Michael Moore

A Valentine to Michael Moore

Moore loves to describe himself as a working class kind of guy. He reminds people he was born in the blue collar town of Flint Michigan. When asked about all the money he has made he says, "A guy like me, with a high school education, who is suppose to be working in a factory," he muses, "that chance to reach as many people as I have, that's something I do not take for granted." Sounds good, but the truth is that although he was born in Flint, he grew up in nearby Davison, a mostly white, middle-class community. And although Moore's father did work on the assembly line of a G.M. plant, he managed to send his three kids to college. Moore dropped out of college at the University of Michigan after one year. So it was Moore's choice to only have a "high school education," not because he couldn't have a college education.

Michael Moore Unravels Before the Oscars

What happened behind the scenes at "TV Nation" gives a glimpse of the real Michael Moore. "He disliked sharing credit with his writers" like Merrill Markoe, wrote MacFarquhar. And he disliked sharing money, as well.

When two of the show's young writers, who had been given the title Associate Producer, took steps to join the Writers Guild (the powerful union for movie and TV writers), Moore took them aside. "I'm getting a lot of heat from the union to call you guys writers and pay you under the union rules," Eric Zicklin recounted Moore's words for MacFarquhar. "I don't have the budget for that," Moore threatened them, "But if they keep coming down on me that'll mean I'll only be able to afford one of you and the other one's gotta go."