Hot Topic: ‘Fahrenheit’ ignites Moore controversy

Kirk Baird

Monday, June 28, 2004 | 7:58 a.m.

The theater screen is black, but the terrified screams emanating from the speakers are, nonetheless, piercing to the heart.

Terrorists have just slammed an airliner into the World Trade Center.

As the jarring images come into focus, stark film footage chronicles the chaos on the New York City streets: despondent men and women, staring blankly ahead at the wreckage, some unable to stand as the flood of emotion wallops their senses.

Cut to an elementary school classroom in Florida where the president of the United States is making a public-relations appearance. Moments before President Bush goes into the room, an aide informs him of the first attack. Bush elects to proceed with the photo-op anyway, sitting down at the front of the classroom, then reading aloud from "My Pet Goat" to the children, as a video camera records the scene.

A few minutes later the aide tells the president that a second plane has struck the World Trade Center, the same target of terrorists nearly a decade earlier.

The most powerful man in the world remains seated, eerily stoic, before returning to the book.

Nearly seven minutes elapse before the president exits the room on his way to a briefing.

Critics of Bush will point to the footage, as seen in "Fahrenheit 9/11," as yet another example of BushUs inability to lead - especially when thereUs no one around to give him orders. The presidentUs boosters, however, will counter that the president chose to remain calm amid the confusion and not frighten the children.

It seems there is little middle ground when it comes to the films of Michael Moore. Liberals typically embrace his documentaries as stirring calls to action against corporate America, gun lobbyists and now the Bush administration.

Conservatives demonize the filmmaker as a huckster with a camera, whose brash assertions are fabrications and half-truths conceived to further his career and the liberal agenda.

Moore's most recent effort, "Fahrenheit 9/11," is simply the latest example of the filmmaker's strident approach. It's also sure to be the most talked-about movie since Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ."

Not so much a documentary as it is a searing indictment of Bush's choices as president, "Fahrenheit 9/11" examines the post-Sept. 11 world and what Moore perceives as the administration's misuse of the tragedy to wrangle sympathy from the public and coerce Congress into complicity with its policies.

In a previous interview on ABC's "This Week with George Stephanopoulos," Moore called his film "an op-ed piece."

"It's my opinion about the last four years of the Bush administration," the filmmaker said. "I'm not trying to pretend that this is some sort of, you know, fair and balanced work of journalism.

"I would like to see Mr. Bush removed from the White House."

To that end, Moore features actual footage of the president in particularly unflattering moments, such as addressing his "base" constituents as "the haves and have mores," and making an urgent call to "all nations to do everything they can to stop the terrorist killers," moments before he returns to his golf game.

Political? Sure.

But while Moore's film is a clear attack on the Bush administration, the filmmaker maintains that he is not a Democrat.

"I am not a member of the Democratic party," The 50-year-old told Matt Lauer, in a recent interview on NBC's "Dateline."

"If you know anything about me ... I'm the anti-Democrat. I have voted against the Democrats for a long time. They have been a weak-kneed, wimpy party that hasn't stood up to the Republicans. They've let the working people down across this country. I railed against Clinton when he was in office. I didn't vote for him in '96. And I didn't vote for Gore in 2000.

"This is not a partisan issue with me."

Democrat or not, Moore is certainly no friend to the Republicans, who have mounted their own crusade against the filmmaker.

Move America Forward, a pro-Bush group which evolved months ago from the letter-writing campaign that led CBS to drop its controversial TV movie "The Reagans," devoted a special section to discrediting Moore on its Web site, www.moveamericaforward.org.

"Stop Michael Moore" is a response to what the site says is "an attack on the U.S. Military, the heroic men and women of the Armed Forces and our Commander-In-Chief via his film 'Fahrenheit 9/11.' "

"Michael Moore and his anti-American film distributors are hoping to cash in to the tune of millions of dollars and also change U.S. politics," the site states.

But even some of Moore's critics maintain he's a necessary part of the political process.

"I'm definitely not a fan of Michael Moore. But I'm happy he is out there," said Andrew Wagner, a 41-year-old filmmaker and recipient of the Jury Award at the CineVegas Film Festival for "The Talent Given Us."

"We're living in a profound moment of change and the consequences are terrifying. It's important to have voices out there and filmmakers brave enough to look at anything and express everything and make people as aware as possible of the world we live in. We need him."

Moore politics

Born and raised in Flint, Mich., Moore first entered public consciousness in 1989 with the scathing and humorous documentary "Roger & Me," which details the economic hardships of his hometown after the local General Motors plant closed.

The filmmaker has since written several books critical of corporate America, and filmed another documentary attacking greedy CEOs, "The Big One."

Moore has also two TV series to his credit: "TV Nation" and "The Awful Truth."

But it was his controversial look at gun control and the increasing violence in the United States in "Bowling for Columbine" that made Moore a household name.

Moore received the Writers Guild of America screenwriting award -- which seemed to suggest that "Bowling for Columbine" was more the product of one man's opinion than a straight documentary.

A few months later, however, and "Bowling for Columbine" won the Academy Award for best documentary.

Clearly, as far as Hollywood is concerned, Moore blurs the line between documentarian and filmmaker.

Trevor Groth, director of programming for the CineVegas Film Festival, took it a step further: "I think (Moore) is a great documentarian. No. I think he's a great manipulator."

Francisco Menendez, chair of the department of film at the University of Nevada Las Vegas, maintains the two are not mutually exclusive.

"To be fair, documentaries are organized and written before they are done. And the documentarian, even though they try to be fair and balanced, they do bring their own point of view to it," Menendez said.

"To say documentaries are just strictly about reality and not a point of view is a little bit naive. One of the things documentarians always bring (to their work) is a strong point of view. He's just the loudest one out there."

Cannes

The top prize-winner at the Cannes Film Festival, "Fahrenheit 9/11" was also the biggest buzz-maker at the festival.

"I was at Cannes while they were screening the film, and there definitely was a lot of talk about it," Groth said.

"I have not seen it yet ... but the Americans I spoke with were underwhelmed by it and said there's not that much new information in it. But Europeans absolutely loved it and gave it a 20-minute standing ovation."

Even with the success of "Fahrenheit" at Cannes, the film hasn't had an easy time of it in the United States.

Moore had to overcome a distribution battle with Disney, which originally owned the rights to "Fahrenheit 9/11." The studio subsequently sold the rights to the film to the Weinstein brothers, Harvey and Bob, who found two distributors for the film, Lions Gate Films and IFC Films.

But Moore's tribulations over the film continued.

The conservative organization Move America Forward launched a campaign to convince theater owners not to show the film.

"Since we are the customers of the American movie theatres, it is important for us to speak up loudly and tell the industry executives that we don't want this misleading and grotesque movie being shown at our local cinema," the group says on its Web site.

The group's efforts, however, had little effect on the film's distributions. "Fahrenheit 9/11" opened on more than 850 screens -- including Century Orleans 18, Century Sam's Town, Crown Theatres Neonopolis 14, Regal Cinemas Colonnade 14, Regal Cinemas Village Square 18 -- making it the largest opening ever for a documentary.

Legendary underground filmmaker Bruce Davison said the negative publicity surrounding the film-- especially the attempts to keep it out of cinemas -- is only going to entice more people to see it.

"I think this is wonderful because all this ever does is defeat the antagonistic, negative values and give enormous amount of publicity to the film," said Davison, who was in town recently to receive the CineVegas Film Festival Vanguard Director Award for his career in film.

"People always want to go see movies they're told not to. And somehow, people who protest these things, never seem to realize that."

High praise

"Fahrenheit 9/11" has been mostly praised by critics, receiving more than an 80-percent approval rating on the Rotten Tomatoes critics "Tomatometer".

New York Times film critic A.O. Scott opined, "It is worth seeing, debating and thinking about, regardless of your political allegiances."

While Roger Ebert wrote: "Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11" is less an expose of George W. Bush than a dramatization of what Moore sees as a failed and dangerous presidency. The charges in the film will not come as news to those who pay attention to politics, but Moore illustrates them with dramatic images and a relentless commentary track that essentially concludes Bush is incompetent, dishonest, failing in the war on terrorism, and has bad taste in friends."

Meanwhile, Todd McCarthy of Variety was less enthused with the film: "The sporadically effective documentary trades far more in emotional appeals than in systematically building an evidence-filled case against the president and his circle."

But Moore didn't make the film for critics. Nor the liberals and conservatives who have already endorsed their presidential choice.

Instead, the filmmaker said he is reaching out to the middle -- the masses of undecided or even non-voters.

Moore told "Dateline": "If I do nothing else but just get people out to vote, regardless of who they vote for, if I can get part of that 50 percent that has chosen not to vote, to engage and come back in and care about what's going on, then I will feel like I've done something important."

No matter the film's success or the overall buzz, David Damore isn't so sure "Fahrenheit 9/11" will have an impact come November elections.

The assistant professor of political science at UNLV said the film may inspire a few undecideds to cast their ballot, "but in general, people who don't vote, don't vote."

"You may get a little higher turnout this year, because it's a more competitive campaign. But look at the 2000 election. That was a really competitive campaign and (voter turnout) was no better than '96, which was a blowout election.

"I think those people who will be undecided generally don't make up their minds until a week or two before the election," Damore said. "My guess is that it will just reaffirm what people already think."

Regardless of the film's impact and criticism lobbied against its director, there are those who simply admire Moore's effort to shake up the institution.

"It's like the guy went in, he took a big stick and he smacked the bee's nest. And now you'll see how it all plays out," said Larry Golin, a 38-year-old filmmaker whose "Cross Bronx" received the Audience Award at CineVegas.

"There's no easy answers anymore. I don't know what the answer is, but it's good that people are trying to arrive at one."

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