All in all, Michael is really just a regular guy, Moore or less
Michael Moore is a shy man, a lazy man. A couch potato who watches too much TV and does not read enough literature. Someone with a teeny ego who cannot stand to look at himself on a movie screen.
Really. He insists.
Moore has been the central figure at this year’s Cannes Film Festival with “Fahrenheit 9/11,” his severe assault on President Bush and the White House’s actions before and after the Sept. 11 attacks.
His squabble with Disney, which refused to let subsidiary Miramax release “Fahrenheit 9/11,” has been branded by Hollywood cynics as a publicity stunt to whip up interest in the film. His voluble anti-Bush rhetoric at Cannes lends the impression he’s never met a microphone he didn’t like.
With two movies, two best-selling books and a one-man show on the London stage in just two years, he’s seemingly a tireless toiler and shameless self-promoter.
Time for Moore, an Academy Award winner for his gun-culture documentary “Bowling for Columbine,” to tell all on himself.
“There’s a character that is often written about that is often times largely invented by the media, and it’s called Michael Moore,” said Moore, 50, whose previous credits include “Roger & Me” and the television shows “TV Nation” and “The Awful Truth.”
“It took me a few years to figure this out, but that guy isn’t really me. … I read things, negative things about my flaws or whatever. I go, you know, they don’t have to make this stuff up. If anybody would just ask me, I have lots of things wrong with me.”
The awful truth about Moore:
• Work ethic. “I’m lazy. I’m a lethargic individual. I strive to do nothing. … I watch too much TV. Some days, I watch four, five hours of TV, just completely vegged out, completely zoned out.”
• Reading habits. “I don’t read enough novels, I don’t read enough fiction. I love to do that, and I don’t take the time to do it. I’m not as well read as I should be on that level.”
• Body and spirit. “I clearly have put my health second. Taking care of myself is second to everything else I’m doing. That’s a horribly stupid thing to do.”
Despite his pudginess, Moore said doctors routinely proclaim him in good health, though they admonish him: ” ‘Mike, get up and walk around the block.’ I don’t do that.
And, he adds, “I don’t take care of my spiritual needs as well as I should. I try to go to Mass as often as I can, but not out of some obligation, some rule of the church, a hierarchy that I completely disagree with.”
• Self image. “I’m very shy, I’m very introverted. I think I was able to ask out one girl in high school, and I didn’t do much better after high school, and I just had to wait around for people to ask me out. I can’t stand looking at myself in a movie. … I don’t have enough of an ego. I read that (about his supposed egomania), but then I remember, that’s that other Michael Moore.”
The birthday bunch
Actress Joan Collins is 71. Actor Charles Kimbrough (“Murphy Brown”) is 68. Actress Lauren Chapin (“Father Knows Best”) is 59. Comedian Drew Carey is 46. Actor Linden Ashby (“Melrose Place”) is 44. Actress-model Karen Duffy is 43. Singer Maxwell is 31. Singer Jewel is 30.