Michael Moore Reveals Stealth NSA Project ‘Where to Invade Next’ on Periscope
One of the big surprises among the world premieres at the Toronto International Film Festival this September is Michael Moore’s first documentary in six years, “Where To Invade Next.” The usually expansive filmmaker and social media master has kept the project under wraps for a year, he declared on his first Periscope live video via Twitter. (As of Tuesday there was no IMDb listing.)
“I’d like to say hello to my NSA friends who are watching right now,” Moore said. Clearly, he feels a certain paranoia about his subject, much as Laura Poitras did with “Citizenfour.”
“Where to Invade Next” happens to be the name of a 2008 book that collects seven fact-based essays that lay out arguments for the U.S. to invade other countries and reveal the role of propaganda in foreign policy.
Here’s what Moore was willing to reveal as he answered questions from his followers:
It’s been a year since he appeared on a TV show.
The idea has been percolating for a long time, and Moore assembled a team of veterans from his NBC show “TV Nation,” “Bowling for Columbine,” “Fahrenheit 9/11” and “Capitalism: A Love Story.”
While the “epic” film covers three continents, Moore kept a small crew. “You have to be able to movie at a moment’s notice,” he said. “Usually someone is chasing us.”
One of the questioners asked about the U.S. being at “infinite war.” That has concerned Moore for “quite some time and provides the necessary satire for this film,” he said. “We’re living in a time post 9/11 and everything that’s going on in this country, and this constant need to have to have an enemy.” That’s all about keeping alive the military industrial complex, he said.
Moore reiterated his commitment to delivering movies that entertain as well as inform. “I make movies,” he said. “The first thing I tell the crew is we’re not making a documentary…non-fiction is the vehicle we’re using, we choose non-fiction. It’s a movie. I’m asking you to give up your Friday or Saturday night to come to a theater and buy a ticket and $9 popcorn (that will be my next movie). I want you to have the best cinematic experience you can have going to the movies. It’s important to me that you have that sense of enjoyment… from laughing your ass off, being in tears and being angry to learning something and thinking. Thinking! That’s why we love to go to the movies. Humor is also a great vehicle to make social commentary and say something about what’s going on these days.”
