GM union representative Mike Westfall provided the filmmakers with an audiotape of the 1987 stockholders meeting exchange. Smith himself, in a phone call with Melnyk included in "Dissent," said he didn't cut off Moore's microphone as Moore depicted in his film. "Dissent" also includes the 1990 Premiere magazine article that first published the transcript of that 1987 exchange.
In a recent interview, Pierson said he now believes Musselman's claim that Moore spoke with Smith.
"Dissent" also makes note of a 2000 tax return that lists Moore as president of the Center for Alternative Media and Culture, a New York-based nonprofit that invested in industrial and aerospace conglomerate Honeywell, the Iraq war defense contractor Halliburton and drug maker Eli Lilly, among others.
In "Dissent," when Melnyk confronts him over his nonprofit's investments, Moore first denies having a personal foundation, then says he doesn't have time to answer to the "crazy right-wingers," and finally tells her: "The people know the truth. You can't fool the people. Little while? Yes. Long term. No. And nobody will believe that stuff. They don't believe it."
In an interview in the June 1 issue of Entertainment Weekly, Moore described his work as a specific art form, apart from traditional documentary film. It's a shift from his position in 2004, when he announced that he'd set up a rebuttal "war room" to vet the reporting in "Fahrenheit 9/11" and posted a "line-by-line factual backup" to the film on his website, michaelmoore.com.
"I continue to hope," he wrote in a May 23 posting on his website, "that I can make a contribution to the art of cinema and give people a good reason to get out of the house for a few hours."
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gina.piccalo@latimes.com
