Oh Rox! You sweet talker! By the time that I'm through singing The bells from the schools of wars will be ringing More confusions, blood transfusions The news today will be the movies for tomorrow And the water's turned to blood, and if You don't think so Go turn on your tub And it it's mixed with mud You'll see it turn to gray
Read it and weep, Moore-haters. I wonder if Karl Goebbels Rove is having second thoughts about holding King George II's lovefest in New York City. If not, he should. A stupid choice for the location of the 2004 Republican Convention. They should have chosen Plano. http://money.cnn.com/2004/06/24/news/midcaps/fahrenheit.reut/index.htm?cnn=yes 'Fahrenheit' turns on box office heat Michael Moore's anti-Bush film breaks the single-day records at the two New York theaters. June 24, 2004: 6:46 AM EDT LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Director Michael Moore's controversial documentary "Fahrenheit 9/11" turned on the box office heat in its first day in theaters breaking single-day records at the two New York City theaters where it played. The movie, which aims a critical eye at President Bush and his prosecution of the war in Iraq, sold $49,000 worth of tickets at the Loew's Village 7 theater, beating the venue's single-day record of $43,435 held by 1997's "Men in Black," according to distributors Lions Gate Films and IFC Films. At the Lincoln Plaza theater, "Fahrenheit 9/11" took in more than $30,000 to top the $24,013 set by "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" in 2000. A spokesman for Lions Gate Films said the company debuted the movie in the two theaters to help build good word-of-mouth -- friend telling friend -- publicity ahead of the wide debut Friday when it plays in 868 theaters in all 50 states. The film has caused a storm of controversy because director Moore, whose past work includes Oscar-winning documentary "Bowling for Columbine," makes a case that the Bush administration was determined to invade Iraq following the Sept. 11 attacks. The movie links Bush family members and business associates with wealthy Saudi Arabian families, including that of Osama bin Laden, and Moore clearly wants to see the president fail to win re-election in this fall's presidential campaign. Groups have organized support for and against the movie, and audiences appear to be keen to see it. Online ticket service Fandango.com reported Wednesday that "Fahrenheit 9/11" was making up 48 percent of advance ticket sales for the weekend ahead, compared to 11 percent for "Dodgeball" and 9 percent for next week's "Spider-Man 2."
I didn't think this movie would make it out here, but sure enough, it'll be open on Friday in College Station.
The director, Michael Moore, predicted that those on the fence regarding his new documentary will be off it and on his side when the last credits roll. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A849-2004Jun23.html
The Weinsteins did a good job getting screens for this movie. It's going to open extremely wide for a documentary. I don't think they ended up getting the 1,000 screens they wanted, but they got a lot.
I heard 700 first, but I think it's shy of 900 now. When they say screens, do they mean that literaly or do they mean theaters?
By Way of Deception By Stuart Klawans, The Nation. Posted June 24, 2004. The political impact that 'Fahrenheit 9/11' may have is one thing; its impact as a film -- a work of art -- is another. In this case, it is strong on both counts. Not the judgment of film critics but the passage of time will decide whether Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 can change the world. Change, of course, is the whole purpose. Whatever satisfaction Moore derives from his ever-mounting income and awards, he clearly will consider this picture a success only if it helps drive George W. Bush from office. Voters will write the real review. I can merely fill time until November, with the thought that Fahrenheit 9/11 might be interesting as a movie after it has done its work as politics. As with any good polemic -- and this is an excellent one -- you sit in the theater thinking of how someone else would respond, some imaginary "undecided" in a swing state, or perhaps your Uncle Max the Republican. You don't much monitor your own reactions. But then, as you leave the movie house, you might notice that the sidewalk chatter sounds oddly muffled, the traffic looks a little blurred, as you begin to realize that your attention has not come outside with you; it's still in the dark, struggling with the feelings that Fahrenheit 9/11 called up and didn't resolve. Are you outraged, heartbroken, vengeful, morose, gloating, thoughtful, electrified? Moore has elicited all of these emotions and then had the nerve -- the filmmaker's nerve -- to leave you to sort them out. I think there are two bundles of messages in Fahrenheit 9/11, one political and one emotional -- and while the first is about as ambiguous as a call to take up pitchforks and torches and storm the castle, the second is too complex to unsettle those in power. It works to unsettle you. It's what makes Fahrenheit 9/11 a real movie. For clarity's sake, then, let's start with the politics: the film's bill of particulars against Bush, and also against the Democratic leadership, which in Moore's view has colluded most shamefully in the misrule the world now suffers. The prologue to Fahrenheit 9/11 revisits Bush's rise to power in late 2000, paying particular attention to the hunched posture of the Democrats who let him step on their backs. Here are Dick Gephardt and Tom Daschle, counseling "acceptance" of the non-election; and here is Al Gore, mildly officiating over the Senate session that legitimized the theft of his presidency. For the first time in Fahrenheit 9/11, but certainly not the last, Moore tells his story through borrowed but decidedly nonstock footage, which you most likely have not seen before -- in this case, a scene of members of the House, all of them African-American, coming forward to contest the election, while Gore calmly rules their objections inadmissible because no senator, not one, would satisfy Congressional rules by signing on to them. Moore's antagonists, being Republican, won't go so easy on him. Their attacks will no doubt include the charge that his film is Democratic Party propaganda. You should understand from the preceding the flimsiness of this accusation -- although it's true that Moore spares us the sight of one notable Democrat, John Kerry, voting to authorize Bush to start a war on his own say-so, at any time that suited him. But enough of Democratic malfeasance. Who is this Sage of Crawford, that he may choose for us between life and death? Moore answers, in part, with more footage you probably haven't seen until now: a substantial portion of videotape from the morning of September 11, 2001, when Bush and his handlers staged a photo opportunity at an elementary school in Florida. After an aide whispered to him that a second airplane had struck the World Trade Center, Bush sat in place for seven minutes, pretending to read a book titled My Pet Goat. Have you ever before had a chance to study his face on that morning? Has anything other than this movie made you feel the unendurable length of his inaction? What do you suppose he was thinking for all that time, as he stared into space? Moore himself asks that last question on the soundtrack, as a way of opening a biographical digression about Bush, his family and their business interests. This section of the film will particularly incense Moore's attackers, who will pronounce on him the dependable slur of "conspiracy theorist." So, to digress on my own: Moore alleges no conspiracies. He merely says that Bush has motives beyond those he's willing to state. To make this case, Moore begins by showing that the Bush family in general, and George W. in particular, have received lavish support over the years from the Saudi elite, including the bin Ladens, and have offered valuable help in turn. Unlike the actualities footage that Moore uses in the film, these facts are by now widely known -- although it was news to me that Prince Bandar, the Saudi ambassador, had dined with Bush at the White House on September 13, 2001. In speculating about this dinner, and about the subsequent airlifting out of the United States of more than a hundred Saudis when everyone else was grounded, Moore goes only so far as to say that the overwhelmingly Saudi makeup of the September 11 attack teams could have proved embarrassing to Bush. He would not have wanted journalists just then to begin looking into his personal ties to Saudi interests, or to ask whether any useful information had emerged from the two dozen bin Ladens who had been in the country, and whom he soon spirited away without the indignity of questioning. Nothing conspiratorial about that. The worst you can reasonably say of this section of the film is that it gives Moore the opportunity for one of his man-on-the-street pranks. He films himself and Craig Unger (author of the book House of Bush, House of Saud) in front of the Watergate complex in Washington, directly across the street from the Saudi Embassy: a choice of location that insures interruption. Sure enough, onto the scene drive carloads of Secret Service agents, who just want to ask, politely, why a film crew is working on this spot. The agents move off readily enough when given the answer, although one of them seems abashed when Moore blandly delivers his punch line: "I didn't realize the Secret Service guards foreign embassies." In fact, reasonable people may find this to be the best part of the section. You may have heard, by the way, that Moore is less of a presence in Fahrenheit 9/11 than he was in his previous pictures. Actually, he's always with you, in voiceover; but he does perform for the camera less than usual. At times, his stunts serve to drive home a point, as when he accosts members of Congress on the street and offers them recruiting brochures, in case they want to enlist their children in the military. At other times, his antics are pure comic relief. (After complaining that the House passed the USA Patriot Act sight unseen, Moore corrects the situation by reading the bill aloud to Congress, circling the Capitol in an ice-cream truck and reciting the provisions over a loudspeaker.) Either way, though, Moore makes sparing use of this sort of material in advancing his main charges against Bush. The first principal accusation is that Bush had gotten along just fine with the Taliban before September 11 (which is demonstrable) and didn't much care about fighting them afterward (which is unproved but plausible). Bush invaded Afghanistan, Moore claims, because he had to be seen to do something, because the war helpfully diverted attention from the Saudis and because those closest to him would gain lucrative contracts for a natural gas pipeline. Moore's second accusation is that Bush undertook the war in Iraq for even shadier purposes. As Nation readers knew, and as others have since caught on, Bush attacked without even the excuse he'd had in Afghanistan of pursuing bin Laden. There were no terrorists in Iraq to destroy, no military threats to counter -- and unless you define "democracy" as the creation of profit-making opportunities for Halliburton, no process of democratization to pursue. There is also a third principal point, most devastating of all. But before I go into that, let me digress once more, to sum up the impressively varied materials that Moore assembles to make these arguments. The film contains, as I've said, a few of Moore's little skits, along with a lot of borrowed actualities footage, which is usually surprising and sometimes shocking. (How many shots have you seen of daily life in Baghdad immediately before the war? How many dead and wounded Iraqi civilians have you looked at close up?) In addition, you find pop-culture images, which Moore takes over for purposes of sarcasm or parody (as when he remakes the TV western Bonanza as the Bush adventure Afghanistan); talking-head interviews with expert commentators (such as former counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke, former FBI agent Jack Cloogan and Senator Byron Dorgan); a range of texts and graphics; patches of direct cinema (for example, an excursion to a shopping mall in Flint, Michigan, with a couple of Marine recruiters); and, most critical of all, filmed encounters with ordinary citizens, who pretty much have the frame to themselves while Moore stays quietly out of the way. The most important of these citizens, the one who takes over the final portion of the movie, is Lila Lipscombe of Flint, mother of Sgt. Michael Pedersen, who served in a helicopter unit in Iraq and was killed in action sometime after "the completion of major combat operations." Lipscombe is a pleasantly robust woman of modest means, patriotic and Christian in convictions, guileless in manner, whose role in the polemic is simple: She is meant to embody disillusionment. Having once despised all protesters against war, feeling that they were slapping our soldiers in the face, she now grieves over a dead son, whose final letter home said of Bush, "He got us out here for nothing." In a succession of artfully spaced scenes, which constitute the film's third damning charge against Bush, Lipscombe speaks of the meager possibilities open to most young people in Flint; she recalls having encouraged her own children to enter the military, believing it to be a good thing to do and a good opportunity; and at the end, bereft, with Moore trailing behind, she visits the White House (or as close to it as you can get these days) and says she is glad to be there, since it gives her a place to put her anger. Lipscombe makes a very efficient witness -- but she is an intractably complex movie character. She just doesn't fit Moore's scheme. He generally relies on economics to explain the behavior of the elite and psychology to account for the rest of us. (As you may recall from Bowling for Columbine, he is very interested in the way politicians and the communications media use fear to grab attention and elicit compliance.) But when it comes to Lipscombe, Moore (to his great credit) forgets about his standard categories. For perhaps the first time in his career, he shows someone as a fully rounded personality, animated by beliefs and loyalties that he does not necessarily share but must respect; and so he allows her emotions to overwhelm his cleverness. This is the point at which Fahrenheit 9/11 may overwhelm you, too. Perhaps it will seem trivial to a pollster, counting and recounting those swing votes, that this campaign tool should also qualify as a work of art; but I can't believe the effect will be lost on moviegoers. Fahrenheit 9/11 is Michael Moore's most urgent diatribe and also his best, most moving film. Stewart Klawans is the film critic at the Nation.
lmao and yeah, that Ten Years After song is badass.. the solo is a lot of fun to play.. it drove me nuts trying to figure out what it was after seeing the promo..
Screens. So if it's on three screens at the Angelika in Plano, that would count as three rather than one. They may well have gotten their thousand screens after all is said and done. The first weekend grosses will have the screen count, so we'll know then. On a related note: ‘Fahrenheit 9/11’ ban? Ads for Moore’s movie could be stopped on July 30 By Alexander Bolton Michael Moore may be prevented from advertising his controversial new movie, “Fahrenheit 9/11,” on television or radio after July 30 if the Federal Election Commission (FEC) today accepts the legal advice of its general counsel. At the same time, a Republican-allied 527 soft-money group is preparing to file a complaint against Moore’s film with the FEC for violating campaign-finance law. In a draft advisory opinion placed on the FEC’s agenda for today’s meeting, the agency’s general counsel states that political documentary filmmakers may not air television or radio ads referring to federal candidates within 30 days of a primary election or 60 days of a general election. The opinion is generated under the new McCain-Feingold campaign-finance law, which prohibits corporate-funded ads that identify a federal candidate before a primary or general election. The proscription is broadly defined. Section 100.29 of the federal election regulations defines restricted corporate-funded ads as those that identify a candidate by his “name, nickname, photograph or drawing” or make it “otherwise apparent through an unambiguous reference.” Should the six members of the FEC vote to approve the counsel’s opinion, it could put a serious crimp on Moore’s promotion efforts. The flavor of the movie was encapsulated by a recent review in The Boston Globe as “the case against George W. Bush, a fat compendium of previously reported crimes, errors, sins, and grievances delivered in the director’s patented tone of vaudevillian social outrage.” The FEC ruling may also affect promotion of a slew of other upcoming political documentaries and films, such as “Uncovered: The Whole Truth About the Iraq War,” which opens in August, “The Corporation,” about democratic institutions being subsumed by the corporate agenda, or “Silver City,” a recently finished film by John Sayles that criticizes the Bush administration. Another film, “The Hunting of the President,” which investigates whether Bill Clinton was the victim of a vast conspiracy, could be subject to regulations if it mentions Bush or members of Congress in its ads. Since the FEC considers the Republican presidential convention scheduled to begin Aug. 30 a national political primary in which Bush is a candidate, Moore and other politically oriented filmmakers could not air any ad mentioning Bush after July 30. That could make advertising for the film after July difficult since it is all about the Bush administration and what Moore regards as its mishandling of the war on terrorism and the decision to invade Iraq. After the convention, ads for political films that mention Bush or any other federal candidate would be subject to the restrictions on all corporate communications within 60 days of the Nov. 2 general election. “Fahrenheit 9/11” opens nationally tomorrow. The film’s distributor, Lions Gate Films, an incorporated organization, would almost certainly pay for its broadcast promotions. David Bossie, the president of Citizens United, plans to allege that “Fahrenheit 9/11” violates federal election law, arguing that “Moore has publicly indicated his goal is to impact this election season.” Bossie had planned to file a complaint with the FEC yesterday but postponed action because his lawyers want to review it at the last minute, said Summer Stitz, a spokeswoman for Bossie’s group. “I don’t think much of Michael Moore or his two-hour political advertisement — that’s all it is,” Bossie said. “He uses all of these words to make it look like he makes documentaries, but it’s the furthest thing from the truth. Documentaries tend to be fact-based.” Sarah Greenberg, a spokeswoman for Lions Gate Films who is serving as Moore’s spokeswoman, did not return a call for comment. The FEC counsel’s draft advisory opinion responded to a request for guidance from David Hardy, a documentary film producer with the Bill of Rights Educational Foundation. Hardy asked whether he could air broadcast ads that refer to congressional officeholders who appear in his documentary. At issue in the FEC’s opinion is whether documentary films qualify for a “media exemption,” which allows members of the press to discuss political candidates freely in the days before an election. In its opinion, the general counsel wrote, “In McConnell vs. FEC … (2003) the [Supreme] Court described the media exemption as ‘narrow’ and drew a distinction between ‘corporations that are part of the media industry’ as opposed to ‘other corporations that are not involved in the regular business of imparting news to the public.’” “The radio and television commercials that you describe in your request would be electioneering communications,” the counsel concluded. “The proposed commercials would refer to at least one presidential candidate. … They would also be publicly distributed because you intend to pay a radio station and perhaps a television station to air or broadcast your commercials. … Finally, they would reach 50,000 people within 30 days of a national nominating convention and or the general election.” However, one commissioner, Michael Toner, has a different view of what restrictions may be placed on political films. “I think there’s evidence that when Congress created the press exemption they intended for it to cover media in all its forms,” said Toner. “If a documentary produced by an independent company would be subject to restriction or, equally important, if efforts to promote the documentary would be subject to restriction, I think that is very problematic.” http://www.thehill.com/news/062404/moore.aspx
Interesting Paige. I would think that the showing of the film in a private theatre, paid for by the patrons would not be a problem. Possibly they would have to adjust the ads to not directly reference Bush. Confusing only those who had lived in a media vaccuum for the last several months -- and giving the film EVEN MORE publicity... Mikey, i think, would like that!
My reading is that the real potential problem is the ads, as you mentioned. Even if there were a potential problem vis-a-vis the film, I can imagine the FEC would truly say the film itself couldn't be shown. The ads are, however, a different matter. But by July 30, the advertising push for the movie will have come and gone anyway. The push for the DVD release would be the biggest potential problem, should this ad ban come to pass.
I can imagine the ads now: Mike smirking to the camera as he addresses an undisclosed president (perhaps with a paper bag over his head??) whisperin "you-know-who" and implying some Ascroftesque silencing... Like I said... I almost think he's hoping this comes to pass.
It's New York City, RMT, not Plano, TX. If Moore sells out theaters in "real"America, not the Peoples Republics of New York, California and Massachusetts, then you can crow all you want to. Moore is a disgusting slimebag who plays fast and loose with the truth.
Except that would probably run afoul of the rules, as well, as that would likely be making an unambiguous reference.
This is awesome. I'm glad to know that you don't "think about [your] political views much outside election time," being instead content to robotically pull a lever. Nice work. It's no surprise you work in talk radio.
