June 17, 2004
Friends, We're a week away from the nationwide opening of "Fahrenheit 9/11" and not a day goes by where we don't have some new battle to fight thanks to those who are still working overtime to keep people from seeing this film. What's their problem? Are they worried about something? A Republican PR firm has formed a fake grassroots front group called "Move America Forward" to harass and intimidate theater owners into not showing "Fahrenheit 9/11." These are the same people who successfully badgered CBS into canceling the Reagan mini-series a few months ago. And they are spending a ton of money this week to threaten movie theaters who even think about showing our movie. As of this morning, a little over 500 theaters have agreed to show the movie beginning next Friday, June 25. There are three national/regional theater chains who, as of today, have not booked the movie in their theaters. One theater owner in The right wing usually wins these battles. Their basic belief system is built on censorship, repression, and keeping people ignorant. They want to limit or snuff out any debate or dissension. They also don't like pets and are mean to small children. Too many of them are named "Fred." This new nut group is the Right's last hope in limiting how many people can see this movie. All of their other efforts have failed. Let's recap: 1. Roger Friedman at FOX News reported that the head of the company which first agreed to fund our film “got calls from Republican friends” pressuring them to back out. And they did. But... Miramax immediately picked up the film! Except... 2.
Michael Eisner, the chairman of Disney, then blocked Miramax (a company owned by
Disney) from releasing the film once it was finished. But... public attention
and embarrassment forced Disney to let the Weinstein brothers of Miramax find
another distributor! But... 3.
Instead of a new distributor stepping right in -- as all the media predicted
would happen -- it took another month to find distributors who would take on
this movie. A number of other distributors, thanks to various pressures, were
afraid to get involved. It looked for a while that we would be distributing this
ourselves. But then Lions Gate and IFC Films rode in to the rescue!
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