Yesterday’s Marketplace had an interview with Andy and Mike, a couple of activists who fight “evil doers”:

In 1999, just before the big protests in Seattle, Mike and Andy set up a parody of the WTO website at the domain GATT.org. Some people mistook it for the real thing and wrote in with questions about all sorts of trade matters. Finally, Mike and Andy found themselves invited to conferences to speak as the organization they opposed. They scrounged up their savings, bought plane tickets, and went.

At these conferences, Mike and Andy put forth some outrageous proposals, such as recycling hamburgers in the third-world , encouraging democracies to adopt a free market model by selling votes, and introducing an “employee visualization appendage” (represented by a “three-foot-long-golden phallus”). But the real story is the reaction they got. For example, after the phallus presentation:

the audience rewards Andy with a healthy round of applause, but no questions. A reporter takes photos. As they wander around all that day, Mike and Andy come up again and again against a blank wall, until finally they find one woman who admits being terribly offended by Andy’s Appendage–because women can be factory managers too.

There’s a movie about all of this–it’s called The Yes Men, and it’s showing at the Sundance Film Festival. This could be a great documentary, even though it has a lot of potential to be unbalanced and preachy (Bowling for Columbine, anyone?). I hope the film emphasizes the satire and irony of Mike and Andy’s hijinks and allows audiences to draw their own conclusions.

People everywhere are writing about Fahrenheit 9/11. I mostly agree with this review at IMDB, so I won’t add to the discussion except to say that, whatever else you think of him, Michael Moore does not make boring movies.

But why oh why is Ray Bradbury being such a cranky old curmudgeon about the film’s title? I hate speaking ill of the man; Fahrenheit 451, along with 1984, The Handmaid’s Tale, Brave New World, etc., represents one of my favorite genres: “apocalyptic futures that could happen if you all don’t pay attention.”

The internet has been full of angry Ray Bradbury stories for the past few weeks, but I got mad all over again when I heard Tuesday’s interview on the radio program Here and Now.

I hope this film sinks away and is forgotten.

Nice. If any filmmaker wishes to use the title of a Good Grief! post, he or she should feel free to do so. Words of Wisdom From Your Toilet, Dating Polar Bears, and Roy Orbison and the Infidel Ray would make fascinating documentaries.