Robert Greenwald: Leading the distribution revolution?

So filmmaker Robert Greenwald is moving on from his lobby contretemps with a Wal-Mart spy/consultant and getting into the promotional push behind his latest documentary, Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price. And while you just know the guy thrives on high-profile drama at his premiere and assaults from loose stool like Bill O'Reilly, I have to say that Greenwald's ambition and influence is popping up in some truly mind-boggling places.

To wit:

This interview with Robert Greenwald, director of the new documentary Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price, is part of an unprecedented collaboration by The Nation, The American Prospect, In These Times and AlterNet to focus attention on issues raised by the film.

And to The Nation interviewer's inquiry about the director's curious self-distribution strategy, Greenwald responded:

I like going to the movies. I like having popcorn. But if your goal is to create social change, it's not even a question that this is the way to go. Let's think about it for a minute. You go to the movies, you have to spend $10. What are the chances you're going to get someone to go to a movie on a subject they don't care about, or they disagree with you on? Very, very slim. However, if it's on at your church, or your neighbor invites you over for a drink and shows the DVD, or if it's at your student union hall or your bowling alley, it's an entirely different thing. Everyone has a friend who disagrees with them politically, everyone has relatives they fight with all the time, people they argue with at work...these are the kinds of people we are reaching with this kind of campaign.

Yes, indeed--let's think about it for a minute. If "your neighbor invites you over for a drink and shows the DVD"? Is this actually happening anywhere in the United States? "Yeah, hey, Bob. Happy hour at my place--and I got this killer Wal-Mart documentary." And churches? Your bowling alley?

Anyway, the money has nothing to do with it--CNN and Fox News Channel are both old basic cable stand-bys, and they each possess polarized ideologies that their respective viewerships count on. Even Greenwald's own film Outfoxed sought to expose Fox's bias and to prove that conservatives are so intractable that someone could make a mint giving them their own news network. Now he has The Nation accepting at face value that right-wingers are going to consider watching his film because they do not have to pay to sit in a theater? This is a joke, right?

I guess I could have it all wrong, but the only alternative reading suggests that Greenwald is admitting that his film has no audience. The left (outside The Nation offices) does not need to see it, the right does not want to see it. Yep--that, too, would definitely stifle your box office.