Friends,
Where do I
begin? This past week has knocked me for a loop. "Fahrenheit 9/11," the #1 movie
in the country, the largest grossing documentary ever. My head is spinning.
Didn't we just lose our distributor 8 weeks ago? Did Karl Rove really fail to
stop this? Is Bush packing?
Each day this week I was given a new piece
of information from the press that covers Hollywood, and I barely had time to
recover from the last tidbit before the next one smacked me upside the head:
** More people saw
"Fahrenheit 9/11" in one weekend than all the people who saw "Bowling for
Columbine" in 9 months.
** "Fahrenheit 9/11" broke "Rocky III’s" record
for the biggest box office opening weekend ever for any film that opened in less
than a thousand theaters.
** "Fahrenheit 9/11" beat the opening
weekend of "Return of the Jedi."
** "Fahrenheit 9/11" instantly went to
#2 on the all-time list for largest per-theater average ever for a film that
opened in wide-release.
How can I ever thank all of you who went to see
it? These records are mind-blowing. They have sent shock waves through
Hollywood – and, more importantly,
through the White House.
But it didn't just stop there. The response to
the movie then went into the Twilight Zone. Surfing through the dial I landed on
the Fox broadcasting network which was airing the NASCAR race live last Sunday
to an audience of millions of Americans -- and suddenly the announcers were
talking about how NASCAR champ Dale Earnhardt, Jr. took his crew to see
“Fahrenheit 9/11” the night before. FOX sportscaster Chris Myers delivered
Earnhardt’s review straight out of his mouth and into the heartland of
America: “He said hey, it'll be a
good bonding experience no matter what your political belief. It's a good thing
as an American to go see.” Whoa!
NASCAR fans – you can’t go deeper into George Bush territory than that! White
House moving vans – START YOUR ENGINES!
Then there was Roger
Friedman from the Fox News Channel giving our film an absolutely glowing review,
calling it “a really brilliant piece of work, and a film that members of all
political parties should see without fail.” Richard Goldstein of the Village
Voice surmised that Bush is already considered a goner so Rupert Murdoch might
be starting to curry favor with the new administration. I don't know about that,
but I’ve never heard a decent word toward me from Fox. So, after I was revived,
I wondered if a love note to me from Sean Hannity was next.
How about Letterman’s Top
Ten List: “Top Ten George W. Bush Complaints About "Fahrenheit
9/11":
10. That actor who played
the President was totally unconvincing
9. It oversimplified the way
I stole the election
8. Too many of them fancy
college-boy words
7. If Michael Moore had
waited a few months, he could have included the part where I get him
deported
6. Didn't have one of them
hilarious monkeys who smoke cigarettes and gives people the
finger
5. Of all Michael Moore's
accusations, only 97% are true
4. Not sure - - I passed out
after a piece of popcorn lodged in my windpipe
3. Where the hell was
Spider-man?
2. Couldn't hear most of the
movie over Cheney's foul mouth
1. I thought this was
supposed to be about dodgeball
But it was the reactions and reports we
received from theaters around the country that really sent me over the edge. One
theatre manager after another phoned in to say that the movie was getting
standing ovations as the credits rolled – in places like Greensboro, NC and
Oklahoma City -- and that they were having a hard time clearing the theater
afterwards because people were either too stunned or they wanted to sit and talk
to their neighbors about what they had just seen. In
Trumbull, CT, one woman got up on her
seat after the movie and shouted "Let's go have a meeting!" A man in
San
Francisco took his shoe off and threw
it at the screen when Bush appeared at the end. Ladies’ church groups in
Tulsa were going to see it, and
weeping afterwards.
It was this last group that gave lie to all the
yakking pundits who, before the movie opened, declared that only the hard-core
"choir" would go to see "Fahrenheit 9/11." They couldn't have been more wrong.
Theaters in the Deep
South and the
Midwest set house records for any
film they’d ever shown. Yes, it even sold out in
Peoria. And
Lubbock, Texas. And
Anchorage, Alaska!
Newspaper after
newspaper wrote stories in tones of breathless disbelief about people who called
themselves “Independents” and “Republicans” walking out of the movie theater
shaken and in tears, proclaiming that they could not, in good conscience, vote
for George W. Bush. The New York Times wrote of a conservative Republican woman
in her 20s in Pensacola, Florida who cried through the film,
and told the reporter: “It really makes me question what I feel about the
president... it makes me question his motives…”
Newsday reported on a
self-described “ardent Bush/Cheney supporter” who went to see the film on
Long
Island, and his quiet reaction
afterwards. He said, "It's really given me pause to think about what's really
going on. There was just too much - too much to discount." The man then bought
three more tickets for another showing of the film.
The Los Angeles Times found
a mother who had “supported [Bush] fiercely” at a theater in Des Peres,
Missouri:
“Emerging from Michael Moore's ‘Fahrenheit 9/11,’ her eyes wet, Leslie Hanser
said she at last understood…. ‘My emotions are just....’ She trailed off, waving
her hands to show confusion. ‘I feel like we haven't seen the whole truth
before.’"
All of this had to
be the absolute worst news for the White House to wake up to on Monday morning.
I guess they were in such a stupor, they "gave"
Iraq back to, um,
Iraq two days early!
News
editors told us that they were being "bombarded" with e-mails and calls from the
White House (read: Karl Rove), trying to spin their way out of this mess by
attacking it and attacking me. Bush spokesman Dan Bartlett had told the White
House press corps that the movie was "outrageously false" -- even though he said
he hadn't seen the movie. He later told CNN that "This is a film that doesn't
require us to actually view it to know that it's filled with factual
inaccuracies." At least they're consistent. They never needed to see a single
weapon of mass destruction before sending our kids off to die.
Many news
shows were more than eager to buy the White House spin. After all, that is
a big part of what "Fahrenheit" is about -- how the lazy, compliant media bought
all the lies from the Bush administration about the need to invade
Iraq. They took the Kool-Aid
offered by the White House and rarely, if ever, did our media ask the hard
questions that needed to be asked before the war started.
Because the
movie "outs" the mainstream media for their failures and their complicity with
the Bush administration -- who can ever forget their incessant, embarrassing
cheerleading as the troops went off to war, as though it was all just a game --
the media was not about to let me get away with anything now resembling a
cultural phenomenon. On show after show, they went after me with the kind of
viciousness you would have hoped they had had for those who were lying about the
necessity for invading a sovereign nation that was no threat to us. I don't
blame our well-paid celebrity journalists -- they look like a bunch of
ass-kissing dopes in my movie, and I guess I'd be pretty mad at me, too. After
all, once the NASCAR fans see "Fahrenheit 9/11," will they ever believe a single
thing they see on ABC/NBC/CBS news again?
In the next week or so, I will
recount my adventures through the media this past month (I will also be posting
a full FAQ on my website soon so that you can have all the necessary backup and
evidence from the film when you find yourself in heated debate with your
conservative brother-in-law!). For now, please know the following: Every single
fact I state in "Fahrenheit 9/11" is the absolute and irrefutable truth. This
movie is perhaps the most thoroughly researched and vetted documentary of our
time. No fewer than a dozen people, including three teams of lawyers and the
venerable one-time fact-checkers from The New Yorker went through this movie
with a fine-tooth comb so that we can make this guarantee to you. Do not let
anyone say this or that isn't true. If they say that, they are lying. Let them
know that the OPINIONS in the film are mine, and anyone certainly has a right to
disagree with them. And the questions I pose in the movie, based on these
irrefutable facts, are also mine. And I have a right to ask them. And I will
continue to ask them until they are answered.
In closing, let me say
that the most heartening response to the film has come from our soldiers and
their families. Theaters in military towns across the country reported packed
houses. Our troops know the truth. They have seen it first-hand. And many of
them could not believe that here was a movie that was TRULY on their side -- the
side of bringing them home alive and never sending them into harms way again
unless it's the absolute last resort. Please take a moment to read this
wonderful story from the daily paper in Fayetteville, NC, where
Fort Bragg is located. It broke my
heart to read this, the reactions of military families and the comments of an
infantryman’s wife publicly backing my movie -- and it gave me the resolve to
make sure as many Americans as possible see this film in the coming
weeks.
Thank you again, all of you, for your support. Together we did
something for the history books. My apologies to "Return of the Jedi." We'll
make it up by producing "Return of the Texan to Crawford" in
November.
May the farce be with you, but not for long,
Michael
Moore
www.michaelmoore.com
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
P.S. You can read letters
from people around the country recounting their own experiences at the theater,
and their reactions to the film by
going here.
P.P.S. Also, I’m going to
start blogging! Tonight! Come on over and check it
out.