Home > The M.O. > Archives > 2007 > July > 02 > Entry
More ‘Sicko’
‘Sicko’ had the second-highest opening weekend of all time for a documentary (behind Moore’s ‘Fahrenheit 9/11’), grossing $4.5 million on 441 screens for a per screen average just over $10,200 - third highest of the weekend.
Following the success of its first week and its exclusive open in New York the week before, according to a press release, “The Weinstein Company plans to add the film to 200 additional screens and will continue to roll out the documentary to theaters across the country in the weeks ahead.”
In the release, Harvey Weinstein said, “We are thrilled that in addition to playing strongly in cities like N.Y. and Los Angeles, ‘Sicko’ played to sold-out audiences in mainstream commercial theaters in markets like Chicago, IL; Dallas, TX; and Atlanta, GA., as well as smaller markets such as cities in Vermont, Hartford, CT; Sacramento, CA; Austin, TX; and Madison, WI, showing the breadth of interest among all Americans. We are excited to continue expanding the film so that more and more people will be able to experience the film.”
As I stated in my write-up of the film last week, I believe the film properly diagnosed the problem with health care in America: Too many Americans are taken advantage of by a for-profit health care system that is generally pandered to by Congress. While feeling outraged and saddened by the picture Moore painted of our broken system, I did not feel, however, that he came up with a prescription for how to fix it. I did not necessarily believe that was his job or purpose in making the film, but I have felt his rosy depiction of health care in other nations made it seem as if a cure was simple — just give everyone free health care and access to medicine and have the government pay for it. Oh, if it were only so easy.
Reading Slate today, I saw an interesting response from an economist who works as an adviser to the Obama campaign, Austan Goolsbee, with a much better grasp than I have on the economics of the situation. He contends, as I did, that Moore did a fine job of portraying the problem, but Goolsbee goes into much better detail, dissecting where Moore’s solution has its faults. Obviously this is just one man’s opinion, but I found it interesting and thought I’d pass it along, especially considering many people’s knee-jerk reactions to the film. If you want to read a review of ‘Sicko,’ there are myriad resources online (such as here and here), you can also Google the film and find a plethora of responses (both positive and negative) to the movie’s policy ideas.
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