A documentary about Michael Moore

Canadian filmmakers Debbie Melnyk and Rick Caine are getting some good press for their documentary on Michael Moore:

"That Oscar speech - when he did that, we were standing in our living room literally on our feet applauding," Caine recalled Thursday. "At that time, four days into the Iraq war, 80 per cent of the American public was onside with that war. So it was an incredibly courageous thing to do at that juncture."

Filled with admiration, the couple set out to make a film about their hero, who first became a darling of the left with "Roger and Me." That 1989 documentary centred on Moore's supposedly unsuccessful attempts to get GM president Roger Smith to talk to him about the devastating effects on Flint, Mich., after the carmaker closed down a plant there.

What they discovered about Moore's techniques as they began to research the portly filmmaker stunned and disappointed them. Their journey can be seen in "Manufacturing Dissent," a startling documentary screening Sunday night at Toronto's Hot Docs film festival, running till April 29.

"It was a slow reveal, really," Melnyk says. "We go into things and start to research them as we go along and start to do interviews with people, and we started to realize: 'Oh my God, there are some cheats in these films.' Obviously, the biggest one being that Michael actually did talk to Roger Smith twice during the making of 'Roger and Me.'

Given Moore's popularity in Canada (and his occasional pro-Canuck statements), it's quite surprising that this film was made in the first place: Canadians have a huge soft-spot for anyone who says positive things about the country — especially if they're American. Of course, the two don't want to be taken out of context:

Several Fox News shows were keen to book the couple for some on-air Moore-bashing. They agreed to go on a live Fox show - but only to prevent their comments from being edited to fit what they feel is the network's political agenda.

The couple came out with guns blazing on Fox's "The Live Desk" with host Martha MacCallum [. . .]

"We said: 'This is crap. We do not want to become poster kids for the right-wing media. No, we haven't seen the light and converted.' That is exactly what they were thinking," Melnyk says. "But we were intent on telling them that it's not only Michael Moore who is lying and cheating, it's mainstream news organizations and George Bush."

Interesting take, that: the message shouldn't be tainted by the messenger. Radical. And so unlikely to be understood after the media put it through the sausage-making machinery.