Michael Moore remains a man on a mission. A mission that has not been deterred by cancellation -- by both NBC and Fox.
Moore, whose "TV Nation" won an Emmy during brief runs on those two networks, is back with another comedy/satire series titled "The Awful Truth." This time he's on cable's Bravo channel, but his style and his mission haven't changed."It has a lot of the same spirit of our complete and utter disrespect of those with money who hurt other people who don't have as much money," Moore said in a recent interview with TV critics.
"The Awful Truth" debuts on Sunday at 7 p.m. on Bravo.
Whether it's taking on corporate America (as he did so well in his award-winning film "Roger & Me") or political bigwigs, Moore is unapologetically, unabashedly on the side of the little guy.
"I think what bothers me is, that when we live in what is supposedly a good time right now, that so many people are not able to share the good time," Moore said. "Like Clinton will talk . . . about the great statistics, about the economy, (but) he leaves out the fact that more bankruptcies were filed last year than at any time since the Great Depression. There were more layoffs last year than in any year during the 1990s. Personal debt is at an all-time high. People are financing this economic recovery with their five MasterCards. It's all built on debt. Real wages have gone up 3 percent in the last decade, corporate profits are up over 200 percent.
"So, it's that kind of disparity that I would like to see changed."
Moore remains a bit of a paradox. He enjoys poking holes in other people's inflated egos, but he's got quite an ego himself. Many of the segments in "The Awful Truth" are hysterically funny, but these days he apparently fancies himself a standup comedian, introducing the taped pieces in front of a studio audience in Chicago.
(And, rest assured, he's no standup comedian.)
And Moore makes no effort to disguise his own biases -- as demonstrated in a wildly funny but over-the-top segment in the "Awful Truth" premiere, where he reacts to Kenneth Starr's investigation of President Clinton by launching his own witch hunt.
"What single fact did this multi-year, $50 million investigation uncover? That middle-aged men have affairs with younger women," Moore intones. "Fifty million dollars for that? I could have told you that for 50 bucks."
Actually, he spends $560 to hire his own group of Puritans -- actors in costume who run down the street chasing Starr's car before heading off to Washington, D.C., to confront actual congressmen.
(This is not a show for kids -- the "Puritan leader" shouts out passages from the Starr report.)
It's laugh-out-loud funny with a point, making the whole thing look incredibly silly. (And how the heck did Moore make it up on the dais of the House Judiciary Committee while Starr was testifying?)
Try to imagine a young woman in Puritan garb shouting, "The judiciary committee reports to Satan." And another shouting, "Orrin Hatch killed a man just to watch him die."
Or "Sen. Robert Byrd was a member of the Klan." And when Moore interjects, "That one's true," the actress screams in horror.
Sunday's other segment is uncomfortably funny -- and perhaps more pointed. A young man whose diabetes has caused him to need a pancreas transplant is denied that operation by his HMO -- Humana. Moore takes the man to Humana's headquarters so he can invite the company's chairman to his funeral -- and he stages a funeral outside the company's offices.
There is a happy ending, however.
"The local paper found out about it and wrote about it, and the next day Humana reversed its policy and decided to give the guy the operation," Moore said.
Moreover, Humana has reversed its original policy and now covers pancreas transplants for all of its members.
"That was really kind of a cool thing to see, because this guy who we thought would be dead within the next couple of months will probably live now as a result of the operation," Moore said.
In many ways, "The Awful Truth" is the show Moore wanted "TV Nation" to be. And he attributes that to the freedom he's afforded by Bravo and the British network Channel 4, which is co-financing the program.
"They've been so supportive, and it's really, really wonderful to work in a censorship-free environment," he said.
Conversely, he said there were "five or six" segments that NBC and/or Fox refused to air on "TV Nation," most of them dealing with "gays and abortion."
"But we have not been blocked from doing any stories," Moore said. "It's the best environment for us to work in."