You might have heard of this documentary called Manufacturing Dissent, where Rick Caine and Debbie Melnyk went about filming a doc focusing on Michael Moore, and ended up using Moore's own in-your-face techniques to question the controversial filmmaker. Cinematical's Jette Kernion reviewed it at SXSW, and asked: "how do we know what the truth is behind this film or any documentary?" But she isn't the only one who started asking questions after the film. Kim also alerted us to complaints from John Pierson about Moore's techniques and wavering credibility. Now you can see it for yourself -- or rather, most of it.

Before the doc gets released on DVD on November 6, Variety has reported that 40 of the film's 97 minutes are getting screened on AOL's True Stories website -- for free. Of course, since you're not having to fork over your hard-earned money, you will have to deal with ads being spliced into the video. It's an ... interesting way to drum up support. They're hoping for lots of blogs and comments on the material to help increase buzz, and possibly get the film on more screens, but is showing almost half of the film interspersed with ads the way to go?

We're all familiar with a preview clip here or there, but that's different than watching half the film and then waiting a few months to see the other half. I'm wondering if this will drum up enough buzz for the DVD, or if it will be forgotten by the time November rolls around. Or, will viewers feel satiated by what they see in 40 minutes, and not feel the need to see the rest? It's an intriguing idea, yet I can't help but think it would've been much better if it was done a week or two before the DVD release -- where people could see if they'd like the doc enough to buy it, and still have the film fresh in their mind when it hits the stands.

Yeah, I know, this is light years old in internet time, but a couple days ago over on indieWIRE, John Pierson -- who, many moons ago, sold Michael Moore's groundbreaking documentary Roger & Me to Warner Brothers for the then-startling sum of $3 million or so -- published an open letter to Moore smacking him around for the controversy surrounding another doc, Manufacturing Dissent, directed by Rick Caine and Debbie Melnyk --an unauthorized film about Moore and the making of Roger & Me.

Pierson, who teaches a class on producing a film at UT Austin (and who helmed exec-produced* a 2005 doc about himself called Reel Paradise, about the year he and his family spent living in a remote village in Fiji, where they operated a movie theater for the locals), takes Moore to task in his indieWIRE screed, telling the controversial director how angry and disappointed his producing students were when Pierson screened a working version of Manufacturing Dissent for them. They weren't upset with the quality of that film (which Jette Kernion reviewed for Cinematical during SXSW) -- rather, they were angry to learn from the film about some discrepancies in the way Moore presents the events that unfolded during the filming of Roger & Me -- which is, at UT Austin and many other film schools, a mainstay of the curriculum -- and what may or may not have actually happened.

Whether you like or loathe Michael Moore, you have to admit that the man has done a lot for the shape, scope and reception of documentary film. That being said, you can't say as much for his attention to accuracy, and his films have faced a lot of criticism for the his creative liberties and truth-bending antics. It also seems that Mr. Moore is a bit hypocritical about interviews, and he doesn't like it when filmmakers hunt him down as he hunts others. This past Saturday, SXSW screened the world premiere of Manufacturing Dissent, a documentary on Moore that he didn't give his cinematic consent for.

Toronto filmmakers and husband-and-wife team Debbie Melnyk and Rick Caine approached Moore a number of times for their documentary, and he pretty much shafted them every time. While the pair are fans of the man, they don't fall short of criticizing him for the doc. One of the film's discoveries is that all of the evasiveness in Roger & Me was a crock -- apparently Moore did talk with Roger Smith, but the footage was cut. All of this came about when the duo realized that their attempts at an interview needed to be taken from a different angle. They began to investigate his filmmaking process, which of course, brought up the questions of his practices. I think Melnyk really describes the man best: "We're a bit disappointed and disillusioned with Michael, but we are still very grateful to him for putting documentaries out there in a major way."

The New York Times has a story up about documentary filmmakers Rick Caine and Debbie Melnyk, who decided to make a doc about filmmaker Michael Moore, and found out that he and his camp weren't quite as open to being examined by other filmmakers as they'd expected.

Their film, Manufacturing Dissent, premieres at the upcoming SXSW Film Festival, and, according to the NYT piece, "to say it sheds an unflattering light on Mr. Moore ... would be an understatement." The film examines alleged errors and omissions in Moore's films, including an interview Moore did with Roger Smith, then General Motors chairman, for his film Roger & Me -- which was largely about Moore's failed attempts to get an interview with Smith after GM shut down its plant in Flint, Michigan, Moore's hometown. The interview occured, say Melnyk and Caine, and was left on the cutting-room floor.