What do you say to the Canadian and French people who claim you paint a
far-too-positive picture of their health-care systems?
What I always say is ''Wanna switch systems?'' And the answer is always no.... We always talk about the negatives: Canadians have to wait two hours or two days or two weeks for this, that, or whatever. Well, okay, let's set up a system where we don't have the Canadian wait. Let's set up a system where we take what they do right and don't do the things that they do wrong.
You mentioned that you worried about how much your presence influences what you get. Cuba seems to me to be a great example. There's this incredibly handsome doctor treating the 9/11 workers in the film.
Doctor El Dreamy! [Laughs] That's what the crew called him.
They have all this fancy equipment that they're happy to show off because it's obviously in their best interest to make everything look perfect for you. Don't you worry that you're getting fooled there, or at the very least not showing an accurate representation?
But that's the only foot they have to put forward: their best foot. And that's not just Michael Moore saying that. Every study that has been done has shown that the Cuban health care system is perhaps the best in the Third World. We insisted that we be put on a floor that has only Cubans and only Cuban patients. You saw it in the film. They're in a room with four people, it's a tiny room. But the best way to answer this question is to talk to Reggie [an EMT who suffered lung problems after 9/11, who was] in the film. After we left, she had to stay longer for the treatment and she got to thinking the same thing that you're thinking: How much of this is done for the cameras? So because she speaks Spanish, she snuck out of her hospital room one day, and went downstairs to see if the intake [process] was the same. She told them she was a tourist from Puerto Rico who wasn't feeling well. And she said it was the exact same thing.
How's your own health?
My health is in excellent condition, other than the fact that I need to lose weight. A few months ago I thought, ''There's a bit of a personal hypocrisy in making a film about health care and not taking the best care of yourself.'' I've lost about 25 pounds now. My cholesterol is 142. My sugar number is 90, which is excellent. My blood pressure is 110 over 60.
You got a standing ovation here. Is your advice to young filmmakers who want to make it at Cannes to put a 10-minute segment in their films about how wonderful the French are, like you did with Sicko?
[Laughs] Look, the French are just relieved that there was finally one American who was willing to say something nice about them.
What's your next big project going to be?
The next big project? Well, I made a mistake at Cannes three years ago and told people what it was, which began the insurance companies and drug companies going into DEFCON 4. So I'm not going to talk about what I'm going to do next. It will not be like this film. Or the previous
films. And it's best that the subject matter that I'll be addressing not know that it's the subject matter.
Ooh! It's Canadian Bacon 2, isn't it?
Yes! How did you know? [Laughs] Especially after those Canadian journalists came after me in the press conference yesterday. A bunch of ingrates, those Canadians!
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