Michael Moore is a man of many hats, both figuratively (director, activist, idealist), and literally (does he ever wear the same baseball cap twice?). When I sat down with a group of Michiganders for a hastily relocated interview — it was intended to take place at The Renaissance Center (General Motors headquarters) in Detroit, but Moore wasn’t allowed in the building — I wasn’t sure which version of Michael I was going to get. Would he be, as some television and radio outlets have implied, a crazed, rabid extremist spouting liberal rhetoric potent enough to turn the room into a bunch of hippies? Would he bring a bullhorn? Was this all a political stunt? I could be wrong, of course, but in reality I don’t think any of this was the case. Despite his hulking stature, he came across, if anything, as meek.

After a moment of formal introductions and informal banter, Moore got down to business — specifically, the business of making a film in Michigan. “The entire production [of Capitalism: A Love Story] was based here, in Traverse City”, Moore says. “Because this is a Paramount movie, a major Hollywood studio, I’m going to guess that this is the first Hollywood-funded/supported movie where the entire movie — its pre-production, its production, and its post-production — was done in Michigan. We had a great time doing it; I brought people here from New York and California, and I also hired a lot of Michiganders. That’s a good thing, and I’d like to encourage other filmmakers to do that.” He also encourages entrepreneurs of any kind to invest in their employees: “I’m the boss of this film,” he says, “but my employees get between $1,800 and $2,000 a week. They get full medical benefits. There’s no deductible if you work for me. Dental, paid days off — however many you need…. If you’re going to have a baby, and you’re working for me, you don’t just get a maternity leave, you get a paid maternity leave. I try to behave as I wish everyone would behave, but individual action on my part is not going to bring that about; that’s why we have to insist that our government do this. If we lived in almost any other Western industrialized country, we would have many of the things I talk about.”

What he talks about, repeatedly and emphatically, is giving back. While he is adamantly in favor of free enterprise as he believes it should be practiced — “working hard, making money, doing well, being inventive, using your ideas and sweat” — he insists that capitalism today is an “evil that must be stopped.” “Capitalism now,” he goes on to say, “is making money off of money…turning Wall Street into a casino and guaranteeing that the rich get the biggest hunk of the pie. That’s what capitalism has done; I oppose that. I don’t think we can put the genie back into the bottle.” However, he maintains that wealth, in and of itself, is not a sin, if it’s not hoarded among an elite few. “You cannot, in the afterlife, get through the gates…if you have not done something with your money, while you are alive, to help those who have less. My film could flop tomorrow, and I could lose everything, or it could do well — so, it’s not that if the film does well at the box office, I’m a sinner. What it does is put a heavier burden on me to do right, and to do good with that money.”

With that, Moore is in his element, and stresses his hope that Capitalism: A Love Story will bring the result he wanted from his first film, the 1989 documentary Roger & Me, which he considers a failure. “If anything, for years now, I’ve tried to think about what I did wrong. I set out with that film to change things, to wake people up about General Motors. I had this fantasy that people would see the movie, would wise up to this company, and it wouldn’t end up the way that it has now. The fact that it failed…makes me question — could I have done something else, said something a different way? I’m constantly critical of myself, because the film didn’t succeed in what I set out to do, which was save those jobs, and save my hometown. When Roger & Me was made there were still 50,000 jobs in Flint…I don’t think there’s 6,000 there now.”

He certainly has a point — in addition to maintaining its business policies of the late ’80s, General Motors has also doggedly kept Moore from its world headquarters in Detroit. As was the case with Roger & Me, Moore’s attempt to speak with the president of GM during the filming of Capitalism was rebuffed. When asked how it felt to go back after 20 years, Moore says he had been hoping they would have “called his bluff” by now. “You mean GM, across the street? We couldn’t even be there today! We weren’t supposed to be here. We were supposed to be out in the lobby across the street doing these interviews while the movie was screening, and GM said no. Right now I can’t be here for the Detroit premiere of my film…. Honestly, here’s what I thought: I was ready. This time, they’re gonna call my bluff, let me in. I had a whole thing I wanted to say to whoever would talk to me about what I think GM could be doing to save the company, save the jobs, be a transportation company for the 21st century — mass transit, alternative energy, all of the things we could be doing to benefit society instead of the old internal combustion engine that’s melting the polar ice caps.”

When a Flint, Michigan native on the panel suggested he had nevertheless been onto something with Roger & Me, Moore insists he wasn’t “20 years ahead of the curve,” though he is hopeful that Capitalism’s subject matter will coincide with the national debate. “With Sicko, we were two years ahead, trying to get a healthcare debate. This film…I think we’re kind of right here, in the middle of it. This film is gonna come out and be perhaps the most relevant film that they’ve seen this year…. They’ll see things in this movie that they will not see on the evening news…. I’ve already seen it with the crowds — people’s minds are blown.”

All of Moore’s films incite a certain amount of outrage, however, and one wonders — after his long career exposing the dirty dealings of politicians and their corporate backers, how Capitalism will be any different. “People are run-down right now and full of despair,” he says. “This movie is meant to inspire a cathartic experience watching the bad guy get his comeuppance. If anything, I hope that people will go to see this and have a good laugh! I think there was fatigue over George W. Bush when Fahrenheit came out, but people went to the theater in droves because they had a sense that the movie was going to take the piss out of the guy, and so, I think that people understand this movie is about what the Wall Street people and the bankers have been up to, and that they’re gong to get a bit of a smackdown…. I’m going to tell a lot of things, and you’re going to be in the theater saying, ‘I can’t believe he’s saying this — oh my God, I never saw that on TV!’ It’s never gonna be easy…. Those with money are never going to just give it up. I’m not surprised that they’re very active now in organizing people to be their foot soldiers. But that’s not how the majority of the country feels — the majority of the people in the country voted for Barack Obama; 60% of the Senate is democratic. People want change. They’re sick and tired of the way things have gotten — they’re fed up. And if a small group of voices are the ones being heard instead of the majority, then something is seriously wrong.”