Taking On Wal*Mart

The New York Times > Movies > Taking On a Giant (Whistleblowers Welcome) By DAVID M. HALBFINGER : "He's taken on the Bush administration, the war in Iraq and the Fox News Channel. He's forged alliances with grass-roots liberal groups like MoveOn.org, liberal research groups, even liberal churches.

Yet Robert Greenwald, the producer and director of "Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism," thinks his next documentary-cum-indictment will appeal to gun-toting Bush voters in the Bible belt as much as to the latte-drinking lefties who made his last movie a hit at house parties on both coasts.

His new project? "Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price."

The diminutive Mr. Greenwald, 61, is leading this assault on the retailing behemoth of Bentonville, Ark., from a converted hot-sheets motel in Culver City, Calif. There, where MGM executives once conducted their trysts, he and a dozen or so young producers and editors are compiling digital video from interviewing teams across the country, while spreading the word through advocacy groups and labor unions to invite whistleblowers to come forward.

Their plan is to depict what they and a growing number of critics perceive to be Wal-Mart's sins against society: unfair competition and erosion of the fabric of communities; exploitation of its American workers, and of the government welfare programs many rely on to supplement their wages and benefits; union busting; reliance on suppliers with sweatshops overseas; and environmental negligence - among others.

They also intend to show how the retailer exerts its outsized influence on American culture through the so-called "Wal-Mart effect," by limiting the choices of products like clothing, music - and movies - that are available to consumers.

Mr. Greenwald is hardly the first to look for a dark side to the company that has become known to millions as a cheap source of staples and minor luxuries. Last November PBS's "Frontline" series showed "Is Wal-Mart Good for America?," a 60-minute program produced by Rick Young and Hedrick Smith, a former correspondent for The New York Times. And last year The Los Angeles Times won a Pulitzer Prize for a series that investigated the retailer's practices and policies.

Yet Mr. Greenwald, like his fellow muckraking documentarians Michael Moore and Morgan Spurlock, promises to up the ante by putting the quest for impact squarely ahead of journalistic convention. He said he chose to discuss his project - which has until now operated in secret - on the eve of the company's annual shareholders meeting this Friday, for instance, in hopes of kicking up as much dust there as possible.

Asked whether his documentary would strive for fairness, Mr. Greenwald said he would offer top Wal-Mart executives the chance to be interviewed but did not see a reason to give them equal screen time. "I don't feel an obligation, because they are spending $2 million a day now telling their side of the story," he said, asserting that Wal-Mart spent that much on public relations.

Mr. Greenwald, who kept "Outfoxed" secret from the Fox network until just before its release, said he had kept his Wal-Mart project under wraps until now, and would not reveal details about his project until it is finished in a few months, lest Wal-Mart try to interfere through litigation or by intimidating workers from cooperating.

He added that he had lost two investors in the project, both of them Hollywood figures who Mr. Greenwald said backed out rather than risk Wal-Mart's rejection of their other films, as the company is the world's largest DVD retailer. But he refused to name them or any other investors, saying only that he had so far raised $700,000 out of a budget of about $1.6 million. He said he would raise the rest by the same means he hopes to distribute his finished movie: through a series of partnerships with like-minded organizations and by marketing over the Web.

Mr. Greenwald did this successfully with his documentary "Uncovered: The Whole Truth About the Iraq War," for which the Center for American Progress, a Democratic research group, held press screenings in Washington, and which MoveOn.org advertised on its Web site for $29.95. This time, he has aligned with church groups, including the United Church of Christ, which is concentrated in the Northeast, Midwest and West; with the Petroleum Marketers Association of America, a trade group of gas station and convenience store operators; and with the National Education Association. Each for its own reasons had already set its sights on Wal-Mart, but now they are planning to screen Mr. Greenwald's movie in church sanctuaries, at school teach-ins and in the living rooms of small-business owners.

Mr. Greenwald, who has another, more profit-oriented life as a maker of television movies like "The Burning Bed" and theatrical films like "Steal This Movie," acknowledges that he has mainly preached to a partisan choir in his earlier documentaries, "Uncovered" and "Unprecedented: The 2000 Presidential Election," which he directed, and "Unconstitutional: The War on Our Civil Liberties," which he produced.

But he said he chose Wal-Mart as his next subject because he saw it as a mainly red-state company. And in thinking about how to appeal to a red-state audience, he said in an interview, he realized this could be a way to make common cause with the socially conservative base of the Republican Party."