Arms and the Man 1995 Copyright Marquee Magazine
Bart Mills August 1995
49th Parallel-- Canada has posed for America so often in films and television that it's nice to see Canada qua Canada in Michael Moore's American-backed political satire, Canadian Bacon. Such a lovely--or humorous--war has not been seen on the big screen since The Mouse That Roared.

America has been invading Canada culturally almost since its last military incursion in 1812. Now Moore has imagined a president (Alan Alda) who talks tough about those mean guys up north so he can jack up his numbers in the polls and get America's weapons factories humming again. The trouble is, a lawman from Niagara Falls, N.Y., the late John Candy, takes the talks seriously and precipitates an international incident.

"Ever since the Soviet Union fell apart, we've needed an enemy," says Moore, a friendly, shambling hulk of a man who always wears non-designer jeans and not-new running shoes. Moore, who rarely spends money on haircuts, preferrring to stuff the overgrowth under a Detroit Tigers baseball cap, is the bulky radical ex-journalist who transformed what looked like a home movie, Roger & Me, into the highest-grossing documentary at the time, and fronted the quirky NBC docu-series TV Nation last season.

When Canadian Bacon's initial distributor, MGM, balked at some of the film's darker elements, Moore fought to keep it intact. It has since found a home at Gramercy Pictures, and will hit theatres in September.

"The end of the Cold War has been disatrous for the defence industry," Moore says. "Those guys have been trying and trying to figure out a way to stay in business. In Canadian Bacon, they think, "Uhhh...Canada! It's close. It's right there. The public will buy it. They'll be so afraid of Canada that we'll be able to build missiles again.'"

Alan Alda, who has moved firmly from his "war is a crock" Hawkeye character on M*A*S*H to that of presidential villian in Canadian Bacon, describes the film as a "preposterous farce. It's a bipartisan knock against a wide range of presidents who got us into wars. I loved the part. I could get up every morning, put on a suit and have people killed."

Large chinks of the money Moore earned from Roger & Me have gone into helping finance other filmmakers' projects, such as acclaimed documentary, Panama Deception. Moore calls himself a populist, and he comes to radicalism by way of Roman Catholicism and unionism.

"The values I had when I was fourteen are the values I have now," he says, asked about the impact of success on his lifestyle. "I'm in the same relationship I was in twelve years ago and I still have the same friends I always had. Money doesn't matter to how I live my life."

Home The Exchange Films Books TV Mike's Message E-mail Mike