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Activist and documentarian Michael Moore has proven a controversial figure throughout his career, wading into political conversations around big business, the insurance industry, and even war crimes, but now seems potentially primed to take on an even more scandalous subject: The growing legal conflict between “It Ends with Us” collaborators Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni.
“I’ve been working on something, yes, for the last number of months, but I can’t talk about that right now,” said Moore in a recent interview with Deadline. He later teased, “I’ll have some interesting stories to tell when I can speak about it, like what the heck Justin Baldoni, Wayfarer, and Blake Lively have to do with me trying to make a movie…”
The dispute between the star and her co-star and director began at the end of last year when Lively filed a complaint in the Los Angeles Superior Court accusing Baldoni and his company Wayfarer Studios of both sexual harassment and executing a retaliatory smear campaign to tarnish Lively’s image, amongst many other claims. Baldoni has since sued Lively, her husband Ryan Reynolds, and their publicist Leslie Sloane for defamation, as well as The New York Times for a piece they wrote when the complaint was first revealed. Baldoni’s legal team also recently shared raw footage from set in an effort to show no misconduct took place. What is unclear is how Michael Moore plays into all this. Nonetheless, he’s determined to follow compelling subjects for as long as he still can.
“When you’re me, you have to make sure you’re alive to make the film,” the 70 year-old filmmaker said. “I’m not unconscious of what the risks are, but that’s never stopped me and this is my 35th year of making movies. I am working quietly on it with my producers. We don’t want to get shut down so I’m not going to say much more. But as of now, we’re moving forward.”
When asked about his fears of being silenced in today’s America, when censorship seems to be taking hold and preventing films like the now Oscar-nominated Palestinian/Israeli documentary “No Other Land” from finding a U.S. distributor, Moore was resolute about continuing to speak his mind and pushed for others to do the same.
“We need people that have courage, and who are not subject to propaganda or don’t care about it,” said Moore, adding later, “Is there a campaign to stop all this? Of course there is. It’s not like I haven’t had to fight my own battles this past year to get my own work out there… or even just to appear on TV. How many people like me do you see on CNN? Not many.”
Moore serves as an executive producer on another documentary that’s struggled to be seen, Palestine’s Oscar submission, “From Ground Zero,” which features 22 shorts that range between documentary, fiction, animation and experimental work and revolve around the people of Gaza trying to survive amidst the Israel-Hamas War.
“From Ground Zero” is currently in limited theaters from Watermelon Pictures.
English (US) ·