Columbine film angers firearms group
By Andy Seiler
USA Today
The National Rifle Association has two words for Michael Moore's latest outrageous documentary, "Bowling for Columbine," which opened this week in New York and Los Angeles: "Politically irrelevant."
"Michael Moore has a pre-existing political agenda and probably would do anything to advance that political agenda," says Andrew Arulanandam, the NRA's public affairs director.
Some might say "Columbine" is eerily relevant because of the sniper who has been terrorizing the Washington, D.C., area. But the film would be timely in any year, Moore says. "Eight children under the age of 18 are killed by guns in America every day. (The sniper attacks) just happen to be clumped together geographically. Are the 40 gun deaths that are going to happen today any less newsworthy?"
In "Columbine," NRA president Charlton Heston blames "mixed ethnicity" in the United States for the number of gun deaths. He says: "If (the right to bear arms) was good enough for those wise old dead white guys who invented this country, it's good enough for me."
Arulanandam says the NRA stands behind anything Heston says. But he suggests that Moore perhaps re-edited Heston's words to make his remarks appear racially charged. (No way, Moore says.) The NRA's official position is that gun deaths often occur in the United States because police do not enforce existing gun laws.
Dick Clark also takes some hits in "Columbine." Moore argues that work-related practices at Dick Clark's American Bandstand Grill chain led to the murder of a 6-year-old by another in a suburb of Flint, Mich., in 2000. (The boy who killed his classmate was left with improper supervision because of his mother's workload.) When questioned, Clark slams his car door and drives away.
"Dick Clark is not going to give this movie five seconds of his time," spokesman Paul Shefrin says.
"Columbine," which has won prizes at Cannes and other film festivals, takes its title from reports that Columbine High School students Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold were happily bowling with their gym class six hours before they opened fire on classmates and teachers. So heavily does Moore linger on that absurd image and others equally bizarre that "Columbine" often feels like a dark comedy.
"I can't make a movie where I'm giving people two hours of despair," says Moore, who also uses "South Park"-style animation in the film. "I have long admired the old filmmakers who used comedy and satire as a means to discuss or illuminate social conditions, whether it was Charlie Chaplin, Will Rogers or even the Marx Brothers.
"I hope people will laugh at this movie harder than they've laughed at a movie in years — but that they will also find themselves choking back the tears."
