The Chris Moeller Archives

Digging up Moses

One of the truly indelible moments caught on film during my lifetime is the confrontation between Michael Moore and Charlton Heston in Moore’s 2002 film Bowling for Columbine. The debate over gun violence took place between the director and the veteran actor-slash-National Rifle Association president in Heston’s backyard in 2001 after Heston had begun to suffer the debilitating effects of Alzheimer’s Disease, but before a public announcement had been made of the fact in 2003.

Though the film received high marks from critics and became one of the highest-grossing documentary films of all-time, political wisdom cast a harsh light, then and now, on Moore for supposedly failing to play fair with Heston in his obviously-befuddled state-- the big, bad liberal picking on a weak old man.

It’s a bogus charge. As expressed, Heston-- the one-time civil rights champion who devolved during his later life into David Duke’s favorite public figure and a man who blamed America's high rate of gun violence on its "mixed ethnicity"-- was still in a very high-profile position as head of the nation’s most powerful political lobby when the celluloid encounter transpired next to Heston’s swimming pool at his palatial Beverly Hills home. The year after Moore interviewed the 78-year-old, the gun rights lobbyist campaigned for Congressional Republicans in 22 different states. He was on record shortly before as saying that the most recent standard-bearer for the Democratic Party, Al Gore, had “the guts of a guppy,” so when Gore made the strange public statement that Moore’s film did the impossible of arousing sympathy in him on behalf of Heston, it kind of re-enforced Heston’s point.

In this penultimate scene of the movie, Moore attempts to have Heston answer for the NRA’s decision to hold a meeting in Denver, Colorado in the days following the deadly mass shooting at Columbine High School in 1999. Moore attempts to deliver (into Heston’s “cold, dead hands”?) an 8x10 photo of one of the dead girls, but winds up leaving it at Heston’s gate, instead, after the old man abruptly ends the interview.

Maybe what was so poignant about Moore’s film is that Heston, along with Ronald Reagan and George Murphy, were pioneers in using the Hollywood image machine to serve their political ends, nearly all of which were reactionary-- trampling the cultural and economic victories of Franklin Roosevelt’s “New Deal,” that interestingly, all three actors had once championed. In Heston’s unique case, the persona was trading in on his many acting roles as “great men” in big-budget, historical epics.

The Moses Industry, as one might call it, led the one-time star of MGM’s The Ten Commandments to take increasingly angry and ridiculous public policy positions. It’s well documented by sociologists that poor white men in America, as they age, begin to harbor deep resentments towards what they perceive as cultural favoritism towards women and minorities, but I believe these are nothing compared to the resentments felt during their golden years by rich white men, especially those that have lived in the public eye, as they come to believe that, even though they don’t directly feel the crushing burden of affirmative action and equal employment opportunity, they are no longer venerated by young people. In Heston’s case, we add alcoholism into the mix. Moses/Ben-Hur checked into a rehab clinic in Utah in 2000.

His Moses alter ego was so extreme that it colored his public statement when announcing his Alzheimer’s in 2003. “I can part the red sea,” he or a publicist wrote, “but I can’t part with you.” In his worsening, final phase, he attempted to reach back for a public sympathy he no longer garnered from the mushy political middle that he no longer occupied, adding lines to his statement such as “If I tell you a funny story for a second time, please laugh anyway.” It's almost enough to make you forget how uncivil the man had been for the previous 20 years.

The encounter in Bowling for Columbine is painful at times to watch, for sure, but let’s not forget how it was forged as the result of Heston’s enormous Hollywood ego, one that that the radical reactionary fringe of our country always attributes, in blanket form, to movie stars on the political left. Reagan suffered from Alzheimer’s late in life also, but he was kept discreetly away from the public. In the end, Heston couldn’t keep the same steely grip on his public image that he always kept on his sidearm. He had wandered so far and so long ago off the political reservation that the public could no longer determine when his demented opinions had simply become dementia.

posted by CM @ 7:48 PM