My Wild First Week with "Fahrenheit 9/11"... by Michael Moore
July 4th, 2004
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
mmflint@aol.com
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.
