Michael Moore spoke Thursday at the Michigan Theater in downtown Ann Arbor. Originally part of the Art and Design (A & D) Distinguish Speaker series sponsored by Penny Stamps, it also became the world premiere of his new movie, “Slacker Uprising”.
To see the schedule for this year’s lecture series go here: http://www.art-design.umich.edu/ev_lectures.php
At times, Moore was funny, other times he was angry, and at other times he cracked himself up (and a good number of us missed the joke – either sports related or policically related). His message is definitely to oust Bush from office and to keep McCain from occupying the oval office. He had a lot of negative things to say about Bush/McCain, the US past, and, at least in the first 50 minutes, nothing to say about Obama. I had a commitment that evening and couldn’t stay until the end. Maybe he was getting to that … although, it was unclear what his point was, other than political. He didn’t talk about art, his movies, or even the movie that was to show at 8 PM after his talk.
The crowd is often heavy on the U of M student side at the A&D lectures. I think some of them are required to be there for class credit and others come as part of some sort of art passport project. I was surprised Moore didn’t gear his talk directly to the 20 something crowd – it seems like his movie is geared towards that. Or, again, maybe he did after I left. It seemed like a good number of the students I could see from my vantage point were more interested in the incoming/outgoing text messages on their phones than what was happening right in front of them.
From what little I know about his movie, I think he’s spoken to the college age demographic group before. “Slacker Uprising” looks like (from the trailer) a series of his talks on college campuses or to groups of 20-somethings. You can get a free download of the entire movie at www.slackeruprising.com this coming week. He’s giving it away free. At least check out the trailer and see what you think.