- Friends,
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- Where do I begin? This past week has knocked me for a
loop. "Fahrenheit 9/11," the #1 movie in the country, the largest
grossing documentary ever. My head is spinning. Didn't we just lose our
distributor 8 weeks ago? Did Karl Rove really fail to stop this? Is Bush
packing?
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- Each day this week I was given a new piece of information
from the press that covers Hollywood, and I barely had time to recover
from the last tidbit before the next one smacked me upside the head:
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- ** More people saw "Fahrenheit 9/11" in one
weekend than all the people who saw "Bowling for Columbine" in
9 months.
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- ** "Fahrenheit 9/11" broke "Rocky III's"
record for the biggest box office opening weekend ever for any film that
opened in less than a thousand theaters.
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- ** "Fahrenheit 9/11" beat the opening weekend
of "Return of the Jedi."
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- ** "Fahrenheit 9/11" instantly went to #2 on
the all-time list for largest per-theater average ever for a film that
opened in wide-release.
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- How can I ever thank all of you who went to see it? These
records are mind-blowing. They have sent shock waves through Hollywood
- and, more importantly, through the White House.
-
- But it didn't just stop there. The response to the movie
then went into the Twilight Zone. Surfing through the dial I landed on
the Fox broadcasting network which was airing the NASCAR race live last
Sunday to an audience of millions of Americans -- and suddenly the announcers
were talking about how NASCAR champ Dale Earnhardt, Jr. took his crew to
see "Fahrenheit 9/11" the night before. FOX sportscaster Chris
Myers delivered Earnhardt's review straight out of his mouth and into the
heartland of America: "He said hey, it'll be a good bonding experience
no matter what your political belief. It's a good thing as an American
to go see."
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- Whoa! NASCAR fans - you can't go deeper into George Bush
territory than that! White House moving vans - START YOUR ENGINES!
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- Then there was Roger Friedman from the Fox News Channel
giving our film an absolutely glowing review, calling it "a really
brilliant piece of work, and a film that members of all political parties
should see without fail." Richard Goldstein of the Village Voice surmised
that Bush is already considered a goner so Rupert Murdoch might be starting
to curry favor with the new administration. I don't know about that, but
I've never heard a decent word toward me from Fox. So, after I was revived,
I wondered if a love note to me from Sean Hannity was next.
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- How about Letterman's Top Ten List:
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- "Top Ten George W. Bush Complaints About "Fahrenheit
9/11":
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- 10. That actor who played the President was totally unconvincing
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- 9. It oversimplified the way I stole the election
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- 8. Too many of them fancy college-boy words
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- 7. If Michael Moore had waited a few months, he could
have included the part where I get him deported
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- 6. Didn't have one of them hilarious monkeys who smoke
cigarettes and gives people the finger
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- 5. Of all Michael Moore's accusations, only 97% are true
-
- 4. Not sure - - I passed out after a piece of popcorn
lodged in my windpipe
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- 3. Where the hell was Spider-man?
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- 2. Couldn't hear most of the movie over Cheney's foul
mouth
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- 1. I thought this was supposed to be about dodgeball
-
- But it was the reactions and reports we received from
theaters around the country that really sent me over the edge. One theatre
manager after another phoned in to say that the movie was getting standing
ovations as the credits rolled in places like Greensboro, NC and Oklahoma
City -- and that they were having a hard time clearing the theater afterwards
because people were either too stunned or they wanted to sit and talk to
their neighbors about what they had just seen. In Trumbull, CT, one woman
got up on her seat after the movie and shouted "Let's go have a meeting!"
A man in San Francisco took his shoe off and threw it at the screen when
Bush appeared at the end. Ladies' church groups in Tulsa were going to
see it, and weeping afterwards.
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- It was this last group that gave lie to all the yakking
pundits who, before the movie opened, declared that only the hard-core
"choir" would go to see "Fahrenheit 9/11." They couldn't
have been more wrong. Theaters in the Deep South and the Midwest set house
records for any film they'd ever shown. Yes, it even sold out in Peoria.
And Lubbock, Texas. And Anchorage, Alaska!
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- Newspaper after newspaper wrote stories in tones of breathless
disbelief about people who called themselves "Independents" and
"Republicans" walking out of the movie theater shaken and in
tears, proclaiming that they could not, in good conscience, vote for George
W. Bush. The New York Times wrote of a conservative Republican woman in
her 20s in Pensacola, Florida who cried through the film, and told the
reporter: "It really makes me question what I feel about the president...
it makes me question his motives"
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- Newsday reported on a self-described "ardent Bush/Cheney
supporter" who went to see the film on Long Island, and his quiet
reaction afterwards. He said, "It's really given me pause to think
about what's really going on. There was just too much - too much to discount."
The man then bought three more tickets for another showing of the film.
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- The Los Angeles Times found a mother who had "supported
[Bush] fiercely" at a theater in Des Peres, Missouri: "Emerging
from Michael Moore's 'Fahrenheit 9/11,' her eyes wet, Leslie Hanser said
she at last understood. 'My emotions are just....' She trailed off, waving
her hands to show confusion. 'I feel like we haven't seen the whole truth
before.'"
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- All of this had to be the absolute worst news for the
White House to wake up to on Monday morning. I guess they were in such
a stupor, they "gave" Iraq back to, um, Iraq two days early!
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- News editors told us that they were being "bombarded"
with e-mails and calls from the White House (read: Karl Rove), trying to
spin their way out of this mess by attacking it and attacking me. Bush
spokesman Dan Bartlett had told the White House press corps that the movie
was "outrageously false" -- even though he said he hadn't seen
the movie. He later told CNN that "This is a film that doesn't require
us to actually view it to know that it's filled with factual inaccuracies."
At least they're consistent. They never needed to see a single weapon of
mass destruction before sending our kids off to die.
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- 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?
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- May the farce be with you, but not for long,
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- Michael Moore
www.michaelmoore.com
mmflint@aol.com
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