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You won't be sorry!

Fahrenheit 9/11 has touched millions of viewers across the world. But could it actually change the course of civilisation?

by John Berger
Tuesday August 24, 2004

Fahrenheit 9/11 is astounding. Not so much as a film - although it is cunning and moving - but as an event. Most commentators try to dismiss the event and disparage the film. We will see why later.

The artists on the Cannes film festival jury apparently voted unanimously to award Michael Moore's film the Palme d'Or. Since then it has touched many millions across the world. In the US, its box-office takings for the first six weeks amounted to more than $100m, which is, astoundingly, about half of what Harry Potter made during a comparable period.

Only the so-called opinion-makers in the media appear to have been put out by it.

The film, considered as a political act, may be a historical landmark. Yet to have a sense of this, a certain perspective for the future is required. Living only close-up to the latest news, as most opinion-makers do, reduces one's perspectives. The film is trying to make a small contribution towards the changing of world history. It is a work inspired by hope.

What makes it an event is the fact that it is an effective and independent intervention into immediate world politics. Today it is rare for an artist to succeed in making such an intervention, and in interrupting the prepared, prevaricating statements of politicians. Its immediate aim is to make it less likely that President Bush will be re-elected next November.

To denigrate this as propaganda is either naive or perverse, forgetting (deliberately?) what the last century taught us. Propaganda requires a permanent network of communication so that it can systematically stifle reflection with emotive or utopian slogans. Its pace is usually fast.

Propaganda invariably serves the long-term interests of some elite.

This single maverick movie is often reflectively slow and is not afraid of silence.

It appeals to people to think for themselves and make connections.

And it identifies with, and pleads for, those who are normally unlistened to. Making a strong case is not the same thing as saturating with propaganda. Fox TV does the latter; Michael Moore the former.

Ever since the Greek tragedies, artists have, from time to time, asked themselves how they might influence ongoing political events. It's a tricky question because two very different types of power are involved. Many theories of aesthetics and ethics revolve round this question. For those living under political tyrannies, art has frequently been a form of hidden resistance, and tyrants habitually look for ways to control art. All this, however, is in general terms and over a large terrain. Fahrenheit 9/11 is something different. It has succeeded in intervening in a political programme on the programme's own ground.

For this to happen a convergence of factors were needed. The Cannes award and the misjudged attempt to prevent the film being distributed played a significant part in creating the event.

To point this out in no way implies that the film as such doesn't deserve the attention it is receiving. It's simply to remind ourselves that within the realm of the mass media, a breakthrough (a smashing down of the daily wall of lies and half-truths) is bound to be rare. And it is this rarity which has made the film exemplary. It is setting an example to millions - as if they'd been waiting for it.

The film proposes that the White House and Pentagon were taken over in the first year of the millennium by a gang of thugs so that US power should henceforth serve the global interests of the corporations: a stark scenario which is closer to the truth than most nuanced editorials. Yet more important than the scenario is the way the movie speaks out. It demonstrates that - despite all the manipulative power of communications experts, lying presidential speeches and vapid press conferences - a single independent voice, pointing out certain home truths which countless Americans are already discovering for themselves, can break through the conspiracy of silence, the atmosphere of fear and the solitude of feeling politically impotent.

It's a movie that speaks of obstinate faraway desires in a period of disillusion. A movie that tells jokes while the band plays the apocalypse. A movie in which millions of Americans recognise themselves and the precise ways in which they are being cheated. A movie about surprises, mostly bad but some good, being discussed together. Fahrenheit 9/11 reminds the spectator that when courage is shared one can fight against the odds.

In more than a thousand cinemas across the country, Michael Moore becomes with this film a people's tribune. And what do we see? Bush is visibly a political cretin, as ignorant of the world as he is indifferent to it; while the tribune, informed by popular experience, acquires political credibility, not as a politician himself, but as the voice of the anger of a multitude and its will to resist.

There is something else which is astounding. The aim of Fahrenheit 9/11 is to stop Bush fixing the next election as he fixed the last. Its focus is on the totally unjustified war in Iraq. Yet its conclusion is larger than either of these issues. It declares that a political economy which creates colossally increasing wealth surrounded by disastrously increasing poverty, needs - in order to survive - a continual war with some invented foreign enemy to maintain its own internal order and security. It requires ceaseless war.

Thus, 15 years after the fall of communism, a decade after the declared end of history, one of the main theses of Marx's interpretation of history again becomes a debating point and a possible explanation of the catastrophes being lived.

It is always the poor who make the most sacrifices, Fahrenheit 9/11 announces quietly during its last minutes. For how much longer?

There is no future for any civilisation anywhere in the world today which ignores this question. And this is why the film was made and became what it became.

It's a film that deeply wants America to survive.

Sure, Michael Moore may have won an Oscar for his 2002 film, Bowling for Columbine. And the French film jury at Cannes this spring may have fawned all over his latest effort, Fahrenheit 9/11. But few imagined that the filmmaker from Flint, Mich., would try to play kingmaker in the 2004 election.

Now that Moore's relentless screed against President Bush has broken box-office records, that scenario is haunting conservatives, whose clumsy efforts to suppress the movie have only increased its appeal.

So could this be the first Presidential election ever decided by a film? Not likely, but Moore is creating buzz -- and a political machine -- that can only hurt Bush in a razor-thin contest.

Moore is straightforward about Fahrenheit's goal: to deny Bush reelection. The movie itself defied expectations and grossed $24 million on its debut weekend of June 25, establishing it as the biggest nonmusical documentary ever.

Moore's distributor is preparing to more than double its screens to 2,000.

Lefty Moore can thank conservatives for some of that boffo reception. The right-wing group Citizens United petitioned the Federal Election Commission (news - web sites) on June 24 to restrict advertisements for the movie, charging that they are political ads. Others pressured theater owners to shun the movie, only generating more attention.

But the bad news for Bush supporters doesn't stop there.

Moore plans to use the movie as an organizing tool. On June 28, he conducted a virtual town hall meeting with the liberal group MoveOn.org. Moore exhorted the 55,000 listeners who logged in or turned out at 4,600 MoveOn parties around the country to sign up as foot soldiers in an anti-Bush crusade. Once people see his flick, said Moore, anyone who once supported Bush and the war in Iraq "will feel deceived and betrayed, and they will respond with a vengeance."

Media Influence

That's a stretch. The movie tenaciously attacks the President for his decision to invade Iraq, his fealty to wealthy supporters, and his pre-September 11 inattention to terrorism. But Moore is largely preaching to the converted. While a BusinessWeek-Ipsos poll of 1,002 adults during Fahrenheit's opening weekend found that an enormous share of respondents, 77%, had heard about the movie, only 17% of Republicans were inclined to see it, vs. 62% of Democrats and 40% of independents. Few said viewing the film would influence their vote.
Still, says Ipsos pollster Janice Bell, "people tend to underestimate how much they are influenced by the media."

One of the movie's biggest boosters is shock jock Howard Stern, formerly a rabid Bush supporter.

Stern claims to have turned on the Prez after reading Moore's book, Dude, Where's My Country? -- an epiphany that closely coincided with the Federal Communications Commission (news - web sites) crackdown on so-called airwaves smut. A poll conducted for the centrist New Democrat Network claims that 4% of the electorate are swing voters who regularly hear Stern's anti-Bush rants. MoveOn is targeting undecideds, too.

Members are being asked to take fence-sitters to Fahrenheit or invite them over to watch the DVD.

The release date? This fall -- just before the election.

OUR FAHRENHEIT 9/11 MOVIE REVIEWS

Grokking Real Eyes Flip Book:
Alien Invasion - M Theory

Read about Mike's book signing Police raid
Read A primer on understanding conspiracies
Related Reading: The Corporation - The Pathological Pursuit of Power

**editor note**(OR READ THE PATRIOT ACT before signing it!!)

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
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.

*** ***

In just one weekend, Fahrenheit 9/11 earned more money than any feature-length documentary in history. This despite a campaign against the film by the White House and its surrogates. Everyone expected George Bush's media shills to go after Moore, but who would have thought Fox News would keep its attack dogs relatively muzzled while ABC and NBC launched remarkably unbalanced attacks.

So far, Fox's main complaint is that Moore won't give them an interview. However, he did allow himself to be interrogated by George Stephanopoulos on ABC's This Week. During that chat, he addressed his critics' major points. Take the fact that Saudi nationals, including members of the bin Laden family, were allowed to leave the United States after 9-11 even though all commercial flights were grounded. Moore implies that the president cleared those flights because of family business ties to the Saudis. But Richard Clarke, the former security adviser—and prominent Bush critic—insists it was he who authorized the flights. When Stephanopoulos brought this up, Moore replied that Clarke's decision had been an error, adding that Clarke has admitted making mistakes "and he apologized to the 9-11 families for those mistakes."

Maybe this was an evasion, maybe not; but it certainly constituted a response, and ABC could easily have included it in subsequent news stories about Fahrenheit 9/11. Instead, the network launched a two-pronged attack on the film's accuracy—one that advanced from Good Morning America to World News Tonight—without giving Moore a fair chance to respond to the most damaging claims. Both segments began with the graphic "Fact or Fiction?"—the journalistic equivalent of asking a defendant when he stopped beating his wife. Both relied heavily on Clarke's statements and let them go unanswered.

"My feeling is that ABC News gave Michael Moore a fair chance to respond," says Bridgette Maney, the publicist for Good Morning America. ABC News spokesperson Cathie Levine noted that World News Tonight had run a clip from the Stephanopoulos interview after airing Clarke's statement. But that clip did not contain Moore's response to Clarke's comments.

NBC ran highly negative assessments of the film on both its Nightly News and its cable channel MSNBC. The network referred to its coverage as a "truth squad report." As part of this exposé, senior correspondent Lisa Myers targeted the hilarious moment in Fahrenheit 9/11 when Moore asks legislators to sign up their children to fight in Iraq. Myers noted that Moore had failed to include comments by Republican congressmember Mark Kennedy, who appears in that scene looking baffled. "My nephew had just gotten called into service and was told he's heading for Afghanistan," Kennedy told Myers. "He [Moore] didn't like that answer, so he didn't include it." Moore had addressed this allegation in the Stephanopoulos interview: "When we interviewed [Kennedy], he didn't have any family members in Afghanistan. . . . We released the transcript and put it on our website." But NBC made no mention of these readily available rebuttals. (A network spokesman declined to comment.)

Note that none of the facts in Fahrenheit 9/11 are in dispute. What ABC and NBC called into question is Moore's extrapolation and interpretation of information; in other words, his slant. But by using loaded phrases like "truth squad" and "fact or fiction," and by omitting Moore's answers to key questions, these networks did the very thing they accuse him of doing. I would argue that this sort of distortion is far more dangerous in the context of a news broadcast than in a clearly opinionated film.

Why did NBC and ABC take the administration's line? Well, NBC is owned by General Electric, a prime defense contractor. ABC is owned by Disney, which has no need of Pentagon largesse—but Disney is dependent on the kindness of federal regulators, and to the Bush administration those mouse ears have a lot to answer for. After all, it was Disney subsidiary Miramax that initially planned to distribute Fahrenheit 9/11, and even after the studio pulled out under pressure from the parent company, Miramax chief Harvey Weinstein formed a consortium of companies to release the film. Last Thursday's Wall Street Journal reported that Disney may sever its ties with Miramax next year. And Disney is about to release a feel-good documentary called America's Heart and Soul. With its theme parks under siege for allowing desecrations of family values, such as Gay Day, Disney has much to gain by joining the attack on Moore's movie, which is regarded in certain congregations as the Great R-Rated Satan.

But how to account for Fox's relatively merciful coverage (or the exceedingly odd editorial in Monday's New York Post defending Moore from the Federal Election Commission's attempt to muzzle his ads)? Here's my explanation: Rupert Murdoch is covering his ass in case John Kerry wins. For that matter, his news machine doesn't have to prove itself to the Bushies—and besides, an attack from Fox would have easily been dismissed as partisan. Better to let NBC and ABC lend the imprimatur of their "objectivity." I'm not saying these networks acted in cahoots; they merely expressed their interests.

That may explain why CNN, whose audience skews slightly leftward, took a careful pro-and-con approach to Fahrenheit 9/11, as did CBS News. Was CBS's neutrality a reflection of its traditional resistance to the right; was it part of a bid for the sizable anti-Bush audience; or is the network's owner, Viacom, banking on an advantage in a Kerry administration? Maybe all of the above.

When you consider how well the film is doing despite this pile-on, you have to conclude that most people haven't been affected by the media's negative spin. They want to see what all the fuss is about. Of course, the real question is whether audiences will leave the cineplex arguing about Moore's truthfulness or his insights into Bush. If the film turns out to have an impact on the fall election, we'll learn something about the limits of the media's power to shape perceptions. Since this is a recurring theme of mine, I hope Fahrenheit 9/11 affirms my conviction that the press distorts but we decide.

Y Tu Mamá También

In the printosphere, the line on Fahrenheit 9/11 was mixed. The film garnered overwhelmingly favorable reviews and mostly negative reactions from media pros with Washington connections. Michael Isikoff's Newsweek feature was typical: a point-by-point rebuttal accompanied by a photo of Moore captioned "Problem with authority." But the most florid outrage was expressed by George Orwell's demon seed, Christopher Hitchens.

It's never enough for Hitchens to condemn an enemy. He must enlist every epithet in the English language. Here's a partial list of the imprecations Hitchens hurled at Fahrenheit 9/11 in just one piece posted on Slate:

"Dishonest . . . demagogic . . . a piece of crap . . . an exercise in facile crowd pleasing . . . a sinister exercise in moral frivolity . . . a spectacle of abject political cowardice . . . a big lie [sustained] by a dizzying succession of smaller falsehoods beefed up by wilder and (if possible) yet more contradictory claims . . . loaded bias against the work of the mind . . . so flat-out phony that 'fact-checking' is beside the point." As for Moore himself, Hitchens calls him "a silly and shady man" and "one of the great soggy blimps of our sorry, mediocre, celeb-rotten culture."

When someone is attacked with such operatic ferocity, one thing is certain: That person is successful.

June 25, 2004— Michael Moore's political documentary Fahrenheit 9-11 is facing critics for its accusations about the Bush administration's reasons for invading Iraq. The filmmaker defends his film in an interview with ABC News correspondent Jake Tapper. The following are excerpts:

TAPPER: Well there are some questions about the substance of the film, and I would just like to give you the opportunity to respond to these questions. So they don't go unanswered. To begin with your film showcases former counter-terrorism czar Richard Clarke, using him as a critic of the Bush administration. Yet in another part of the film, one that appears in your previews, you criticize members of the Bush administration for permitting members of the bin Laden family to fly out of the country almost immediately after 9/11. What the film does not mention is that Richard Clarke says that he OK'd those flights. Is it fair to not mention that?

MOORE: Actually I do, I put up The New York Times article and it's blown up 40 foot on the screen, you can see Richard Clarke's name right there saying that he approved the flights based on the information the FBI gave him. It's right there, right up on the screen. I don't agree with Clarke on this point. Just because I think he's good on a lot of things doesn't mean I agree with him on everything.

TAPPER: But the film, you don't as a narrator of the film, discuss Richard Clarke's involvement in that part of the decision to let bin Laden family members to fly out of the country.

MOORE: Because it was the FBI who ultimately gave the information to Richard Clarke, that's correct.

TAPPER: Discussing pre-war Iraq, your films shows many tranquil scenes of the country, kids flying kites, smiling Iraqis, but knowing what we do know about the brutality of Saddam's regime, which you do mention at one point in the film, are those pictures a fair representation of pre-war Iraq?

MOORE: They're a fair representation of the civilians that were killed by our bombs. And I wanted to spend just 20 seconds so that the people in the United States could see what human beings look like in Iraq. Children flying kites, a kid getting his hair cut in a barber shop, a couple getting married — these were human beings.

And we bombed and we bombed in an indiscriminate manner and according to The New York Times two weeks ago 50 airstrikes, we were zero for 50 in hitting our targets and what we did hit were a lot of civilians. And that is what I show in this movie. The ABC News and the other networks did a very good job and have done a good job in showing what a brutal dictator Saddam Hussein was. But we rarely got to see images of everyday life in Iraq and I wanted to show that, just as one human being that thought that we should see these human beings and not have them dehumanized as statistics in a war.

TAPPER: But would it not be a more fair representation in your film to have also included some images of the brutality of Saddam's regime, the Kurds he gassed, the Iraqis he oppressed, the millions of Iraqis he killed?

MOORE: I do show Saddam Hussein shaking hands with Don Rumsfeld in 1983 back when he was our good friends and our ally. A Saddam Hussein that received nearly $4 billion in some form of aid from the United States during that time. We also supplied him with satellite photos of Iranian troop movements which he then used to gas Iranian troops. He was our good friend in the 1980s, Don Rumsfeld and others are well aware of that because they were involved in the Reagan administration. And that's what I show in my movie, things you haven't seen that much on the news.

TAPPER: Well, the picture of Rumsfeld shaking Saddam's hand is fairly well-known but …

MOORE: Oh no, the American people don't know that. The American people are not that aware that Saddam Hussein was our ally, that we helped to create the Saddam Hussein that he became. See, this is our problem as Americans, we create these monsters like Osama bin Laden, we helped to fund his mujahadeen in the 1980s, we helped to train him and his troops in the 1980s to defeat the Soviets in Afghanistan and then once the Soviets are gone Osama gets other ideas in his head and we're going "Whoa, what's he doing that for?" It's like, what, what were we doing funding a guy like that I the first place? We need to seriously examine this as Americans, why we back brutal dictators, like we did with Saddam Hussein, why we fund terrorists like we did with Osama bin Laden, these are legitimate questions to ask.

TAPPER: Is it not also legitimate to question whether, however, you are doing the same thing you're accusing the U.S. government of doing? You fault Saddam Hussein for being a brutal dictator back in the '80s when the United States was allied with Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war, yet when it comes to the part of the movie where you discuss going to war in Iraq in 2003, that's not a part of the movie you talk about how brutal Saddam Hussein was.

MOORE: Because people like you and this network and other networks over and over and over again told us that. Look, we all get it. We all know that. I'm just trying to present another side of the story. Why don't you think that's a good idea to have a filmmaker out there presenting a point of view and a side of the story that really wasn't well represented in our mainstream media?

TAPPER: You declare in the film that Hussein's regime had never killed an American …

MOORE: That isn't what I said. Quote the movie directly.

TAPPER: What is the quote exactly?

MOORE: "Murdered." The government of Iraq did not commit a premeditated murder on an American citizen. I'd like you to point out one.

TAPPER: If the government of Iraq permitted a terrorist named Abu Nidal who is certainly responsible for killing Americans to have Iraq as a safe haven; if Saddam Hussein funded suicide bombers in Israel who did kill Americans; if the Iraqi police — now this is not a murder but it's a plan to murder — to assassinate President Bush which at the time merited airstrikes from President Clinton once that plot was discovered; does that not belie your claim that the Iraqi government never murdered an American or never had a hand in murdering an American?

MOORE: No, because nothing you just said is proof that the Iraqi government ever murdered an American citizen. And I am still waiting for you to present that proof.

You're talking about, they provide safe haven for Abu Nidal after the committed these murders, uh, Iraq helps or supports suicide bombers in Israel. I mean the support, you remember the telethon that the Saudis were having? It's our allies, the Saudis, that have been providing help and aid to the suicide bombers in Israel. That's the story you should be covering. Why don't you cover that story? Why don't you cover it?

TAPPER: I've been told that's all the time we have. Thank you very much for this spirited debate, I appreciate your time, good luck with the movie — Michael Moore in New York.

http://abcnews.go.com/sections/Entertainment/Politics/tapper_moore_transcript_040626-1.html

It's funny. I'd seen all this stuff before--I mean it isn't as if there was anything really new here for anyone who's been paying attention for the past few years. And yet, I cried. Maybe it's the deprogramming of having at least some of what we've seen replayed with any decent focus for One Brief Shining Moment, beyond the self-imposed straitjacket of a docile and dangerously inept US press. Maybe it's just the oxygen given to all those impulses so many of us have kept in check, all those shoots of anger, sadness and embarrassment blossoming into full blown consciousness.

My own thought process in response to Michael Moore's new film reminded me of one of those dessicated sponges you put in water-a few hours later and voila: your tiny piece of foam has bloated into a full blown fish, or frog, or palm tree ten times its original size. Or maybe like opening an archive, unzipping a million saved files at once. My brain fairly exploded with repressed anger going back to the Florida recount disaster: things I had known in much more detail before Moore scratched the surface again and brought it all flooding back..

In fact, as soon as we got home, my wife and I started searching through old folders of emails from that period tucked away, too important to throw away, yet too disheartening to face on a more regular basis. This is the potential power of Fahrenheit 9/11: rousing the natural, inevitable rage against the machine of war, lies and fabricated videotape. Of course, many people will be exposed to new (for them) truths or aspects of the current crisis they haven't fully thought through. But more, I suspect, will be nudged into acknowledging nagging feelings that something is terribly wrong in this country, feelings they have been harboring but afraid to express.

What Moore does is let the cat out of the bag, so to speak. When we left the theater, there was a crowd of young aspiring journalists waiting to ask our impressions of the film. One young man in front of us was a bit evasive, simply offering that it was "mostly stuff he had known all along, but maybe people will start to wake up." As he walked away, one of our crowd recognized him from high school. "Hey, isn't that so-and-so? His father died in the military, right? And he just got out from a four-year stint."

It is this level penetration that is familiar, yet still surprising. Since even Republicans are bolting left and right from the sinking, stinking ship that is the Bush administration, it stands to reason that the defection goes more than skin deep. Still, it is gratifying to see that the disaffection with The Way Things Are affects such a broad swath, from soldiers in Iraq to unemployed workers in Michigan and elsewhere.

Of course, I was wary, as usual, that I would wind up hating something so overhyped. But I was pleasantly surprised at how moved I was by this film. Yes, Moore resorts to his tired old frumpy-schmuck tactics of ambushing targets and coming away the rejected loser who is, after all, only looking for the truth. But it is hilarious watching congresspeople scurry away from him like cockroaches in the sun as he tries to enlist their ruling class kids-made especially poignant by the marine at his side, who would rather risk jail time than go back to Iraq "to kill other poor people."

In fact, one of the more didactic subplots of the film, in which Moore painstakingly follows the transformation of a military mother who, early on, proclaims herself a 'conservative democrat,' is also the most moving, probably because Moore eschews his earlier guerilla theater instincts and lets the drama play out. Mining the dramatic gold of this mother reading her dead son's Last Letter Home may be Moore's stock and trade, but there were few dry eyes in the theater (mine not among them).

It may be a bit discomfiting for astute American viewers to find themselves more focused on--and perhaps more moved by--this woman's plight than of earlier shots of Iraqi civilian dead. Moore does create the echo of mourning parents in each country, the plaintive Iraqi mother's cries to Allah: "what did he do? Why did he have to die?" Michael Pederson's mother eerily refracts this plaint, calling on Jesus to help her and questioning "why did they have to take him? He was a good kid!" This brilliant parallel makes the transformation one Moore apparently hopes domestic viewers can identify with: seeing this mother, wracked with grief, after a confrontation with some brain-dead loser who accuses her of "staging" her son's death at an antiwar display outside the white house. In fury and self-blame, she laments that "People think they know, but they don't. I thought I knew, but I didn't know." Then her legs seem to buckle under her as she cries out with a mother's grief: "I need my son!" while Moore's probing yet tender camera keeps running, helpless, distant, paralyzed by the same realizations.

It is rousing the US public out of this paralysis that may be the chief goal and result of this film, as tall an order as that may seem. It fairly burns to see the puffy red face of Jim Baker from Florida 2000, the oil-greased slide of power, death and war profits that motivates these bastards, the total contempt for the poor and working-class kids they snare in relentless, targeted recruiting shams--all while yucking it up with the "haves and have-mores," what Bush loathsomely refers to in one of his scripted, awkward, podium-joke deliveries: "some people call this the elite-I call it my base!"

But more importantly, even while focusing on what a jackass Bush is--hey, it's funny--Moore manages to delve deeper than his ill-conceived fawning over War Hero Clark last Spring would imply. In particular, the Democrats take the pasting they deserve for the abysmal fact that not a single Senator would come to the aid of the Congressional Black Caucus in officially protesting the 2000 election. Deftly, Moore is able to tie this spineless moral failure in with an even more criminally immoral system where salivating recruiters hunt down (there is no other word for it, as the footage makes clear) brown and poor kids to fight the wars of the rich. The disingenuousness of the "opposition" party is laid bare, despite a few important interviews from members of congress fighting the good fight, as the consummate corporate ass-kisser it is, too addicted to campaign cash to effectively oppose the president's march to war. War is, as one eager potential profiteer sheepishly concedes on film, "good for business, bad for the people."

Enraged and ashamed (hopefully), the audiences at Moore's film can indeed rise up if they seize the opportunity, throwing off the bullshit-encrusted mantra that "we are stuck in Iraq," along with the sham arguments that sold a pack of war crimes disguised as "liberation." A friend's reaction was simple and succinct: "It makes me mad. I probably should have been more aggressive with people at the grocery store, or people at my old job. You know, people you just feel like choking." Is it too late to turn back the rising tide of ignorance and budding fascism? For the sake of humanity, we have to hope not.

© 2004 Daniel Patrick Welch. Reprint permission granted with credit and link to danielpwelch.com. Writer, singer, linguist and activist Daniel Patrick Welch lives and writes in Salem, Massachusetts, with his wife, Julia Nambalirwa-Lugudde. Together they run The Greenhouse School. His website is at danielpwelch.com.

UPDATE: 25 JUNE 2004

Fahrenheit 9/11

OK I've seen the film, Now what do I do?
Contact the media and the good people in our government

By selectively ignoring stories, relying on misinformation or government propaganda, and confusing opinion with fact, the media presents a picture of war that is nothing like the reality that US soldiers and Iraqis face daily. The mainstream media has a unique ability to sway public opinion, and for this reason, they have been complicit in the justification for war and subsequent occupation of Iraq.

From minimizing growing discontent among occupied Iraqis to largely ignoring civilian casualties and even downplaying the personal stories of US soldiers who were killed, the media was guiding US opinion to support war and shielding the public from stories unpleasant enough to change their minds.

They considered it too dangerous to report on the raw facts and brutal reality of war, so instead, a self-censored version appeared, in which the US "liberated" the Iraqi people with little harm done to the population or the infrastructure of the country.

Embedded journalism only allowed reporters to see one side of the story, in a place where there are multitudes of opinions and realities to report on. Independent media sources, human rights groups, and some brave mainstream media outlets, like the New Yorker, reported on instances of torture months ago, but all was widely ignored.

Whenever these reports did find their way into larger news sources, they were an afterthought, a brief mention negated by a pro-war context. Once photos documenting soldiers torturing Iraqis emerged, the media began to pick up on the story, but even then, as this article points out, they were still slower to catch on and less comprehensive in their reports than was the foreign press. It only became a huge story when the sensational nature of the photos turned into a scandal, and newspapers could use it to shock readers and sell papers.

The government, of course, has a major influence over the media. For example, when the Department of Defense banned images of coffins of US soldiers killed in the war, it was readily accepted and only challenged by an independent website. Few news agencies challenged the guidelines for embedded journalism or strayed from the information they were "allowed" to report on. In addition, reporters' own pro-war views were reflected in their commentaries. Even Dan Rather admitted that his coverage of war was slanted because he wanted the US to win.

Not every major news source is outright lying, or even intentionally dishonest. In most cases, it was laziness and an absence of critical thought. The New York Times is the first paper to admit to their mistakes. It's not a giant conspiracy. But it is troubling, given the amount of influence the media has on public perception of political issues, that reporting is at times inconsistent with facts, repeating one half truth until it takes on a life of its own, and profiting from this gross misinformation. In general, war is good for the media, because it prompts people to tune in.

If the media won't or can't become more responsible and less subjective in their reporting, then it's up to you to seek out the real news. This may mean accumulating information from a variety of sources, mainstream media included, and deciding for yourself. Or you could just stay slightly skeptical and question stories that only report from one angle. Just be aware, inform yourself, and always ask questions.

We've compiled a comprehensive directory of media contacts. You can write letters, call, fax, or email to let them know that you're intelligent enough to see through their thinly veiled propaganda. Whenever they attempt to pull the wool over your eyes, you need to be right there, writing and calling them until they learn that biased journalism is unacceptable. If they arenմ reporting the whole story or if they are simple ignoring the realities of a situation altogether, then they need to hear from you. A concerted effort to call their fluff for what it is may well result in fairer, more objective coverage.

www.fahrenheit911.com

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 Illinois has reported receiving death threats.

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!

So, we have beaten back all attempts to kill this movie, and the only thing in the way of you now seeing "Fahrenheit 9/11" is this Republican big-money front group trying to force theaters not to show the movie.

Please, contact your local theaters and let them know you want to see "Fahrenheit 9/11." Tell them that some people don't know that this is America and that we believe in freedom of speech and the importance of ALL voices being heard. (The members of MoveOn.org--an ACTUAL grassroots organization--have done a very cool thing. They are pledging to send a message to theater owners and are planning to attend a showing of the film on its opening weekend.)

I appreciate their efforts, but you don't have to be a member of MoveOn to help stop this effort to keep "Fahrenheit 9/11" from making it to screens across the country. If a theater in your area is planning to show the film, just give them a call and thank them for standing up for the freedom of speech. If your local theater isn't showing the film, call them and let them know that you would like to see it and you'd like them to show it.

The White House and their minions in our media have presented one distorted version of the truth after another for the past four years. All we are asking for is the right to show what they HAVEN'T shown us, the real truth. The truth that ain't pretty (and is, sadly, damningly hilarious).

On top of all this, the MPAA gave the film an "R" rating. I want all teenagers to see this film. There is nothing in the film in terms of violence that we didn't see on TV every night at the dinner hour during the Vietnam War. Of course, that's the point, isn't it? The media have given the real footage from Iraq a "cleansing" -- made it look nice, easy to digest. Mario Cuomo has offered to be our lawyer in appealing this ruling by the MPAA. Frankly, I would like to think the MPAA is saying that the actions by the Bush administration are so abhorrent and revolting, we need to protect our children from seeing what they have done. In that case, the film should be rated NC-17!

However it turns out, I trust all of you teenagers out there will find your way into a theater to see this movie. If the government believes it is OK to send slightly older teenagers to their deaths in Iraq, I think at the very least you should be allowed to see what they are going to draft you for in a couple of years.

Finally, some very sophisticated individuals have been hacking into and shutting down our website. It is an hourly fight to keep it up. We are going to find out who is doing this and we are going to pursue a criminal prosecution. I'm preparing lots of cool stuff for the site so watch for new items on it next week (www.fahrenheit911.com and www.michaelmoore.com).

Thanks again for your support and I hope to see you at the movies on opening night, June 25.

Yours,

Michael Moore

PS. I am sponsoring a number of benefits around the country next week for local and national peace and justice groups, including Military Families Speak Out and September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows. Please check your local papers and my website next week for further details.

PPS. Also, I am going to be on the "Late Show with David Letterman" on Friday night. It's on CBS at 11:35 PM Eastern and Pacific. And on Monday morning (June 21) I will be on ?The Today Show? on NBC. Next week, Jon Stewart and Conan. I'd go on O'Reilly but, like a coward, he walked out on a screening we invited him to (with Al Franken just a few rows away!). I personally caught him sneaking out. Embarrassed, he tried to change the subject. He said, "When are you coming on my show?" and I said, "Turn around and watch the rest of the movie and I will come on your show." He walked out.

Fair and balanced.

WASHINGTON - A conservative group asked federal election officials on Thursday to investigate whether television ads for director Michael Moore (news)'s anti-Bush documentary "Fahrenheit 9/11" violate campaign finance law regulating when commercials may feature a presidential candidate.

The Federal Election Commission (news - web sites) might take months to issue a ruling on the complaint, making it unlikely the commission would act in time to affect the film's ad campaign. The two-hour documentary, which depicts President Bush (news - web sites) as lazy and oblivious to warnings in summer 2001 that al-Qaida was poised to strike, opens nationwide on Friday.

The group Citizens United contended that commercials for "Fahrenheit 9/11" fall under federal campaign finance law. Regulations prohibit the use of corporate money to air ads identifying a presidential candidate in the 30 days before his party's nominating convention and the 60 days before the Nov. 2 election.

Bush will be nominated by the GOP during its New York convention Aug. 30-Sept. 2. Citizens United argued that "Fahrenheit 9/11" ads that identify Bush and are paid for with corporate money should be banned after July 31.

Moore called the complaint "a blatant attempt on the part of a right-wing, Republican-sponsored group to stop people from seeing my movie." He said he would fight the complaint, and members of the Congressional Black Caucus (news - web sites) appearing with him at a news conference near the Capitol promised to help.

"It's a violation of my First Amendment rights that I cannot advertise my movie. It's a movie," Moore said.

"I have not publicly endorsed John Kerry (news - web sites). I am an independent, I am not a member of the Democratic Party."

An exemption to the law frees a wide array of media organizations from the ban on the use of corporate

money for ads identifying federal candidates close to elections. Moore, an Oscar-winning documentary filmmaker, and the film might be covered by the media exemption. Citizens United contends that "Fahrenheit 9/11" is propaganda and doesn't qualify for the media exemption.

It is among conservative groups that have tried to mobilize the public against the film, arguing that Moore's portrayal of the Bush administration is inaccurate.

The group's complaint names Moore; companies involved in the film's marketing and distribution, including Lions Gate Entertainment Corp., Cablevision Systems Corp., Viacom International; and brothers Harvey and Bob Weinstein, executives at the film company Miramax who formed a separate company to find a way to distribute Moore's film.

The complaint also contends that because Lions Gate is foreign-owned, the ads are subject to a ban on the use of foreign money for ads identifying presidential candidates close to elections.

"Fahrenheit 9/11" won the top honor at last month's Cannes Film Festival (news - web sites). Moore and his distributors lost their appeal Tuesday to lower its rating from R to PG-13.

The FEC issued a decision Thursday on ads involving another film, but commissioners said it doesn't address Moore or ads promoting "Fahrenheit 9/11." In that ruling, the FEC told an Arizona man he couldn't use corporate money to run ads promoting his documentary film and identifying Bush and congressional candidates close to the election.

David Hardy, president of the Bill of Rights Educational Foundation in Tucson, Ariz., had asked the commission for its advice on whether he could use foundation money for the ads. Hardy didn't ask the commission whether his ads would qualify for the media exemption. __

Associated Press Writer Aparna Kumar contributed to this report. _

On the Net:

FEC: http://www.fec.gov/

Michael Moore: http://www.michaelmoore.com/

Moore Crowned Cannes King
By Sarah Hall

Nobody seriously believes that what happens in a chic French seaside resort in the heart of ''Old Europe'' will have a decisive bearing on the US election. But Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 has certainly raised the political temperature and if President Bush does watch the documentary that savages his presidency he should be advised not to have a bowl of pretzels within reach.

The award was given by a jury with just one French member and four Americans and was not, as some commentators have suggested, a sly dig at the White House over strained US-Franco relations. It was, though politically motivated in the broadest and best sense, a documentary that struck right at the heart of its subject.

Moore may make an unlikely knight in shining armour for the American left but documentaries at their best make the viewer sit up and take notice. And no one does this better than Moore on the Bush presidency.

By SHARON THEIMER, Associated Press Writer

He did it! Michael Moore, genius, man of the people, cult hero or muckraker – depending on where one stands within the political spectrum – walked away from Cannes with the coveted Palme d'Or for his controversial documentary film Fahrenheit 9/11 and received an unprecedented 20-minutes standing ovation to boot.

The Guardian has described Moore as "an ursine figure in an ill-fitting suit", George W. Bush's description might well be unprintable at this point. When Governor of Texas, Bush told the director: "Behave yourself will you. Go find some real work." Moore took his advice and has since been busy trying to topple the Bush machine starting with Stupid White Men down to his latest book Dude, Where's my Country?

Fahrenheit 9/11 is the icing on Moore's "Get Bush" cake, which some pundits say could influence United States election results, provided it finds an American distributor.

A message to his fans, posted on his website last Sunday reads: "No, we still don't have a distributor in America as I write this but after winning the world's top film prize, I'd give it about one more day (if that) because we have someone brave enough (and smart enough) to show Americans what the world can already see…

"I fully expect the right wing and the Republican Party to come at me and this film with everything they've got," he ominously predicts. "They will try, as they have unsuccessfully in the past, to attack me personally because they cannot win the debate on the issues the film raises– namely, that they are a pack of liars and the American people are on to them." Perhaps this explais the three burly minders who tower over the millionaire, whom he refers to as his masseur, Pilates teacher and fitness trainer.

Disney, which owns Fahrenheit 9/11's production company Miramax, has prohibited the latter from distributing the documentary. According to a May 5 article in the New York Times this is because the film might anger the President's brother Jeb Bush, Governor of Florida, thereby endangering millions of dollars in tax breaks Disney receives from that state.

The film-maker who could help to bring down Bush has been larging it at Cannes. He has made millions asking awkward questions of corporate America. But there are a few awkward questions we'd like to ask him...

Andrew Anthony
Sunday May 23, 2004


The Observer

It would be wrong to suggest that all of human life passes through the lobby of the Majestic hotel in Cannes. Better to say that beneath its exotic arrangement of palm trees, hanging rugs, Roman statues and permanently illuminated chandeliers goes all of human life with a movie to sell. And therefore followed, of course, by a few other forms of life. In this baroque setting, on any given day during festival fortnight, the movers, the shakers, the wheelers, the dealers, the chancers, the prancers, the stars and the starlets perform a complex social dance that, with its anxious overlapping non-conversations, might have been choreographed by Robert Altman. Never stopping for more than a moment, the parties embrace, scan the room for someone more powerful, more famous or more beautiful, promise to fix something up, and then move swiftly on. Later, these fleeting encounters will be described as meetings.

Not much stops the palm-squeezing and back-slapping. No one, for example, is too distracted when David Carradine, the star of the Seventies TV series Kung Fu, blows kisses from the top of the stairs, even though he is wearing a Mao jacket and sunglasses and a pair of pumps with 'Kill Bill' lettering to promote his role in Quentin Tarantino's film. Nor are there more than a few jerked necks when Harvey Weinstein, the dark prince of the deal, walks through brandishing a terrifying grin. But everything freezes as a large man with a fast-food gut and a laboured waddle, wispy beard and glasses, makes his way to the door.

Extended hands are left unshaken, air-kisses go unaired, the hubbub softens and two strikingly elegant women teeter on their kitten heels to get a better view, their faces a portrait of rapt admiration. Here comes Michael Moore, film-maker, author, political activist, global phenomenon.

Last week on the baking Côte d'Azur, there was no one hotter than the big fellow from Michigan. Among the stylish hordes of the Croisette, there was no greater attraction than this ursine fig ure in his ill-fitting suit. Everyone wanted a piece of him, and there is a lot of him to go around, but after months of requests, I had the only one-on-one interview. Michael and Me, we had a real meeting arranged.

Moore arrived in Cannes by his traditional mode of transport - on a wave of controversy. Disney had announced that it would not distribute his new film, Fahrenheit 9/11, in America, which left the film's producers, Miramax, a division of Disney, looking for a new partner. Moore accused Disney of censoring his film to protect the tax breaks its Disneyworld complex enjoys in Florida, the state controlled by Jeb Bush, brother of the President (Fahrenheit 9/11 details the cronyism and corruption of the Bush regime, as well as its failings in the 'war against terror').

Disney countered that Moore had known for more than a year that it would not handle the film and was only complaining now to publicise his film. Nevertheless, the director once again successfully positioned himself on the moral high ground in a battle against a multinational corporation. He finessed the same manoeuvre with Stupid White Men, his bestselling critique of American capitalism, by claiming that Harper Collins had tried to suppress the book, and that it only agreed to publish him following a protest by librarians.

Moore, the king-sized millionaire, walking testament to American consumption, is a master of making himself appear the little guy. He told reporters that before Disney, Mel Gibson's company, Icon, had also dropped the film, following a phone call from a man in Washington who told Icon that if they continued with the film Gibson would no longer be welcome at the White House. Icon denied the story, but how could they prove that the mysterious Washington caller did not exist?

The net effect of all these claims and counter-claims was that Fahrenheit 9/11 was the film that everyone on the Croisette wanted to see. But as not everyone had tickets, the old-fashioned capitalist marketing ploy of making demand outstrip supply ensured maximum frenzy and thus still greater demand. In Cannes, nobody wants to hear the word can't. Naturally, the bidding on buying the distribution rights just went up and up.

The film, as it turned out, is Moore's strongest since Roger and Me, his debut documentary 15 years ago which examined the damage wrought by General Motors on his home town of Flint. Whereas the Oscar-winning Bowling for Columbine was hit-and-miss, self-contradictory, and more than a little sanctimonious, Fahrenheit 9/11 seldom loses sight of its target - the Bush administration - or its sense of humour.

It is also, with a couple of exceptions, a triumph of editing. Indeed, Moore is arguably the most ideological and emotive editor since Sergei Eisenstein, the Soviet propagandist who developed a kind of didactic montage. Juxtaposing heroes and villains, he cuts between political comedy and tragic reality with intoxicating glee. There is no information that is vitally new, nor are there any images that are more shocking than those from Abu Ghraib prison, but such is the cumulative force of the film, with its kinetic humour and insistent sentiment, that it is hard to come away from it without concluding a) that George W Bush is not fit to be president of a golf club let alone the world's most powerful nation and b) the war in Iraq was woefully misconceived. In the year of an election that could well prove close, it's the kind of film that could make a historic difference.

In the past, Moore has been accused of twisting chronology and events to suit his agenda. While neither Bowling for Columbine nor Roger and Me can be accused of major factual errors, both trade on a series of misleading implications. For example, in Bowling for Columbine the audience is led to believe that the two teenage killers at Columbine high school may have been inured to violence by the proximity of a local weapons factory. Yet it later emerged that the factory produced nothing more lethal than rockets to launch TV satellites. The film critic Richard Schickel labelled Moore 'the very definition of the unreliable narrator'.

If there is a question mark over the trustworthiness of Moore's work, few can doubt its power, still less its influence. Bowling for Columbine was by far the biggest-grossing documentary in history. Stupid White Men , an easy-read satire, was the bestselling non-fiction book in the US in 2002, with 4 million copies in print worldwide, and 600,000 of those in the UK. At one point the book, and its follow-up, Dude, Where's My Country?, stood at numbers one and two in the German bestseller list. The sales of his films and books have made him known across the planet, as well as very rich, but the image he has sold of himself - fat, bumbling, nerdy, but indefatigable - has made him something else: an international man of the people.

As the limousine carrying Moore to his Cannes press conference pulls out of the Majestic, bound for the Palais less than 200 yards up the road, an Argentinian TV crew rushes out into the road to interview the director. The automatic tinted windows slide down and a few brief words are exchanged before a security guard steps in. The man with the microphone tries to give Moore an Argentinian flag but the security guard won't allow him. 'Put that down,' he warns, as if it were a semi-automatic weapon. The window goes up and the car moves off.

More than Moore's wealth, the question of security is perhaps the issue that most threatens his down-to-earth ordinary Joe persona. In Bowling for Columbine, he posits the theory that America's gun violence problem stems from a culture of fear created by a racist media. Last year, during a residency at the Roundhouse in London, he suggested that if the passengers on 11 September had been black, they would have fought back against the hijackers, and that spoilt whites were too used to having other people look after them.

But during the same series of dates in London, he complained about the lack of security so vehemently that the Roundhouse staff threatened to boycott the show. I got a taste of the air of paranoia surrounding Moore when, because I was without a suitable pass, a friendly PR snuck me into the main press conference alongside his entourage. Suddenly, one of his assistants turned to me and demanded to know who I was. The PR explained that I was with her.

'And who are you with?' asked the assistant.

'You,' replied the perplexed PR. 'I'm working with you.'

'I've never seen you before in my life,' announced the assistant and a security guard duly intervened to bar both of us. It was only when the PR persuaded the assistant that in fact they had been working together all day that the guard relented. On stage, Moore was asked why it was that he was flanked by three security men, who stood with their feet apart, hands clasped at their crotches, in an intimidating military stance. The director did as he always does when asked this question, and claimed that they were his fitness trainer, pilates teacher and masseur, then turned the idea that he needed protection into an elaborate joke. 'I'm not afraid of anything,' he mugged. 'Should I be?' The room broke into laughter.

Moore knows how to field difficult questions before a crowd. When one reporter told him that she had spoken to Icon and they knew nothing of the supposed caller from Washington, Moore told her to speak to his agent - 'He knows all about it.' She told him she had spoken to his agent, that he had professed ignorance of the matter, and had told her that she should speak to Moore. The director simply referred her back to his agent.

After the conference, Moore went to the official screening of his film, which is in competition for the main jury prize. The end of the film brought a standing ovation that, observers estimated, lasted somewhere between 12 and 15 minutes, a Cannes record, and possibly unmatched since Stalin's audiences used to continue clapping for mortal fear of being the first person to stop.

The applause here, though, was genuine. For the Americans who made up a large section of the audience, this was their first opportunity to stand up straight after the shaming horrors of Abu Ghraib, and for the French, well, there is nothing the French love more than an American criticising America. The following evening on French TV, I watched Moore thank the French peo ple for being 'friends who can tell you the truth to your face'. He might have returned the favour and told the French about their government's appalling role in Rwanda a decade before - but there are limits to truth-telling, even among friends.

The charge that Moore, who turned 50 last month, has only ever established a partial relationship with the truth is one that stretches way back into his career. Although he has lived in the rarefied neighbourhood of Manhattan's Upper West Side for the past 14 years, Moore very rarely lets an interview go by without referring to himself as 'working-class'. In fact, he grew up in a middle-class suburb of Flint, in a two-car family. His father was an auto-plant worker who played golf, retired in his fifties, and was well-off enough to send his three children to college.

Moore dropped out of university and, after stints as a hippie DJ, and a period running a crisis centre for teenagers, he set-up an alternative newspaper, the Flint Voice. He edited it with such verve, exposing corrupt officials and racist businesses, that in 1986 the San Francisco-based magazine Mother Jones asked him to become its editor. But just a few months after taking up the position, he was fired. According to the owner of the magazine, the staff said that he was impossible to work with. As far as Moore was concerned, he lost his job because he was set against a piece that was critical of the Sandinistas' record on human rights.

Either way, he won $58,000 damages in a suit for wrongful dismissal, sold his house and put all the money into making Roger and Me . The documentary was a notable critical, if not spectacular commercial, success. Thereafter Moore moved to New York and television, making zany political series such as TV Nation and The Awful Truth, which were full of Moore's trademark stunts designed to mock greed and ignorance and humbug.

Behind the scenes, however, a different picture was forming. Moore's employers were confronted with ever more regal demands. He insisted that Channel 4 house him at the Ritz when he worked in England on The Awful Truth, a fact he now portrays as the revenge of the working class against corporate might. Meanwhile employees grumbled. 'He's a jerk and a hypocrite and didn't treat us right and he was false in all of his dealings,' said one former worker. His former manager, Douglas Urbanski, has said that Moore 'was the most difficult man I've ever met... he's money-obsessed'.

To such complaints, Moore has a stock Nietzschean-cum-Obi-Wan Kenobi answer, which is that whatever attacks his critics launch at him, only make him stronger. 'The readership only expands, the viewership for the movies only expands, and they just look ridiculous.'

And, statistically, he's right. Currently, there is no more powerful anti-war protester in America, and therefore arguably the world, than Moore. In this country, the Mirror named him 'the greatest living American'. Recently, when he called Bush a 'deserter' it caused a scandal in the States, but it also put Bush's dubious record as a National Guardsman during the Vietnam war at the top of the agenda for the first time. He plays sell-out stadiums wherever he travels, and while he has become something of a bogeyman to the American right, and an embarrassment to a small section of the liberal left, he is to many millions the world over the underdogs' most heroic spokesperson. It's a reputation that was cemented by his celebrated Oscar speech at last year's awards ceremony, in which he lambasted Bush and told the assembled actors that they lived in 'fictitious times'.

He would tell interviewers afterwards that he had not planned the speech, assuming that he would not win, but elsewhere he has said that he warned his fellow competitors that he was going to make an anti-war statement. That's the problem with Moore: you can't be certain of the veracity of what he says. Is he the radical who has claimed to give a third of his income to worthy causes or a ruthless self-aggrandising hypocrite, or both?

Now, with my exclusive one-to-one interview, I was, I hoped, about to see the real Michael Moore. But a small cloud had appeared in the brilliant blue Mediterranean sky. The publicity company dealing with Moore in Cannes had resigned, as a fractious working relationship had become intolerable, with the director and Weinstein apparently reducing one of the publicists to tears. The new publicists, drawn and anxious-looking, were at pains to let me know that the interview would still go ahead. They just couldn't be sure what time it would be. And, oh, one other thing, it had been cut to 15 minutes. Fifteen minutes! That was barely enough time to ask a question, let alone hear it answered.

I waited in the lobby of the Majestic, and was finally allotted a time. The hour came and passed. There was no sign of Moore. Was he pulling a Naomi, the no-show interview technique perfected by supermodel Naomi Campbell? He once told an interviewer that he didn't like interviews because he had 'no control over what you're going to write'. One form of control, of course, is not to arrive.

The publicist told me that Moore's lunch meeting had run over but that she was sure everything would be OK. It was clear from her stricken expression that she had no idea where Moore was. She went away and what seemed like a week later returned with a definite slot and disappointing news. Owing to Moore's other engagements, the interviews now had to be compressed, and I would be sharing my limited time with one journalist from Australia and another from Japan.

Inside a well-manned salon, Moore was sporting a baseball cap with the legend 'Made in Canada', a blue hooded tracksuit top, khaki shorts and sandals. Crouched over a circular conference table, he looked like a lumpen tourist at a Vegas blackjack game, uncertain, ill at ease.

'You cool with them being here?' he asked me conspiratorially, though quite brazenly, in front of the Australian and Japanese journalists.

When I told him that it wasn't what was advertised on the brochure, he said: 'Yeah, I don't know what to do here. They've got me so jammed. No offence to you, the Japanese,' he gestured to the Japanese woman, 'but you both deserve your own time,' now gesturing to the Australian woman and myself. Either he doesn't sell too well in Japan or there was a hint of racism in that distinction, but Moore was too caught up in his own drama to notice. 'This is bullshit, you know. Don't they understand the difference between the Observer and a Portuguese magazine, no offence to the Portuguese, but don't they know? I'm just asking, man.'

From being the architect of this farrago, Moore turned himself into the victim, betrayed by the nameless, omnipotent 'they'. He continued in the same vein, currying my favour with his appreciation of the Observer until, to her great credit, the Japanese woman asked if we could begin the interview. At which point Moore burst out laughing, to his credit at himself.

My strategy, given the rushed circumstances, was to dispense with formal inquiries, let the other two ask about the film and general matters, and restrict myself to awkward questions. I wondered if he has any regrets about supporting Ralph Nader, the independent candidate in the previous American presidential election. Most observers think that the votes Nader took from Al Gore were vital in gaining Bush's disputed victory.

'None whatsoever,' he says without hesitation, although he's called on Nader not to stand this time round. What's the difference?

'Wrong year. Even the Green party in the US have said they're not going to campaign in the swing states... I've been very disappointed and very saddened by Ralph, who's a great American who's done many great things. But in his later years he has become, you know, somewhat bitter and vindictive. And I don't want to speak ill of him because he's done so much good, but he has not a single... except I think I heard maybe Patti Smith is supporting him.' His silent ellipses could mean nothing but 'celebrity endorsement'.

I ask him why his old friend and longtime collaborator Ben Hamper, a former Flint auto-worker whom he helped become a writer, told the New Yorker magazine, in among a number of otherwise flattering comments, that Moore 'didn't treat people well'.

'Right,' says Moore, rising to the charge, 'and then he sent me a letter saying that he said that while he was drunk. He has a horrible alcohol problem and I don't really want to talk about it,' he says, going straight on to talk about it, 'because I feel bad because he's a friend. He sent me this painful, painful letter. He hasn't been able to write a book in over 12 years. He's literally had this writer's block that has not been helped by the prescription drugs and the alcohol problem. I care deeply about him. And it's hard for someone like that because here we were putting out this paper in Flint and I've gone on and written my books, made my films, I have this life and, you know, he's struggling. My wife and I have tried to help him [but] at some point in this situation you've got to stop being the enabler and he's got to get it together himself.'

He then tells me how well he pays his employees the best independent film rates around, and even calls in a young assistant and asks him to tell me how much he earns. 'Eight hundred dollars a week?,' he says gingerly. 'What else?' asks Moore. 'You pay for my cell phone.' 'So,' says Moore, 'roughly a thousand a week.' Sounds like roughly $800 to me, but who's quibbling?

The point is, he insists, he's not fallen out with any employees since 1994. I ask if he worked out how to be a better employer.

'I just think I'm a better person,' he says, his head bowed in theatrically solemn contemplation, 'because I'm always struggling to be a better person. I'm a highly flawed individual, as we all are, and because I was raised by Jesuits, I'm constantly, "What is it about me and what I can do to be better?"'

It is doubtless to this mission that he refers in Stupid White Men, when he writes: 'If you're white, and you really want to help change things, why not start with yourself?'

With this thought in mind, I ask him why he decided to send his daughter to a private school in Manhattan.

'Oh,' he says brightly, 'I went to private school. Just a genetic decision. My wife and I, we both went to Catholic schools, we're not public-school [which in the US means state school] people.

So it's not important.

'No, I think it's important and the first five years she went to public school, then we moved to New York and we went to see the local public school and we walked through a metal detector and we said, "We're not putting our child through a metal detector." We'll continue our fight to see to it that our society is such that you don't have to have a metal detector at the entrance to schools. But our daughter is not the one to be sacrificed to make things better. And so she went to a school two blocks away. She just went to the nearest other school.'

He makes it sound as if the other school was just a random choice, but private schools on the Upper West Side are all restrictively expensive, and mostly white, just as the state schools are disproportionately black.

'Is that a bad thing?' he asks rhetorically of his decision, 'I don't know. Every parent wants to do what's best for their child. Whatever I can afford, I'm going to get my kid the best education I can get.'

I suggest that, while that may be a natural instinct, it's hard to see why it's any different from the Republican philosophy of each man for himself and his family.

'I'm not a liberal. When you come from the working class and you do well enough whereby you can provide a little bit better for your family, get a decent roof over their head and send them to a good school, that's considered a good thing. If,' he emphasises, 'you're from the working class. What's bad about it is if you get to do that and then shut the door behind you so nobody else can do that.'

Of course, it's nobody's business but Moore's where he sends his child, except he makes it his business to detail the hereditary privilege of his subjects and tends to make his political arguments personal. In Fahrenheit 9/11 one of his stunts is to attempt to get Congressmen to sign their children up for the war in Iraq.

I ask him finally - the interview has now stretched either side of another with Italian TV - which other documentary film-makers he admires. He names Errol Morris, and a few others, but does not mention Nick Broomfield, whose signature style of putting himself in the frame Moore has to some extent borrowed. I ask how he rates Broomfield.

He pauses. 'I consider him a friend.'

I wait for his answer, as he tucks into a bowl of pickles.

'Do you think he wants to be on camera?' he puts the question back to me. 'Do you think he looks like he's enjoying it?'

What I think, after my short time in his company, is that Moore is a man you would not want as an opponent, but also one you'd think twice about calling a friend. Though a talented film-maker and a clever showman, a populist who knows how to play the maverick, he is too often both big-headed and small-minded. In his desire to be seen as the decent man telling truth to power, he is too ready to blame those less powerful than himself for his shortcomings. He was justly revered in the Palais, but out on the street no one had a kind word to say about him. At Cannes, Moore may have been the star but he was not, it seems, the man of the people.

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Michael Moore's controversial documentary, Fahrenheit 9/11, which has received its world premiere at Cannes, has met with a mixed response from UK and US critics: What's remarkable here isn't Moore's political animosity or ticklish wit. It's the well-argued, heartfelt power of his persuasion. Even though there are many things here that we have already learned, Moore puts it all together. It's a look back that feels like a new gaze forward.

Washington Post

This is an angry film about greed, the abuse of power, the betrayal of the people by their leaders. Moore says he hopes to keep it up to date between now and a pre-election US release in July - assuming Miramax find a distributor to their liking. Republicans will be infuriated by the film's simple emotional message. The rest of us will hope it reaches as wide a congregation as The Passion Of The Christ.

The Independent

Moore's big omission is Tony Blair and the UK. He has a clever pastiche of the opening title-sequence of the old TV western Bonanza, with Bush and Blair mocked up to look like cowboys. But in a section about the ramshackle "coalition of the willing" which was supposed to lend international legitimacy to the invasion, there is no mention of the part played by this country. This can only be because of Moore's insistence on America's international isolation and arrogance. It's a strange, skewed perspective.

The Guardian

Fahrenheit 9/11 may be seen as another example of the liberal media preaching to its own choir. But Moore is such a clever assembler of huge accusations and minor peccadilloes that the film should engage audiences of all political persuasions.

Time Magazine

It's a storming work of tempered polemic, gripping from start to last, that uses the war in Iraq as a starting point for offering a largely convincing class-based analysis of contemporary America. Small wonder that few US distributors want to touch it.

Daily Telegraph

There are still some classic Moore moments here, notably when squirming US congressmen are invited to sign up their own children to fight in Iraq. The director has always been strongest on the cusp between anger and humour, but there are simply too few such inspired episodes here. Fahrenheit 9/11 hits enough of its targets to qualify as an important and timely film. But it should have been a smart bomb, and it feels more like a blunt instrument.

The Times

Told with passion and cutting sarcasm, the film has a good deal of the Moore trademarks, from a deft use of various television and pop culture clips to embarrassing encounters with the great and the good. Moore is mischievous as ever - at one point he tries to convince members of the Congress to encourage their children to enlist and fight in the war. The irony and childish iconoclasm are still there but this is a film in which an adult sense of anger and frustration also dominate.

Screendaily

Its title notwithstanding, Michael Moore has delivered a film rather less incendiary than might have been expected - or wished for by his fans - in Fahrenheit 9/11. The sporadically effective documentary trades far more in emotional appeals than in systematically building an evidence-filled case against the president and his circle.

Variety

What Moore seems to be pioneering here is a reality film as an election-year device. The facts and arguments are no different than those one can glean from political commentary or recently published books on these subjects. Only the impact of film may prove greater than the printed word. So the real question is not how good a film is Fahrenheit 9/11 - it is undoubtedly Moore's weakest - but will a film help to get a president fired?

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The victory of Michael Moore's controversial film Fahrenheit 9/11 at Cannes is further proof of the rise of the cinema documentary.

The movie has already been accused of being anti-George Bush propaganda, maliciously scheduled to make its debut in the run-up to the presidential elections.

But there is no doubt millions will watch it to gain exactly what Moore pledges to give them - food for thought.

Moore himself said he aims to make movies that make people "leave the theatre changed". But he is not the only documentary-maker to cause a stir at cinemas worldwide.

I have written a new book, and this Tuesday it’s being released. It’s called, “DUDE, WHERE’S MY COUNTRY?” Because its content is likely to upset more than a few people, the publisher has “embargoed” the book until midnight Monday (which means no store or media outlet or anyone has access to a copy of the book until then).

They have taken these measures because I have written a book that seeks not to defeat the Bush people next year, but to have them removed from Washington right now. I know, I’m not asking for much. But I have spent the better part of the past year researching and writing this new book, and when you read it you’ll see why the current criminal investigation of the White House for outing a CIA agent in revenge is, in my opinion, just the tip of the iceberg. I can only hope that my book will make a small contribution toward that day when we’ll see one long perp walk of administration officials in handcuffs being led out of the White House and into a waiting paddy wagon. Like I said, I’m not asking for much.

“Dude, Where’s My Country?” is also my humble attempt to violate the Patriot Act on every single page of the book. And, I have learned that many want to get on John Ashcroft’s evildoer list with me. There are already a record number of orders from bookstores across the country. The first printing alone is almost one million copies (my last book’s first printing was 50,000). Chapters include “Oil’s Well That Ends Well,” “The United States of BOO!”, “How to Talk to Your Conservative Brother-in-law,” and more. (Click here to see the cover that will win me a free ticket to Gitmo)

If you get the New York Times, you may have noticed a mysterious ad for the past four days in the Arts section. Each day, the ad simply asks a new, pointed question of Mr. Bush. They are questions from my new book, from a chapter entitled, “Seven Questions for George of Arabia.” We are running one ad each day until the book comes out on Tuesday. In case you’ve missed them, here are the first four:

1. Dear Mr. Bush, is it true that the bin Ladens have had business relations with you and your family off and on for the past 25 years?

2. Dear “Mr. President,” what is the “special relationship” between the Bushes and the Saudi royal family?

3. Dear “Mr. President,” who attacked the United States on September 11th—a guy on dialysis from a cave in Afghanistan, or our friends, the Saudi Arabians?

4. Dear “Mr. President,” why did you allow a private Saudi jet to fly around the U.S. in the days after September 11th and pick up members of the bin Laden family and then fly them out of the country without a proper investigation by the FBI?

In my book, I provide some of the answers and all of the background evidence. It is astounding, and it is criminal. Will there be one Democrat in Congress willing to begin the investigation?

After the book’s release, I take off on a 30-city tour over 25 days. Many of these dates are already sold-out, so check my website first to see where you can find me. I will also be on the “Today Show” on Tuesday, and “The View” and “Conan” on Wednesday.

You may want to stay in touch with my website as I’ll be putting up a lot of new stuff over the next few days and weeks. I’m also planning to keep a diary of my tour, complete with photos from the road.

For me, this is the kickoff of a 12-month campaign for regime change in Washington, DC. I hope you can join me and the millions of