Oscar-winning director Michael Moore is back with Capitalism: A Love Story, a film about the economic crisis currently facing our country. With a film that could be called a bookend to the twenty-year-old Roger & Me, Moore returns issues like unions, jobs, and brings the complexity of economic theory and the bailout to the multiplex. Moore sat down with us recently for a very exclusive interview and after introductions revealed that I was from the Detroit area as well, we started with a discussion of that endangered city.

MovieRetriever: Is Detroit salvageable or will it end up a series of shuttered houses and factories?

MICHAEL MOORE: I don't know. I wouldn't have said that ten or twenty years ago. Now, I don't know. It may be too far down the road. Or we may have to rethink Detroit in a different way.

MovieRetriever: If we are too far down the road, what happens? Can it get worse?

MOORE: Sure. Every century has its ghost towns. The way Michigan is right now, the chance of it getting worse is great.

MovieRetriever: Do you see any signs for hope?

MOORE: Well, they have a new mayor. The jury's out on him – smart guy, decent guy, people like him. It's all about the jobs though. It's about convincing people to come to Detroit and create jobs. That's what has to happen. And it has to be real jobs. Not casino jobs. Real jobs.

MovieRetriever: Do you see that as what needs to happen in the entire country? If there's no hope for Detroit and it's jobs that could save it, is that what needs to happen everywhere?

MOORE: Yes. I think people should see Detroit as the canary in the coal mine. We should have seen that a long time. That's what I'm saying. It may be a little late now. Not just for Detroit, but for other places as well. We need some leadership. We need some people with vision. Obviously, Pittsburgh was a horrible place and then somebody had some vision. But there are not a lot of those people. I've come to learn that. You always think there's a whole lot. Twenty years ago, I thought there'd be a lot of documentaries like mine being made right now. I'm kind of surprised that there aren't.

MovieRetriever: Why aren't there?

MOORE: I don't know. I can't figure this out. There's 300-and-some million people in this country and so few documentaries that are made as movies. Not TV. Not as medicine. As movies for a mass audience. You'd think just the money incentive. People would go "Wow. Look at what the studios make when they fund his films. Maybe we should try that."

MovieRetriever: And there are people that want to be heard. The last election proved that. But why aren't they being heard through film? Maybe they think you've got it covered.

MOORE: (Laughs.) Well, one guy can't cover it. There's SO many things you could make movies about. Clearly, there should be more than one of me or me of them.

MovieRetriever: A movie like this that is so current ... I'm curious about the process. When do you lock it in? What if GM went under the next day? Do you worry about locking in too early?

MOORE: A little bit. Because I'm really dealing with a more general issue and not a specific incident, then I don't really have to worry about it that much. It is a problem with documentary filmmakers. With Hoop Dreams, where do you stop the story? We get into that a little bit. But at some point you have to say, "Here's the movie. Here's the story I'm going to tell." I work on the film right up until the end. I was working on it five hours until I went up to Venice. The sound. I couldn't really change picture.

MovieRetriever: Why do you think socialism has become a hot-button dirty word?

MOORE: That happened in the decade I was born in. In the 1950s. It was odd that they pulled out that old chestnut on Obama. But when he said that to Joe the Plumber, he was essentially describing the basic tenet of socialism – spread the wealth around. So they just didn't make it up.

MovieRetriever: But they jumped on it.

MOORE: Because they thought people would respond to the "BOO!" You know, they forgot statistics and that humans don't live forever. Anyone who was sixty and voted for Reagan in 1980 is DEAD. They'd have to be ninety. There's some. A few. But, basically, they're all gone. So all the "Cold Warriors," all the people of that age who helped put Reagan in office, they're gone. Young people, when you go "Socialism," it's not "Boo!" It's "Hmmmm...."

MovieRetriever: They're still trying the "Boo!" even though it's not working.

MOORE: It doesn't work and they get all defensive about capitalism. Those are two words that we never heard in normal discourse until this past year. And it's REALLY helped the film. Here, I was going to use them when they weren't being used and, all of a sudden, four months into the film, they start using them. I'm going, "Here's a gift."

MovieRetriever: Do you think that the general political discourse has gotten uglier, more spiteful and hateful recently? The birthers, Jimmy Carter's accusation of inherent racism, etc. Do you think there's more hatred out there on the political scene than there used to be?

MOORE: There's always been hatred. Look back at some of the campaigns of the 1800s – pretty vicious stuff. There's always been racism. There's racism now. Is racism a part of this anger toward Obama? Absolutely. It's not the whole story, but it's part of it. I think Jimmy Carter is right to say that and I'm glad he said it. Obama couldn't say it. Somebody had to say it and he said it. A man who grew up in the segregated South knows a duck when he sees a duck.

MovieRetriever: There's been a little bit of frustration with people who expected immediate change when Obama got into office....

MOORE: Well, that's because we were SO exhausted after eight years and everybody just wanted change immediately. But we know what the reality is. We've got the best guy we can get in there right now. He's a smart guy. He comes from the working class. He's gonna do right by us. I believe.

MovieRetriever: Do you think he's done everything he could do in the first eight months?

MOORE: No, no. But the man inherited a number of catastrophes. I mean, it really looks like a bunch of white people made a big mess and called the black guy in to clean it up. I don't know how fair that is to him.

MovieRetriever: I think people misunderstand that "Yes We Can" takes time.

MOORE: Right. It should be more like "Yes We Will."

MovieRetriever: Very good. What do you think will happen with health care?

MOORE: Now that I'm done with this film – I've been busy – I'll get back into it. I'll try and get it revved up. They revved it up on the other side. Didn't take much really. Took Glenn Beck really. A few other crazy people. They're the minority. We're the majority. The New York Times today – two-thirds want this public option. Seventy-five percent want some form of health care. Fifty-one percent support single payer. What's going on? Obama's mistake here is that he started with a compromise position. You don't start with a compromise. You start with what you want. Then you get the base excited. No one's going to get excited about the public option. You're not going to have demonstrations – "Yeah! Public option!"

MovieRetriever: He left the door open for Glenn Beck.

MOORE: Yeah. Okay, he's learned his lesson. You know, there's four quarters in a game. He knows what he's doing. Like I said in Rolling Stone last month, "I think a lot of what Obama is doing is faking right to go left." Here's a good example of it – he says he's going to continue the military tribunals that are going on at Guantanamo and the left goes "Ooooohhhh, this is horrible!" I said to one of my lefty friends, "So, how many military tribunals have they actually had?" "None." "Exactly." He knows that the right ... you just throw that stuff out there and they don't know what to say or what to do with it. Public option is probably his back-door way to get in single payer. A real public option that's cheap – there goes the profit-making insurance companies because they can't compete against it.

MovieRetriever: Do you feel the expectation to be current and political with every documentary or do you ever see yourself making a documentary about something like baseball?

MOORE: Absolutely. Sure. I've actually thought about making a short documentary called "Watching Paint Dry." This was my challenge with this film. After twenty years of this, I didn't want to do the same thing. "Where's the next issue? The next bad guy?" How about I do a film on economic theory but made it interesting, exciting, damning, funny, and all of that and get people to see it on a Friday night? Is that possible? I'm so proud of this film. I think it's possible for a filmmaker to take any subject and construct a good film around it or about it.

MovieRetriever: If you're a good filmmaker.

MOORE: I hope I am by this point. I still work on it a lot and I try to do things in each film that I haven't done before.

MovieRetriever: I heard you on Howard Stern earlier this week and one of the things that blew me away was the talk about your bodyguards and fear for your safety. Do you honestly fear for your own safety?

MOORE: I don't. The studio does. They get the threats and the insurance company says you better have security there.

MovieRetriever: Did you worry more before?

MOORE: Yes. After I made that Oscar speech. And during Fahrenheit. That was the most dangerous time because people were so whipped up in favor of the war. I was kind of alone out there. As I said on Howard, Al Franken was in favor of the war. Keith Olbermann. The New York Times. We were the minority.

MovieRetriever: One final off-topic question that I need to ask – Why isn't TV Nation on DVD?

MOORE: That's what I say. I know. It should be on DVD. Someone's got to start a campaign.

MovieRetriever: I think you're the one with the most power to make it happen or do I need to write my Congressman?

MOORE: I will get it out on DVD. I promise.