Disney Forbids Distribution of Moore Film

Adrian - shouldn't that signature read something like I may not agree with everything you say, but I would fight to the death your right to say it.

Disney, as a corporation, has every right to pull any movie they want. Do I agree with Michael Moore? Nope. I personally think he should be placed on a slow boat out of this country one way never to return.

ossobuco wrote:

Listening.

My aunt and uncle were early Disney employees, as in Very Early, and my ex and I think he was screwed over by a later person there re a screenplay treatment. So, I, in the wings, like to pay attention from time to time.

I guess I wish they would be who I thought they were when I was about nine, whatever the facts of this recent episode.

Censorship only has legal meaning as it relates to governmental action.

Disney, unless one is a Leftist nut case, cannot be accused of "censorship."

Michael Moore has no protected right to have his political screeds financed by Disney, Miramax et al. If and when the government prevents him from turning out his views in pamphlets or on a soap box, then I'll join you in decrying a violation of the Ist Ammedment.

In the meantime, it's all about money and exposure. Hardly constitutional issues.

Even Alternet recognizes that this supposed blow to his film's prospects are in fact a big plus for Moore, noting that Disney's decision "may not be such a bad thing for the bottom line... While Michael Moore is no slouch in the publicity department, when's the last time he had a film promoted on the front page of the New York Times months before its release?" Indeed, the contretemps preceding the publication of his book Stupid White Men was the kind of "censorship" that got everyone salivating over the could-be forbidden fruit. Publisher HarperCollins got nervous about the book's anti-Bush tone right after 9/11 (it was scheduled for early October 2001 publication) and threatened to pulp existing copies and get Moore to revise it.

They eventually relented and published it as intended in February 2002 and this about-to-be-"censored" book became the best-selling non-fiction book of 2002, cementing Moore as a true superstar.

Are the allegations Moore is going to present in his forthcoming film true? Will he use his notorious shading techniques to tell the tale he wants to tell, and imply the evils he wishes to imply? Undoubtedly, it will be a mix of incontrovertible fact, questionable speculation, and even some verifiable lies. And undoubtedly a huge and universally accessible scrum of arguers, haters, and correctors, both educated and uneducated, will leap upon the film. Rather than smother it, this will merely help continue the lively, ubiquitous, multivoiced conversation we've all enjoyed (or sometimes decried) with increasing intensity since the Internet entered almost everyone's lives.

Michael Moore is annoying and something of a hypocrite and he doesn't get his facts straight. But his flourishing as a professional pain in the ass to the president of the United States, and his continued and continual thriving despite supposed "censorship" threats from purportedly all-powerful corporations, make him a glorious symbol of the still-living freedoms in what we can, without much in the way of irony, still call this Great Land of Ours.

Moore admits Disney 'ban' was a stunt

By Andrew Gumbel in Los Angeles

Less than 24 hours after accusing the Walt Disney Company of pulling the plug on his latest documentary in a blatant attempt at political censorship, the rabble-rousing film-maker Michael Moore has admitted he knew a year ago that Disney had no intention of distributing it.

The admission, during an interview with CNN, undermined Moore's claim that Disney was trying to sabotage the US release of Fahrenheit 911 just days before its world premiere at the Cannes film festival.

Instead, it lent credence to a growing suspicion that Moore was manufacturing a controversy to help publicise the film, a full-bore attack on the Bush administration and its handling of national security since the attacks of 11 September 2001.

In an indignant letter to his supporters, Moore said he had learnt only on Monday that Disney had put the kibosh on distributing the film, which has been financed by the semi-independent Disney subsidiary Miramax.

But in the CNN interview he said: "Almost a year ago, after we'd started making the film, the chairman of Disney, Michael Eisner, told my agent he was upset Miramax had made the film and he will not distribute it."...