Unfortunately, the TV version is truly crappy; like a lot of the stuff on Free Speech TV from what I've seen so far, the production values were really low. It was basically Goodman and Gonzalez doing their radio show on TV, looking down at their papers a lot rather than looking into the camera, and so on. No creative use of clips, sound effects, music, or graphics. Plus neither of them wore makeup, which like it or not is a requirement on TV. I understand that the program probably doesn't have money for this kind of stuff, but if you're going to do a TV show, you should do a TV show -- not a radio show that ends up on film. As it stands, it was incredibly boring, and I watched it because I have the politics I have and for the novelty of it. But no one flipping through the channels would have had their attention grabbed by this.
It's stuff like this that puts all the sectarian-left carping about Michael Moore in perspective. He makes audiovisual products with a progressive message that actually stimulate the curiousity of and even entertain large numbers of people. The purist progressives prefer something with a tighter and more elaborate message, but no kick -- stuff that's worthy and boring. In this vein I notice that the ever-more-predictable CounterPunch has a recent article whining about Morgan Spurlock's "SuperSize Me":
http://www.counterpunch.org/williams07152004.html
Personally, I found Spurlock's vegan girlfriend annoying, too, but other than that, these criticisms are for shit. What the CounterPunch critic really wants to say is, "A lot of people saw this movie, and I didn't make the movie, so something must be fatally wrong with it."
- - - - - John Lacny http://www.johnlacny.com
People of the US, unite and defeat the Bush regime and all its running dogs!