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discussion

fahrenheit 9/11

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laryn
Jun 17 2004
09:40 pm

http://www.fahrenheit911.com/trailer/

this is a good trailer—and i’m sure the movie will provide much fodder for debate and discussion (a certain percentage of that will be about whether moore is accurate in what he presents).

i hear there’s a petition underway to try to block theatres from releasing it—haven’t people learned from [i:6f7103c5ff]the passion[/i:6f7103c5ff] that that’s only going to make more people see it?

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JabirdV
Jun 19 2004
12:04 am

Democrats Warm To ‘Fahrenheit 9/11’

By Tina Brown

Thursday, June 17, 2004; Page C01

After more than a week of round-the-clock Reaganolotry, New York was so ready for the rollout of Michael Moore’s Bush-bashing movie. I mean really, really ready. There was such demand to get into a small screening at the Beekman Theatre on Monday night that executive producer and host Harvey Weinstein moved the celebrity crowd to the thousand-seat Ziegfeld Theatre. This was a canny PR move. There was only a one-week frenzy window between Gippermania and the pending Clinton memoir, and Weinstein flew right through it.

Disney’s refusal to distribute “Fahrenheit 9/11” was a perfect ploy to dramatize one of Moore’s favorite themes, the suffocating power of big media. Attempted suppression is a promotional must these days. Bill O’Reilly’s lawsuit put Al Franken on the bestseller list. The distributors who ran away from Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ” made him a miracle worker at the box office. Now we have the Moore/Disney psychodrama. We have gone from the marketing Calvary of Christ to Michael Moore’s Messiah complex.

The buzz is deafening. Weinstein had the wheeze of screening “Fahrenheit 9/11” with a different celebrity host virtually every night this week and next before the movie opens wide on June 25 in 700 theaters. Monday night’s co-host with the Weinstein Brothers was legal eagle David Boies, and a backup cast including Richard Gere, Leonardo DiCaprio, Spike Lee, Tim Robbins, Philip Seymour Hoffman — all the cool dudes. Tonight it’s Viacom’s new co-president, Tom Freston, along with Showtime boss Matt Blank. Next week, Blackstone Chairman Pete Peterson and his wife, Joan Ganz Cooney, corral the Park Avenue power players. If these screenings were scenes in a Michael Moore movie, the filmmaker would be hanging around outside with a camera crew trying for ambush interviews.

It speaks to how desperate New York Democrats feel that a New York premiere audience filled not just with credulous movie stars but top-of-the-line editors, First Amendment lawyers and sober-suited Wall Street donors was so forgiving of Moore’s raucous cartoon history. The blase crowd that usually races out as the credits roll listened in respectful silence as Moore lumbered to the stage in that damn Michigan State University baseball cap and hackneyed leather jacket to pontificate on the importance of getting out the vote.

Nobody raised a question about his film’s wacky insinuations that Bush let Taliban thugs escape because of some previously concocted deal in Texas or let Osama bin Laden get away because of deep Bush connections to the bin Laden family. In Moore’s version of Iraq nobody was hanging from a meat hook in Saddam Hussein’s jails. Baghdad was a happy city where children frolicked in the streets until boom! we blew them away. The invasion of Afghanistan? That was just a cover for running an oil pipeline across the country. You can argue that conspiracy theories are redundant since the Bush administration’s malfeasance on the war is all there right on the surface, but, hey, this crowd feels that they’re entitled to some lefty exuberance after biting their tongues through a week of Republican mythmaking. Their Bush-loathing is so intense there is a pent-up longing for excess, a desire to be swept with emotions the cautious Democratic nominee can’t arouse. They were so jazzed by Moore’s ripsnorting assault, the discussion on the sidewalk afterward was about just one thing: Will it help with the swing vote?

Probably not, but it will certainly pump the base. The movie has such big, noisy energy that it roars right over its own potholes with unforgettable video epiphanies. Who could not be grateful to Moore for the stolen eve-of-war footage of Paul Wolfowitz spitting on his comb before running it through his hair? Political attacks are all about the defining details. We will remember Wolfowitz grooming himself for a TV moment long after his geopolitical game plan to remake the Middle East has sunk into the mists of history.

Ditto the unforgettable camcorder scene of Bush on the morning of 9/11. Moore was able to get from the Florida Elementary School the video nobody else had bothered to ask for of the president sitting frozen in the classroom reading a book to the kiddies. And continuing to sit with a catatonic stare for a full seven minutes under the ticking clock after Andy Card enters and whispers to him the news of the attacks. Our commander in chief is paralyzed — by what? Fear? Indecision? Panic? An unbreakable interest in the plot of “My Pet Goat”? Our conjecture about what must be going through his mind as his eyes dart from side to side at this epic moment (Dick Clarke’s neglected terrorism memo?) is fueled by all the instant histories riding the bestseller list.

The usual arguments against Moore — that he’s intellectually dishonest, that he’s a master of the cheap shot, that he’s a loudmouthed neo-Marxist boor — are beside the point against the power of such moments. After the weapons of mass destruction fallacy and the Saddam-did-9/11 fictions, it’s payback time. The left can have a Rush Limbaugh, too.

Those squeamish about Michael Moore’s methodology, however, should check out the other documentary that opened last night, “The Hunting of the President,” produced by Clinton friend Harry Thomason. It tracks the network of Arkansas dirt-diggers who peddled Gennifer Flowers, Paula Jones and Whitewater to the manipulative right-wing fringe. Thomason’s movie, with its revelations of how Susan McDougal was pressured to lie to incriminate Hillary Clinton, is substantively more damning than “Fahrenheit 9/11.” Moore fans can say his prosecution of Bush only employs the same paranoid technique of reasoning by juxtaposition that the Vince-Foster-was-murdered brigade used to torture the Clintons all those years. That is true, but it doesn’t appeal to the Democrats less emotionally overwrought than Leonardo DiCaprio.

Hollywood agent and Kerry supporter Tom Baer told me, “Kerry should flee Moore’s movie. It’s Goebbels all over again.” And former Clinton speechwriter Mark Katz put it this way: “I hold my guys to a higher standard,” he said quietly. “That’s why they’re my guys.”

? 2004, Tina Brown

? 2004 The Washington Post Company

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dan
Jun 19 2004
04:50 pm

What Moore does in Fahrenheit 9/11, besides drubbing Dubya and his family’s ties to Saudi Arabia, is to measure the human toll that U.S. foreign policy after 9/11 and the war in Iraq are taking on the disenfranchised. Moore likes to rile folks up, which he does with sharp humor. Did I mention that Fahrenheit 9/11 is ferociously, cathartically funny? In one pointedly hilarious scene, Moore rallies members of Congress to get their own children to enlist in the Marines. No chance. Moore isn’t above a cheap laugh at the expense of a pro-war Britney Spears, John Ashcroft warbling a patriotic ditty or Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz vainly prepping for a TV interview. But he steps aside more often than not to let America speak for itself, whether it’s GIs in Iraq, the mother of a dead soldier or the unemployed being recruited in his hometown of Flint, Michigan.

Images of the dead and wounded, and of U.S. soldiers abusing Iraqi prisoners, aren’t new. But Moore has marshaled what’s on the record and off into a stinging indictment of where we’re going. In a multiplex filled with Hollywood cotton candy, we need him more than ever.

Peter Travers, Rolling Stone

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grant
Jun 21 2004
11:07 am

Sure, Moore lets us hear the voice of certain Americans. A friend of mine was in Flint, Michigan a few years ago and asked a resident what he thought of Michael Moore. The guy was not too complimentary. His opinion of Moore was that Moore used Flint, Michigan to further the film-maker’s own agenda and that Moore didn’t put enough money back into the town when he was done with Roger and Me. I doubt we’ll see that blue-collar American’s opinion featured in any of Moore’s films.

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dan
Jun 23 2004
03:36 pm

The following is the best review I’ve read about this film. David Denby shows how a film can be both utterly compelling for anti-Bushers, and totally unconvincing for pro-Bushers. For me the experience of listening to Rush Limbough is probably something like the experience of a right-wing Republican watching Moore’s films.

http://www.newyorker.com/critics/cinema/?040628crci_cinema

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JabirdV
Jun 24 2004
03:59 pm

I am aware of the feelings of some in regards to World Net Daily, but there is a letter submitted by Dr. Ergun Mehmet Caner, a Muslim converted to Christianity, entitled : ‘Hatriotism’ & Michael Moore: Turkish Muslim says ‘Fahrenheit 911’ wrong on liberation of Iraq. A very interesting read.

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=39118

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anton
Jun 24 2004
08:06 pm

Dr. Ergun Mehmet Caner characterized the war as a clash between American democracy and Islamic theocracy.

I talked to a professor and CRC missionary to the middle east named Bassam Madany. HIs perspective was fresh and welcome because he grew up in the middle east and has done missionary work there. He’s the sort of person that when he thinks, it’s Greek first, Arabic second and English third, so ingrained is the middle east in him. He’s in a unique position because understands the middle east and the West pretty well. He accuses the West of being somewhat naive about how things actually work in the middle east.

If you’re interested in his perspective on Islamic theocracy and Christian church-life under it, you can go to his web site, www.levant.info. Under the “reflections” link there are two articles called “Islam is more than a religion”, part 1 and part 2. There are several interesting articles also under “The Church Under Islam” and “Position Papers.”

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JabirdV
Jun 29 2004
12:42 pm

http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/0628041moore1.html

Just thought some might be interested in Michael Moore’s double voter registration and more so in his party affiliation. Might not mean anything, but then again…

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laryn
Jul 05 2004
07:12 pm

has anybody actually seen the film yet? i haven’t had a chance to do so yet, though perhaps i will at some point in the next weeks. i’m interested to hear anybody’s first hand opinion of the film—what was good, what was bad, overall artistic effect, overall theme critiques…etc.

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danrueck
Jul 06 2004
10:30 am

I thought it was really funny! Of course it is one-sided and not fair to Republicans at all, which does bother me. But there are certain images in the film that are impossible to write off. The one that sticks in my head is the one where a reporter is interviewing Cheney and Bush on the tarmack of some airport. First Cheney says something relatively normal and intelligent (I don’t remember about what)—then Bush, who seems to be worried about being showed up, blurts out something much less intelligent. I think images like this will have real staying power. But then again, maybe the people going to see the film were already worried about the fact that the most powerful man in the world has difficulties puttting together a coherent sentence. Actually, Moore could have focussed much more on “cheap-shots” like Bush’s mispronunciations, but he sticks more to criticising his militarism and oil connections. The film was actually better than I expected but I think it would really piss me off if I liked Bush.

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kirstin
Jul 06 2004
02:21 pm

rob and i and our housemates saw the film last week. what moore is saying is important—(mostly) more than just a wild conspiracy theory. i don’t believe that everyone who sees the film must agree with Moore’s conclusions, but ongoing dialogue about EVERY issue is essential in the world’s most powerful nation.

my concern is that moore’s efforts will be ineffective at inspiring any real change for two reasons. first of all, he’s gained such a name for himself as an anti-corporation Bush-hater that people who most need to consider his message will never see his films. while he’s generally critical of all those in power, he’s decidedly anti-Republican and serves to rally knee-jerk liberals in a country of “us-against-them” politics. i don’t think that’s helpful in support of his ultimate message, which is that individuals matter and a just society is one that takes into account the least common denominator rather than the highest bidder.

my second concern is that Moore continues to present overwhelming problems while leaving his audiences without any practical suggestions for action (though he does vaguely through one of his interviewees suggest voting democrat). the easiest (and most likely) response after seeing F. 9/11 is to complain and then do nothing because the problem is just too big. perhaps it’s not appropriate in this medium to suggest a solution, but i’m interested in knowing how Moore sees his efforts having widespread impact.