The next time I saw Moore was at the annual American Booksellers Association Convention in Chicago, the biggest book trade show in the English-speaking world. Moore's publisher, Random House, was officially boycotting the 1996 show, having been sued earlier in the year by pesky independent booksellers who claimed the publishing conglomerate was illegally favoring national chains in its trade practices. Michael Moore announced that he would boycott the boycott and flew out to Chicago to promote his upcoming book, Downsize This!, to independent bookstore owners. Moore was the only Random House author at ABA that year.

By the time I ran into him again, at the same multiplex as before, Moore had gotten himself into trouble with Borders Books & Music. Employees at various Borders stores across the country were organizing union drives, and Moore had not only met with union supporters at one Borders location, but had more or less endorsed the union drive when he spoke at the store. Moore had been prevented from speaking at his next stop, a Manhattan Borders, and a subsequent appearance in Fort Lauderdale was canceled altogether. "They're totally censoring me," he told me when I asked about Borders.

A few weeks later, Moore wrote a scathing column for The Nation headlined "Banned By Borders." That's the kind of guy he is. Promoting his new bestselling hardcover, he goes out of his way to bash one of the country's biggest booksellers in a public forum. From a business point of view, this may seem foolhardy, since Borders still had time to return any unsold copies of the book, as well as to cut their pre-orders for the inevitable paperback version. But Michael Moore's real agenda is twofold, and it's bigger than any one bestseller. First, he's out to call big business on the carpet for its misdeeds, establishing a pattern of abuse running throughout corporate America. And second, he's out to promote himself.

In The Big One, he performs both tasks like the expert he is. Michael Moore, professional gadfly, compares corporate downsizing to acts of terrorism. He shows up unannounced in corporate lobbies, demanding that the PR flacks explain for his camera why their company is laying off workers in a year of record profits. Under cover of darkness, he meets with a group of pro-union Borders clerks who have been forbidden from attending Moore's signing. He sits down with Nike CEO Phil Knight for a one-on-one and challenges the CEO to defend Nike's practice of using cheap Indonesian labor to manufacture tennis shows.

Meanwhile, Michael Moore, comedian, explains why Steve Forbes must be a space alien. (He never blinks.) He sings "The Times They Are A'Changin'" with Rick Nielsen from Cheap Trick. He plays a prank on the hyper-affable "media escort" provided by his publisher, convincing a cop to have her removed from the building. The most entertaining details of The Big One have little to do with politics or Moore's book tour. "They put vegetables on my fish sandwich," he complains after a stop at McDonald's. "Fuckers."

When every day seems to be a new record-breaker on Wall Street, it's admirable that Moore refuses to loosen the screws. There's a dogged purity to his perspective that's rare in politics and economics these days. Every plant closing is its own tragedy, and Moore refuses to let us forget that unemployment throws lives into turmoil. But nothing in The Big One matches the virtuoso tactics of Moore's previous documentary feature, Roger & Me, which includes some of the blackest humor ever to hit a movie screen. (For the purposes of this review, I'm pretending that Canadian Bacon never happened.)

Blown up from video, The Big One doesn't gain much power from being seen on the big screen, and Moore's schtick wears a little thin as the movie nears the 90-minute mark. It's intriguing to see how Knight responds to Moore's request that Nike open a shoe factory in Flint, Michigan ("Americans don't want to make shoes," he argues unconvincingly), but it's a foregone conclusion that he'll look foolish. Face it, Michael Moore could make your grandmother look like a corporate toadie. What's more, the Manhattan theater where I saw The Big One on opening night was pretty empty, suggesting that he may be hitting the end of the road with his man-of-the-people routine. Let's see if Moore can overcome the nature of his own celebrity and snap us to attention all over again the next time around.