Here Comes Trouble

Starred review from August 22, 2011
Filmmaker and political activist Moore's outstanding memoir opens with an account of the infamous Oscar acceptance speech in which he proclaimed "Shame on you!" to President George W. Bush, and the ensuing fallout, which resulted in a slimmer Moore and 24-hour security from ex-Navy SEALS due to the many death threats he received. Eschewing a conventional linear narrative, Moore (Dude, Where's My Country?) offers twenty vignettes from his life that illustrate how his political and sociological viewpoints developed. Displaying his characteristic dry humor, his stories run the gamut, from the minor, a chance encounter with Senator Robert Kennedy in an elevator when a young Moore gets lost in the Capitol building, to the major, such as a high school speech that ultimately ended the Elks' Club's racist policies. True to form, Moore doesn't pull any punches, but he's grown as a writer, with more discussion and fewer extended rants than in his previous books. With the book's emotional highs and lows, and self-deprecating, empathetic style, Moore triumphs. Regardless of which side of the political fence readers are on, they're sure to find this collection enlightening, engaging, and occasionally enraging.

August 15, 2011

Filmmaker and progressive activist Moore comes roaring back with his first new book since Dude, Where's My Country? (2003).

The author's theme this time, at least organizationally, is himself—he calls this "a book of short stories based on events that took place in the early years of my life," even though many of the stories are set in his fifth and sixth decades and, so far as we know, they're factual rather than fictitious. Think of it as a memoir turned slightly on its side. Whatever the case, it's vintage Moore, beginning with a highly satisfying tale of redemption (and gloat-free revenge) in the wake of his condemnation of George W. Bush at the Academy Awards ceremony. Moore was no stranger to death threats, but after that episode, they came fast and furious, and he had to hire bodyguards—and not just to satisfy unfounded paranoia. Homeland Security, he alleges, even keyed his gold Oscar statue, "scratching long lines into its gold plate." Fast-forward a few years, and Moore is, if not a hero, at least no longer persona non grata, now that the rest of country has caught up with the dissimulations and deceptions of the Bush administration. Elsewhere, the author writes of footloose ancestors who brought his bloodline to blue-collar Michigan and their peculiar big-headed evolutionary marker: "The craniums in our part of the country were designed to leave a little extra room for the brain to grow should be ever have a chance to learn anything outside of our rigid and insular lives." From the pleasures of night baseball to family arguments over long hair and Vietnam to early forays into politics, Moore turns in a readable, and often quite funny, American story. 

Indeed, Moore considers himself a patriot; as he writes, if you see his movies, "you will instantly know that I deeply love this country." This spirited, most welcome book is more evidence of that affection.

(COPYRIGHT (2011) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

September 15, 2011
On Oscar night 2005, Moore used the occasion of his winning an award for Bowling for Columbine to criticize President Bush's newly launched war in Iraq. The reaction was swift: death threats, ignominy, and a once-promising career in free fall. He lived as a virtual recluse for two years before roaring back with more controversial documentaries, including Fahrenheit 9/11, a critique of the war. Moore offers a collection of vignettes that demonstrates how he came to be a major critic of government and corporate America. He recalls life in working-class Flint, Michigan, and his path to becoming an antiwar activist as, five years before draft age, his attention locked on the Vietnam War. From childhood, he had a strong interest in politics, and he remembers a family trip to Washington, D.C., where he witnessed passage of the Medicare bill in the Senate. Among other recollections: becoming the youngest (18) elected official in the country with the help of stoners and visiting the Berlin Wall the night of its dismantling and joining in taunting soldiers. A memoir as irreverent as Moore's films. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Three-time best-selling author, political commentator, and Academy Awardwinning documentary filmmaker Michael Moore has a knack for generating media buzz, and he will be heavily promoting his anti-memoir.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)