by Belinda Acosta

Documentarian Michael Moore

At first glance, Minnesota Governor Jesse Ventura and filmmaker Michael Moore have nothing in common. Ventura is a hulky, former pro wrestler and actor in action films. Moore is a pudgy guy who has appeared on and off camera in films that inspire viewers to take action. Ventura has dressed in the outrageous monster drag of pro wrestling before screaming audiences. Moore has dressed down the corporate elite to expose the outrageous activities that make audiences scream. Ventura is a political outsider who stunned the nation with his successful bid for governor of Minnesota last year, causing observers to ask, "How did he do that?" Moore is a Hollywood outsider who stuns his audiences by successfully exposing corporate hypocrisy in such films as Roger & Me, causing observers to ask, "How did he get away with that?"

Although Ventura and Moore's lives and work appear to have taken divergent paths, there is something similar to both: Their literacy in the language of television and image-making and -breaking. Evidence of this can be seen in one new, and one renewed, series premiering this week: The Awful Truth (4/11, 8pm, Bravo) and Split Screen (4/10, 4:30pm, Independent Film Channel). You don't have cable? Go get it or find a friend who does.

Pro wrestler cum governor Jesse Ventura

So-called "guerrilla" filmmaker Michael Moore makes his second foray into television as the host and creator of The Awful Truth. The weekly half-hour series features Moore's irreverent observations and interrogations of big buck untouchables like HMOs, the tobacco industry, Bill Gates, and that limitless source of things irritating or ridiculous: our nation's capital.

If The Awful Truth sounds similar to Moore's 1994 television series, TV Nation, it should. Like its critically acclaimed but ill-fated predecessor, The Awful Truth features Moore and camera, asking questions that go where that the polite and compliant dare not. Unlike TV Nation, Moore's new series includes a live audience with whom he shares quips and rants prior to each segment. Sort of an America's Funniest Videos with the slogan,"I'm Mad As Hell and I'm Not Going to Take It Anymore!"

While Moore is affable and the audience enthusiastic, the pre-segment rah-rah sessions pale next to the actual segments themselves. The premiere episode features Moore and a merry band of Puritans presenting themselves in Ken Starr's driveway, and later cruising around Capitol Hill and D.C., suggesting cheaper ways to conduct a witch hunt than the $50 million spent on the impeachment proceedings. The second segment features Moore and Florida resident Chris Donahue confronting the Humana HMO which denied Donahue a life-saving pancreas transplant (it's not covered). After some bureaucratic sashaying on the subject by a Humana flak-catcher, Moore and Donahue leave, but return with invitations to Donahue's funeral. Moore unsuccessfully tries to deliver one to Humana's CEO.

Other segments in the 13-week series are gleefully tongue-in-cheek, such as the "Beat the Rich" segment, which "pits the wealthy against the working class in a battle of common knowledge," or the "New Man for Hillary Clinton" segment, in which "Moore takes to the street to find a date for the first lady when she is 'free' in January 2001."

At turns outrageously funny and bitterly heartwrenching, The Awful Truth promises to seriously interrogate institutions responsible for those "little murders" -- the injustices that maim pride and spirit, but are not compassionate enough to kill outright.

Rallying viewers under the banner of his People's Democratic Republic of Television (PDRTV), Moore proclaims, "The fact that you're watching this show means that you believe in a free press, you just don't own one!"

April appears to be the month to celebrate outsiders and iconoclasts. The third season premiere of Split Screen, the only television program covering the independent film industry, features a segment on Jesse Ventura, who won his bid for Minnesota governor on the Reform Party platform.

Though his involvement with indies is limited, the focus is on Ventura's rise as a master of the media in the tradition of "the great communicator" Ronald Reagan. Split Screen follows the path of Ventura's wrestling career, his appearance in action films such as Predator and The Running Man, and a small independent film called 20/20 Vision, to reveal how he won the Minnesota governor's mansion with unconventional methods. What other candidate has posed nearly nude, or had an action figure fight big business and corporate corruption in his campaign commercials?

"With independent films, producers and directors allow you much more creativity in creating a role," Ventura says. Interestingly, this seems to have powered the politics of the Reform Party, which called for an end to business as usual, and a call for political parties to respond to the needs of real people.

Like Moore, whose work always champions the underdog, Ventura fashioned himself not only as an ally of the regular working stiff, but as someone who isn't afraid to sit at the table with the big boys -- and tip it over if needed.

"[Ventura] kind of represents Miramax," says David Schimke, a City Pages staff writer in Minneapolis who appears in the Ventura segment. "He looks like an independent, but in fact, he's a Hollywood film. I can see how people would be inspired by the fact that he seems like he's an outsider that got in. But I think he's always been an insider and he learned how to look like an outsider to attract people."

Given the visibility of Moore and Ventura, neither can really claim to be a true outsider. Nevertheless, they have both managed to tap into a sense of disenfranchisement gripping Americans from all walks of life at the end of the millennium. After all, television may be the perfect medium to tap into the collective consciousness -- if there is such a thing -- because, as a commentator in the Ventura segment says, "Every voter has a Ph.D. in television." If so, then Michael Moore and Jesse Ventura are professors emeritus.

Following The Awful Truth's Sunday premiere, encores of previous Sunday episodes air the following Friday at 9pm. After its premiere Saturday, Split Screen will regularly air on Monday (7pm, Independent Film Channel), with encores on the following Saturday at 4:30pm.