Michael Moore To Transition From Documentaries To Narrative Feature Films?

This year might be the last time you see a Michael Moore documentary on the big screen. This according to the filmmaker, who tells The Detroit News that while making his upcoming doc, titled Capitalism: A Love Story, "I've been thinking that maybe this will be my last documentary... Or maybe for a while." Moore says that he would like to transition into the world of narrative fictional feature films. He's even been working on a couple screenplays.

"I have been working on two screenplays over the last couple of years. One's a comedy, one's a mystery, and I really want to do this."

A few of you might recall that Moore attempted to make this transition earlier in his career with the 1995 comedy Canadian Bacon.  For those of you who haven't seen Bacon, the film, as you might expect, was infused with political comedy. With the US economy in a rut, and the President's approval rating at an all time low, a faux war between the U.S. and Canada is invented to invigorate the economy. John Candy played a local sheriff in Niagara Falls along the US/Canada border, who takes it a bit too seriously.

The movie is probably best known to most as the last film John Candy made before he passed. I'm a huge fan of Moore's docs (aside from F911, which just wasn't very well put together), but couldn't stand this film.

That's not to say that I don't believe that Moore is capable of making a good narrative fiction feature. He has been able to craft some fantastic narratives with his documentaries. Bowling for Columbine even won Best Original Screenplay from the Writers Guild of America, the first time in the 55-year history that a documentary had been awarded with that prize. Moore has also demonstrated the unique ability to have the audience laughing one second, and in tears the next.

But it isn't over just yet. Moore's latest, possibly last, documentary Capitalism: A Love Story hits theaters on September 23rd 2009. Moore says that the film will "go right to the source of the problem — an economic system that is unfair, it's unjust and it's not democratic. And now we've learned it doesn't work. This issue informs all my other movies. I started thinking if I can only make one more movie — I started thinking this of course during the Bush years — what would that movie be? And this is the movie."

Thanks to FirstShowing for passing along this story.