to clear up mistakes or rushes to judgement?
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I get new stories from a clipping service (sort of) that pertain to the Dod.

Sometimes the retractions are almost funny. Wrong name, wrong organization, and oh-by-the-way, he didn't say what we said he said.

Who are these people? :)

Blaine said:
I think the court (as much as I hate lawyers) is the place to handle this. The problem is the amount of money involved.
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The firgure was probably chosen by the lawyers. And might just be to get the suit noticed because they doubt they'll win. With the publicity, the plaintiff more or less gets his name cleared even if the case is lost, settled, or thrown out. (And, if won, the jury probably won't award anywhere near the asked-for amount.)
 
A couple of my friends produced the first 8 photo cds for Correl and they made a few for themselves that were for sale. Even though they had releases from each model and it was written by a media lawyer they got sued. They licensed some of their photos to a large magazine and one of the models saw herself in an add and she sued saying that she didn't realize at the time the photo could be used in a large distribution. The point is that even though their lawyer interviewed all the models she won her case and they and the magazine had to pay her for each time it was used and they printed a lot of magazines that month. My friends sold a lot of photo cds and it cost them dearly. Lets just say she didn't have to work for a while. Anybody can sue at any time for anything even if there is a contract. I don't know any way around it, you just hope and pray you've covered your butt and maybe take some video of the talent being explained to what the project involves and get their responce on tape. It also helps if you go before a judge that is a media expert and some people incorporate in Delaware for this reason. They are suppose to have Supiorior Court judges that specialize in media.
 
Come on. Every Time the Michael Moore stuff comes up there are lots of people getting so worked up about how things have been manipulated and misrepresented and maligned, etc. and thats all probably true. But's it as if no one has ever watched a "Documentary" before. It is the most manipulative film form there is by it's very nature. You can't even objectively choose what films get to be called "documentary" or not, it's such a flexible concept that nowadays I would almost call it any film even partially produced using "live" footage. Even the most upstanding, official, news agencies and networks make shows everyday that employ all the same potential fallacies to tell stories the way they want/need to for the purpose of a particular production; it's just the nature of documentary. Re-shooting fake entrances and exits; cutting actions into interviews to describe something that actually didn't happen on camera using footage of a similar action to illustrate; not to mention the horrid reality shows, and I don't think I need to mention the ridiculous drama building they do there- I've worked shooting for "Reality TV" shows and the producers always insist on calling them "documentary", yeah they suck, but who am I to argue with their crappy ethics if they've gotten the proper releases they can legally do what they want with those poor suckers. Field producers will literally tell me what they want a person to look like and explain the kinds of coverage they need to make them out that way (mean/stupid/cute, etc.) and I'm to shoot it that way, no matter what is really happening or what they're saying, they'll even stop a person and tell them what to say to us word for word and people will do it AFTER signing releases! Television consumers, especially the frequent viewers will do anything to be on tv, it's been a popular fascination forever, but then they see themselves there and realize a lot more goes into it than just pumping footage out of a camera and onto the air and it's scary. If someone doesn't agree with the politics of a message, the best you can do to correct it is work on your own media to present the opposing view, since we do have a great deal of power in manipulation of documentaries. I think thats what MM does and he's obviously not trying to be real sneaky about it. Over the years I've lost some respect for him like many others, but not because I disagree with his methods, but I just think it's cheesy, 'in your face' stuff made to reach and rile up a large audience; and it works. Big deal, so I try to make my own work more honest and to the point, based on my message. I'm not going to poo-poo anyone elses work based on technicalities and creative/political differences. I don't think any of his material has ever been very objective, in Roger and Me the evicted family shown throughout the movie never worked for GM and really had no connection to that issue but he used it to make a general point, and probably got releases from them; sure they were mad later, but what could they do? sue for millions! get him to make more fair and balanced movies like the stuff on TV, right? Whatever. The MM stuff is so tired, he's no different than other doc filmmakers he just the only one being shown in theatres time and again so it gets so heavily scrutinized. He knows it, so he's using "slap in the face" methods now to get out his message while he has some fame; it is, after all, a rare opportunity for a doc filmmaker right? Personally, I'm tired of it, but I don't think he's crushing lives, there are more important things to be upset about. Besides what about the ethics of anyone bold enough to send a bunch of hatemail calling an armless veteran anti-war? Whether or not he is fundamentally, I'd say he has some reason to be generally grouchy about his own experience and I wouldn't question his dedication to his job. Thats just mean, let the man speak for himself sounds like he can still do that without 25 million bucks.
 
valdez, you post needs some "white" space. :Drogar-BigGrin(DBG) Breaking it up into separate paragraphs will make it easier to read. :thumbsup:
 
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