Michael Moore did not win an Oscar last night for Sicko, which may only mean that the Academy’s overwhelmingly left-leaning voter base are, like most rich people, far more concerned with the moral and historical implications of the current wars (and, particularly, the way we’re fighting them) than they are with the everyday lives of poor people here at home. But that’s okay, because even Michael Moore has stopped working the health care issue, at least temporarily. He’s too busy trying to Save Documentaries.

Moore made a speech at last week’s International Documentary Association awards, in which the filmmaker announced a plan to declare Monday nights Documentary Night at theaters across America. Mondays are traditionally the weakest night of the week for exhibitors, so, says Moore, with the right marketing small non-fiction films could match the typically low numbers produced by most studio films on that night. He’s essentially calling on studios to devote resources to, as the indieWIRE story on the matter puts it, “a consortium of PR and marketing people at the studios who would support and promote documentary, bolstering the work of smaller companies with limited resources.”

When this story broke last week, it was generally reported without comment, positive or negative (although AJ Schnack did take a small swipe at Moore for showing up at the IDA reception when he had something to promote, after failing to make an appearance when the body honored his career last year). But
Agnes Varnum is now asking some real questions about the plan, in this post. She suggests that a plan such as this might in effect marginalize documentaries further:

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