Michael Moore Bowls a Strike at Telluride

In 1989 Michael Moore's life was changed by one of the kindler, gentler establishments of the movie industry. "Roger and Me," his documentary eviscerating GM head Roger Smith, was accepted by the Telluride Film Festival and from there went on to get a distribution deal and international critical acclaim.

"I didn't know anything about the film industry," Moore said of his Telluride experience. "I was broke. My original plan had been to get the crew together, rent a van and tour the country for roadside screenings."

Moore could be seen ambling through the streets of Telluride, Colorado again this year, rich from his best-selling book "Stupid White Men" but still the jovial populist, yanking at his trademark baseball cap and talking to adoring fans about the North American premiere of his powerful new film, "Bowling for Columbine."

The documentary, which he hopes will spark a national conversation about America's obsession with violence, is a radical exploration of America's love affair with guns, its "paranoid mentality," as Moore calls it, and the violent nature of U.S. foreign policy.

"I made [Bowling for Columbine] because I was angry," said Moore. "I wanted to know, 'Why us?' Not only why did Columbine happen, but why are 11,000 people killed by guns in the U.S. every year when almost everywhere else the numbers are in the low hundreds?"

To answer that question, Moore took his camera and crew from Littleton -- where he interviewed still shell-shocked survivors of the Columbine massacre and townspeople who now specialize in security systems -- to Beverly Hills, for a bizarre tête-à-tête with NRA spokesman Charlton Heston, and across the border to Canada where Moore, in one of the more hilarious scenes, trespasses into strangers' homes to prove that Canadians don't lock their doors.

Like "Roger and Me," "Bowling for Columbine" is propelled by a humorously enraged quest to find the truth. The movie is a journey -- Moore's and ours -- and it begins with Moore positing that the solution to violence must be gun control. (The unforgettable opening scene shows Moore acquiring a free rifle when he opens a new account at a Michigan bank.) But soon enough, Moore, ever the Midwestern Platonist, is arguing that controlling individual gun purchases is too easy an answer, since there are as many weapons in countries with low murder rates.

From there, "Bowling for Columbine" races off into a series of broadly related violence-in-America questions that include the U.S.'s military-industrial complex, its fascination with televised bloodshed, its tradition of scapegoating blacks, ignoring poverty and sanctioning what he calls "state-sponsored violence."

Moore is most convincing in showing that Americans are reluctant to embrace progressive reform because they have become deeply fearful. Although violence is statistically down, every night they watch on television the day's roster of rapes, abductions and murders. It is this violent TV sensationalism, Moore argues, that is creating "a national atmosphere of fear and paranoia" and distracting Americans from important social issues. The film has no final point, no single answer for Columbine or other killing sprees, but it is undoubtedly the most intelligent, thought-provoking and entertaining film about violence in America to have come along in years.

All of Telluride was buzzing about "Bowling for Columbine" the morning after the premiere. In a public conversation in Telluride's Elk Park, Nation columnist Christopher Hitchens did his best to roil Moore about his usage of Serbian film clips, his Ghandian stance on American foreign policy, his strategy of throwing a dozen theories in a kettle and stirring, but ended up being uncharacteristically mild.