"Fahrenheit 9/11" to Open June 25th in 1,000 Theaters

Incidentally, Bush supporters are so concerned about it that without even seeing the movie they've posted a myriad of discussions on the film. Several of my Republican friends who voted for Bush (they actually voted against Gore) saw the film and are not overly sensitive to any of the inferences in the film that are backed up by facts that may add up in different ways. This is the opinion part of the piece in casting suspicion (where's there's smoke, there's fire). They won't vote for Bush. One of them called him stupid as cheese the day he was elected, "But it's all we've got."

U.S. Army, 'Fahrenheit 9 / 11' Distributors at War
August 13, 2004
U.S. Army, 'Fahrenheit 9 / 11' Distributors at War
By REUTERS
Filed at 8:57 p.m. ET

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Just in case anti-Bush documentary ``Fahrenheit 9/11'' needed any more controversy to fuel its hot box office, a new war of words broke out on Friday over whether the U.S. Army is stonewalling efforts to book the film at military bases.

But the organization that orders films for the 160 base theaters countered that it was the distributors -- Fellowship Adventure Group, IFC Films and Lions Gate Films -- that had the problem and noted they plan to stock base stores with the film's DVDs when they are released.

The movie, made by Oscar-winning director Michael Moore, has grossed over $113 million at domestic box offices and such a blockbuster would be routinely, and quickly, ordered up by the military.

But the movie presents a scathing view of President Bush's drive to war in Iraq, and it paints an unflattering view of the conduct of some U.S. military personnel. Although to be fair, many of the men and women fighting in Iraq are depicted as compassionate and caring.

Moore has made no secret of the fact he wants Bush ousted from office, and the film is undoubtedly anti-war.

``We have made all requested materials available to them, but unfortunately, a commitment to show the film has not been made,'' a Lions Gate spokeswoman said.

A spokesman for Fellowship Adventure Group claimed the military was stonewalling for obvious reasons.

Judd Anstey, public affairs specialist for the Army and Air Force Exchange Service which books movies for military base theaters, denied any suggestion the decision not to book the film had anything to do with its content and was solely based on business.

CONTENT OR COMMERCE?

The organization, called AAFES, is a non-appropriated government group, meaning that it is almost exclusively funded through its own ability to make money. The time between when ``Fahrenheit 9/11'' would be played in base theaters and when it would be sold on DVD was too short to allow it to make money, Anstey said.

``This was based on business standards,'' he told Reuters.

Anstey said it was only about a week ago that AAFES was told ``Fahrenheit 9/11'' would be available to the bases by Aug. 16.movies through Sept. 3, and with a reported DVD release date of Oct. 5, it simply didn't think enough base personnel would show up to make the movie profitable.

``Historically, for films screened within that type of time frame, the box office is marginal,'' he said.

Moreover, he said, its audience size was limited because it has played in civilian theaters since June 23.

But sources within the distribution group said AAFES was first contacted in mid-July, given an availability date of Aug. 16, and told 200 to 300 prints would be ready to go by then.

Sources at rival movie studios who asked to remain anonymous said both sides may have their points. Typically the military is fast to order up blockbuster movies that make over $100 million.

Just as typically, independent film distributors have fewer prints to ship around. With ``Fahrenheit 9/11'' playing so strongly, it may be that only recently the prints became available, the sources said.

The spokesman for Fellowship Adventure Group also noted that the DVD release date has yet to be official and has only been reported in the media.

Anstey said that without an official DVD release date, AAFES had to base its decision on what had been reported.

Dear friends,

I came across this article about "Fahrenheit 9/11" in Britain's Guardian newspaper today (the Guardian is one of the U.K.'s largest and most respected daily newspapers). It was written by the acclaimed author John Berger (winner of the Booker Prize) and I thought you might like to see how our fellow "Coalition of the Willing" members are responding to the movie.

Hope you haven't been wondering where I've been. All is well. Just making plans for the fall adventure.

Michael Moore
------------------------------------------------------

THE BEGINNING OF HISTORY
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.

John Berger << drama queen!

Have you seen the film, JustWonders?

I didn't react to it the way a lot of people have, but I did pick up the feeling of love for America when I saw it. There are people here who saw it who have posted quite eloquently about that feeling being expressed in the film.

I read the transcript.

The transcrip of a film without any of the visual images. Really a cop out. That's something like eating a hamburger by throwing out the meat and eating the bun.

I've been known to do that as well

On a high carb diet, huh?

(Which could lead to diabetes, a disease similar to an over-sugary profile of GWB -- like eating a Twinkie, palatable when going down but without any real nourishing substance).

The transcript is definitely not the movie. <nods vehemently>

Right, I neve really go to the movies, I just read a transcript. Just like I never read novels, I read the synopsis. Actually, I've read every last word of the books in my library. I open every last page and read the last word. Gaaaaa!

The DVD is due for release on October 10th and available for pre-order from our shop:

http://www.able2shop.com/search.php?query=Fahrenheit+9%2F11&mode=dvd

Why I Will Not Seek a Best Documentary Oscar
Why I Will Not Seek a Best Documentary Oscar
(I'm giving it up in the hopes more voters can see "Fahrenheit 9/11")

9/6/04
Dear Friends,

I had dinner recently with a well-known pollster who had often worked for Republicans. He told me that when he went to see "Fahrenheit 9/11" he got so distraught he twice had to go out in the lobby and pace during the movie.

"The Bush White House left open a huge void when it came to explaining the war to the American people," he told me. "And your film has filled that void -- and now there is no way to defeat it. It is the atomic bomb of this campaign."

He told me how he had conducted an informal poll with "Fahrenheit 9/11" audiences in three different cities and the results were all the same. "Essentially, 80% of the people going IN to see your movie are already likely Kerry voters and the movie has galvanized them in a way you rarely see Democrats galvanized.

"But, here's the bad news for Bush: Though 80% going IN to your movie are Kerry voters, 100% of those COMING OUT of your movie are Kerry voters. You can't come out of this movie and say, 'I am absolutely and enthusiastically voting for George W. Bush.'"

His findings are similar to those in other polls conducted around the country. In Pennsylvania, a Keystone poll showed that 4% of Kerry's support has come from people who decided to vote for him AFTER seeing "Fahrenheit 9/11" -- and in an election that will be very close, 4% is a landslide. A Harris poll found that 44% of Republicans who see the film give it a "positive" rating. Another poll, to be released this week, shows a 21-point shift in Bush's approval rating, after just one viewing of the movie, among audiences of undecideds who were shown "Fahrenheit 9/11" in Ohio.

My pollster friend told me that he believes if Kerry wins, "Fahrenheit 9/11" will be one of the top three reasons for his election. Kerry's only problem, he said, is how many people will actually be able to see it before election day. The less that see it, the better for Bush.

But 20 million people have already seen it -- and the Gallup poll said that 56% of the American public has seen or plans to see "Fahrenheit 9/11" either in the theater or on home video. The DVD and home video of our film, thanks to our distributors listening to our pleas to release it before November, will be in the stores on October 5. This is very good news.

But can it also be shown on TV? I brought this possibility up in this week's Rolling Stone interview. Our contract with our DVD distributor says no, it cannot. I have asked them to show it just once, perhaps the night before the election. So far, no deal. But I haven't given up trying.

The only problem with my desire to get this movie in front of as many Americans as possible is that, should it air on TV, I will NOT be eligible to submit "Fahrenheit 9/11" for Academy Award consideration for Best Documentary. Academy rules forbid the airing of a documentary on television within nine months of its theatrical release (fiction films do not have the same restriction).

Although I have no assurance from our home video distributor that they would allow a one-time television broadcast -- and the chances are they probably won't -- I have decided it is more important to take that risk and hope against hope that I can persuade someone to put it on TV, even if it's the night before the election.

Therefore, I have decided not to submit "Fahrenheit 9/11" for consideration for the Best Documentary Oscar. If there is even the remotest of chances that I can get this film seen by a few million more Americans before election day, then that is more important to me than winning another documentary Oscar. I have already won a Best Documentary statue. Having a second one would be nice, but not as nice as getting this country back in the hands of the majority.

The deadline to submit the film for the documentary Oscar was last Wednesday. I told my crew who worked on the film, let's let someone else have that Oscar. We have already helped to ignite the biggest year ever for nonfiction films. Last week, 1 out of every 5 films playing in movie theaters across America was a documentary! That is simply unheard of. There have been so many great nonfiction films this year, why not step aside and share what we have with someone else? Remove the 800-pound gorilla from that Oscar category and let the five films who get nominated have all the attention they deserve (instead of the focus being on a film that has already had more than its share of attention).

I've read a lot about "Fahrenheit" being a "sure bet" for the documentary Oscar this year. I don't believe anything is truly a "sure bet." And, in the end, I think sometimes it's good for your soul to give up something everyone says is so easily yours (ask Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps why he gave up his spot in the last race to someone else equally deserving, and you'll know what I am talking about).

I have informed our distributors of my decision. They support me (in fact, they then offered to submit our film for all the other categories it is eligible for, including Best Picture -- so, hey, who knows, maybe I'll get to complete that Oscar speech from 2003! Sorry, just kidding).

Don't get your hopes up for seeing "Fahrenheit 9/11" on TV before the election. In fact, I would count on NOT seeing it there (you know me, I'm always going after something I probably shouldn't). Get to the theaters soon, if you haven't already, or get it from the video store in October and hold house parties. Share it with everyone you know, especially your nonvoting friends. I have included 100 minutes of extras on the DVD -- powerful footage obtained after we made the movie, and some things that are going to drive Karl Rove into a permanent tailspin -- more on this later!

Thanks for all of your support. And go see "Super Size Me," "Control Room," "The Corporation," "Orwell Rolls Over in His Grave," "Bush's Brain," Robert Greenwald's films and the upcoming "Yes Men." You won't be sorry!

Yours,

Michael Moore
[email protected]

P.S. If you want to read my dispatches for USA Today from inside the Republican Convention, go to http://www.michaelmoore.com/.

That leaves the documentary Oscar open for "The Corporation" which I've just seen.

Lightwizard
Lightwizard, I think Moore's film will still be eligible for all other Oscar categories. For example, best director, etc.

BBB

That's true from what I'm reading.

"The Corporation" is a 2-2/1 hour documentary with vintage footage and commentary about how the corporation has changed from the original legal concept. It's now considered "a person" and one of the things this facilitates is welfare doled out under entirely different buraucracies than welfare to individual citizens. I still suspect that for every corporation caught for "creative accounting" such things as Enron, there are a hundred more than haven't been caught. The government doesn't have the oversight resources to uncover the transgressions and the CEO's and CFO's know that. The accounting smokescreens are absolutely amazing. One of the late friends was a Savings and Loan financial officer and a president of a S & L. He outlined specifically what they did to fool the feds. It's permeated the corporate structure and it's somethings we won't see changed during this administration. A few convictions and some white washing is all we'll get, hoping that will satisfy the citizens.

University cancels Michael Moore appearance

Friday, 10/1/04

EXCERPTS:

RICHMOND, Virginia (AP) -- George Mason University on Thursday canceled plans to have "Fahrenheit 9/11" director Michael Moore speak on campus five days before the presidential election.

The decision came after a Republican state legislator wrote a letter to university President Alan G. Merten protesting the Fairfax school's plans to pay the filmmaker $35,000 to speak on October 28.

A message left seeking comment from Moore wasn't immediately returned to The Associated Press, but he told The Washington Post he plans to come and speak anyway.

"I'm going to show up in support of free speech and free expression," he said.

Loudoun County Del. Richard L. Black wrote a letter dated Tuesday urging Merten to reconsider the university's "lavish payment" to Moore, or to cancel the appearance.

"Tax money is being spent poorly, and for partisan purposes," wrote Black, who has one of the General Assembly's most conservative voting records.

Walsch said university officials didn't discuss with Moore whether they would allow him to speak if he waived his fee, nor did they approach student groups or other private organizations to come up with the money.

For complete article go to:
http://www.cnn.com/2004/EDUCATION/10/01/michael.moore.appearance.ap/index.html

Then all partisan speakers should be banned from all universities, including those from the right wing. What? That's not what they meant? The FOX is outed again.

Using the 'partisan speakers' criterion, all candidates for public office -- or their media directros or other shills -- should be barred from making public speeches anywhere where taxpayer dollars will be spent to enable or promote their appearance. Sounds like the university people caved in quickly to political pressure.