On April 20, 1999, Craig Scott was late leaving the house for school, delaying his sister, Rachel. During their drive, the two argued over Craig’s tardiness. When he exited the vehicle, he slammed the door in Rachel’s face.

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It was the last time he ever saw her.

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At 11:19 a.m., Rachel sat with her friend Richard Castaldo on a grassy knoll outside Columbine High School. A pipe bomb partially detonated several feet away, which they dismissed as a senior prank.

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It was no prank. It was the beginning of the most gruesome school shooting the nation had ever seen.

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Seniors Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold opened fire, paralyzing Castaldo and killing Scott with a shot to the left temple. After firing at several more students, killing 15-year-old Daniel Rohrbough and wounding several others, the killers went inside, wounding students Brian Anderson and Stephanie Munson and teachers Pattie Nielson and Dave Sanders, who died later that day.

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Nielson fled to the library, where she told students to hide under the tables. Harris and Klebold entered and murdered ten classmates in 11 minutes. Afterward, they went to the cafeteria and attempted to detonate the propane bombs they’d planted before the shooting. Around noon, they returned to the library and exchanged gunfire with police. Minutes later, they committed suicide, ending the massacre.

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School shootings had happened before, but Columbine was different. It was a coordinated attack by two teenagers with a terrifying ambition: to surpass the Oklahoma City Bombing in 1995.

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The plan was horrifying: time the propane bombs to detonate at the cafeteria's moment of highest occupation, then murder fleeing students to increase the death toll. If successful, the massacre would have claimed over 600 lives.

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Grappling with such brutality, especially after numerous explorative news segments, was difficult. Students got taunted before their murders, and the killers bathed in victims' fear while exchanging congratulations on their murders; Harris even told a wounded girl to “Stop your bitching."

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We didn’t know how to react, who or what to blame, or how to prevent future tragedies. We couldn’t grapple with the youth of America turning on its own or what that meant for a generation we did not understand.

The result was blaming anything we could rationalize no matter how loose the logic: conservative gun culture, bullying, mental health, police cowardice, even Marilyn Manson. Many exploited this mass panic to monetize murder and profit from the politics, none better than “documentarian” Michael Moore.

Ostensibly, Moore’s Oscar-winning effort aims at the cultural flaws that “caused” the Columbine massacre but is actually a selfish immoralist’s hypocrisy dragged out over a two-hour exploitation of the nation’s most shocking mass shooting.

Bowling for Columbine starts with a visit to Thomas Nichols’ farm, where Timothy McVeigh stayed before committing the Oklahoma City Bombing. Moore spars with Nichols over the second amendment: the “right to bear arms.” In typical extremist form, Moore ratchets the conversational volume to the highest decibel, asking if, since nuclear weapons qualify as “arms,” Nichols should be permitted to possess weapons-grade plutonium.

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It is an early exposure of Moore’s intent: not to explore Columbine but perpetrate an aimless, two-hour tirade on America's moral bankruptcy. Moore believes the Right’s gun fetishism and affinity for defense spending fostered the environment in which Harris developed. In Littleton, tech corporation Lockheed Martin employed over 5,000 people, many of whose children attended Columbine. Moore turns his subject's words against him, implying that growing up near a massive weapons manufacturer was partially responsible for Harris' actions. He has no proof, only the conceit to believe it because he wants it that way. A study, or anything Harris and Klebold said or did, would help, but Moore detests evidence; it'd disprove his claims.

In December 1997, Harris wrote an essay on the value of firearms in schools. Both shooters made videos in Harris' basement, the transcripts of which detail their motives and intentions. The two hoped their massacre would become a global phenomenon and everyone would clamor to understand their motivations; they expressed contempt for previous shootings, like Heath High School in 1997. Harris assured that Heath’s perpetrator only sought acceptance; despite their insistence about their classmate’s abuse, he asserted that this isn’t social revenge; his journals make it difficult not to believe him.

Eric wrote of wanting to “trick” girls into his room and “overpower” them, “tell ‘em what they want to hear, be all nice and sweet,” and then “fuck ‘em like an animal, feel them from the inside.” Immediately after this declaration, he cites a Nine Inch Nails music video where a young man gets kidnapped and tortured, the inspiration for another twisted fantasy:

“I want to tear a throat open with my own teeth like a pop can. I want to gut someone with my hand, to tear a head off and rip out the heart and lungs from the neck, to stab someone in the gut, shove it up to their heart, and yank the fucking blade out of their ribcage.”

It is similar to what he then describes wanting to do to a weaker freshman: “tear them apart like a wolf… strangle them, squish their heads, bite their temples in the skull, rip off their jaw, rip off their collar bones, break their arms in half and twist them around…”

Harris' depravity makes consuming Bowling for Columbine as a legitimate social aid impossible, which it knew regardless of Harris and Klebold’s documentation. It uses Nielson's 911 call but omits the FBI transcript released four months before the film's premiere, which displays the pair’s enjoyment, the racial epithets spewed at Isiah Shoels, who begged for his mother before Klebold murdered him, or Harris screaming "Die, motherfucker!" while killing 14-year-old Steven Curnow.

Kyle Velasquez, a special needs student, did not know to hide; Klebold murdered him with a shotgun blast to the head seconds after telling everyone that since they refused to surrender for slaughter, he’d begin shooting.

It ignores Harris’ “peek-a-boo” taunt before murdering 17-year-old Cassie Bernall or Klebold’s interaction with acquaintance John Savage. Savage asked Klebold what he was doing, who replied,

“Oh, just killing people.”

After reflecting on the tragedy and conferring with experts, Dylan’s mother has claimed that his actions were born from a desire to die, not kill. It is the rationalization of a grieving mother aching to make sense of her child’s crimes, but it holds no water. Depression cannot get linked to homicide; even if it could, it cannot make someone relish killing. Dylan enjoyed the hunt, savored the kill, and was as forthright about this as the friend many label a psychopath.

Bowling for Columbine gets many things wrong, but here lies its worst fault. Irrespective of what information was available in 2002, any thesis on Columbine fails without the massacre's defining factor: choice. Eric and Dylan chose to kill; refusing to blame them is invalidating. If mental health, bullying, gun culture, violent programming, or Marilyn Manson were at fault, all become irrelevant in the face of choice. Harris and Klebold sacrificed our consideration the moment they pulled the trigger.

Investigating the "causes" has only preventative value, but such measures rely on receptiveness that people like Harris and Klebold lack. Contrary to popular belief, there are evil people that institutional purity cannot help. We never defend Ted Bundy or Jeffrey Dahmer; they’re adults. We collectively refuse to label children monsters, and so, since the massacre, Eric and Dylan have had defenders who spurn portraying them accurately, Moore among them. After all, acknowledging the truth undermines his goal: throwing everything at the wall to see what sticks.  

As such, he waits 100 minutes to interview an actual Columbine victim. He never claims any particular cause was responsible or that everything was to blame; he spits distorted truth and twisted facts. It is not about the Columbine massacre; he treats it the same way as the NRA, which he chastises for visiting the sites of mass shootings immediately after their perpetration.

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Castaldo never shares his thoughts because Moore cannot allow him to taint his mission. Instead, he ropes in Mark Taylor, another survivor, and goes to the headquarters of KMart, where Eric and Dylan purchased ammunition for the massacre. At one point, he confesses to promising that a Kmart rep would listen to them and give a worthy response. Moore’s film is built on corporate America being an immoral cesspool concerned only with profit. He knew getting a genuine response was unlikely, yet he manipulated two traumatized young men into his on-camera circus.

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Fortunately, he receives a gift: the next day, Kmart issues a televised statement, vowing to phase out the sale of ammunition within the next 90 days: Moore is sure to station himself in the frame and approaches the Kmart rep the millisecond she concludes.

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“The first thing we want to do is thank you…”

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‍"We?" Who is this “we?” Moore is neither a native nor resident of Littleton, was not at Columbine, and is no friend to anyone who was: he has no place next to Taylor and Castaldo or speaking at all. He can't even keep quiet long enough to let the woman finish the statement. A good documentarian would document; Moore inserts, exploits, and relishes.

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It echoes Lawrence of Arabia: “A man who tells lies hides the truth. A man who tells half-lies has forgotten where he put it.” If you must manufacture the appearance of getting a gun from a Kansas bank teller or fake showing the NRA president the photo of a young girl killed with a gun, the truth is not on your side. If you must walk around Canada opening front doors to contrive grandiose claims of American fear-mongering, the truth is not on your side.

It’s unfortunate: conceptually, despite his ignoring it, the truth is on Moore’s side. Nothing can force someone to kill, but our culture makes it easier to murder and escape justice by allowing the dismissal of warning signs. During the basement tapes, Eric recalls an incident where a gun store clerk called his home. Eric’s father picked up, and the clerk informed him that his order was ready. Mr. Harris, a gun owner, denied placing an order. If not for the pervasive gun culture that allows a man in a small Colorado town to own firearms, Mr. Harris may have known something was amiss.

The two insist their friends or family not get blamed and express occasional guilt on their account but relish the deception necessary to perpetrate the attack. In their eyes, their classmates' alleged abuse was unbearable, but they assert this with rage, not sadness. The pair’s journals paint a similar picture; Dylan boils with self-loathing over his lack of romantic success and sexual fetishes; Harris is a typical embittered teenager, only with violent, incel leanings. Regardless, the fury remains.

We can ponder the causes, but some people are just unhinged; gun culture will not cause them to murder: they'll do it because they want to. No disorder creates rape and torture fantasies or enjoying taunting schoolkids before murdering them with a shotgun. How we respond to these facts forms our ability to confront evil. Before calling Bowling for Columbine one of the greatest documentary films ever made, we must ask what it means to be a documentary film. It must document, which Moore’s film does not: no event gets covered, perspective investigated, societal issue dissected, or journey shown.

Columbine overflows with heartbreak: Daniel Rohrbough’s family was among those told there would be a final bus of evacuated students. A police officer later admitted the mistake: there was no bus. Daniel’s family confirmed his death the next day when the morning paper published the image of his dead body on the sidewalk.

What about Daniel Mauser, who allegedly fought back when fired upon, causing Harris to shoot him point-blank in the face? Mauser's father was also part of the last group of parents falsely told of that fictional final bus.

What about the police leaving the deceased at the crime scene for 48 hours or that Craig Scott watched his friends get murdered, lied in their blood to feign death, galvanized the library survivors to escape, and fled past his sister’s corpse?

Harris and Klebold planned the massacre for a year: they knew what they were doing, wanted to do it, and were always going to do it. Bowling for Columbine could accept this and establish credibility but is uninterested. It's busy lying about South Park creator Matt Stone’s attending Columbine and then staging an animated sequence following his interview to make it appear he and partner Trey Parker had created it, mooching off their success.

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At its core, that’s Bowling for Columbine: gratitude for the 13 lives stolen because they allow Moore to feign concern for the “causes” and stroke his ego. The film is more about America’s gun culture than the massacre, but Moore was sure to use its national infamy for his title. Even then, its repudiation amounts to a crowd of drunken fans screaming “Boo!,” even though Moore’s constant use of vague historical context or foreign parallelism indicates otherwise. America is the worst nation on Earth and wholly responsible for the world's faults and resulting terrors. A 48-year-old "documentarian" only says as much as Eric Harris' journals.

It is easy to absorb something we feel necessary; three years post-Columbine, Moore’s outrage felt sincere, something incendiary to which we could attach. Now, we see that it cares nothing about its claimed concerns: not Craig Scott's final moment with his sister or even the reasons why that was the last moment. It cares only for itself, and even in doing that, it is lazy. Look at the title: Harris and Klebold were absent on April 20th; they didn’t attend their bowling class that day.

Was Bowling for Columbine the death of documentary filmmaking? Moore lures people into interviews under false pretenses, feigning respect for their perspective before manipulating it to portray them negatively. He uses clickbait “journalism” to color his enemies and exploits tragedy's victims for clout. On the other hand, there will always be people devoted to the truth; genuine documentary filmmaking will endure. Sadly, people like Moore will persist: exploiting, grandstanding, and throwing a perfect game in their so-called bowl for Columbine.

Director - Michael Moore

Studio - MGM

Runtime - 120 minutes

Release Date - October 11, 2002

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Editor - Kurt Engfehr

Narrator - Michael Moore

Screenplay - Michael Moore

Score - Jeff Gibbs