What a Lovely Story

Somewhat slow off the mark here, but this account from Josh Tyler over at Cinema Blend of going to see Michael Moore's recent film Sicko makes for interesting reading. A quick extract:

As I sat down, right behind me entered an obligatory, cowboy hat wearing redneck in his 50s. He announced his presence by shouting across the theater in a thick Texas drawl to his already seated wife “you owe me fer seein this!”

Sicko started; the stereotypical Texas guy sat down behind me and never stopped talking. He talked through the entire movie… and I listened. The first ten to twenty minutes of the film he spent badmouthing Moore to his wife and snorting in disgust whenever MM went into one of his trademark monologues. But as the movie wore on his protestations became quieter, less enthusiastic. Somewhere along the way, maybe at the half way point, right before my ears, Sicko changed this man’s mind. By the forty-five minute mark, he, along with the rest of the audience were breaking into spontaneous applause. He stopped pooh-poohing the movie and started shouting out “hell yeah!” at the screen. It was as if the whole world had been flipped upside down.

It's worth going and reading the whole thing, it only gets more extraordinary from there.

Hat-tip to Mike Malloy for alerting me to this article.

It's a shame the film didn't get a UK distributor. I know it wouldn't have attracted a huge audience, since we don't have to deal with the US's healthcare system, but all the same, it's nice to have a reminder that, whatever the faults of the NHS, it could be much worse. As it is, your best option is to torrent it, or something.