Film has liberals lining up
'Fahrenheit 9/11': The anti-Bush documentary opens in Baltimore to sold-out shows, with crowds leaning to the left.
Allan Starkey didn't go to see Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 yesterday to have his mind changed about George W. Bush or the war in Iraq. He wasn't disappointed in the least.
"I know the film is as biased as all the critics say it is," Starkey, a professor at Towson University, said a few minutes before the opening of the incendiary new film at 11 a.m. at The Charles Theatre. "As far as I'm concerned, Michael Moore is the liberal answer to Rush Limbaugh and Bill O'Reilly, and I'm grateful he's there."
The left and the right might both agree that Fahrenheit 9/11 amounts to assassination by documentary, assailing President Bush for leading the country into war on the basis of lies and self-interest. While the White House has dismissed the film as "outrageously false," Moore, who won an Oscar last year for his anti-gun documentary Bowling for Columbine, has said that nothing would please him more than if Fahrenheit helps bring down the Bush presidency in the November election.
To do that, however, the film may have to reach beyond an audience that has already decided that Bush should go. It's a safe bet that the vast majority of Moore's fans are to the left of center; the question is whether his film will attract others.
Even before it opened this week, Fahrenheit was the subject of high-decibel buzz beginning last month when the film received the top prize at the Cannes Film Festival. Moore attracted more attention with his highly publicized struggle to find a distributor for Fahrenheit (he did) and to overturn its R-rating (he didn't).
Partisan groups have lined up for and against. On its Web site, the liberal MoveOn political action committee is recruiting viewers to ensure a big opening weekend for Fahrenheit. The conservative Move America Forward, is urging people to raise objections to theater owners who show the film.
All the brouhaha is, of course, free publicity, which helped the film break box office records when it opened in New York Wednesday, reportedly selling $49,000 worth of tickets in one theater and more than $30,000 at another. As the movie opened in about 850 theaters nationwide yesterday, exhibitors elsewhere were similarly expecting big ticket sales.
In Baltimore, the Charles took the unusual step of devoting two screens to Fahrenheit, with as many as nine showings a day. Five of those shows sold out yesterday. The film is also playing at theaters in Columbia,
Owings Mills and White Marsh.
For the first show yesterday at the Charles, the theater was three-quarters full, many primed to enjoy Moore's brand of concussive liberalism. "I had to be the first on my block to see it," said Starkey's friend, Michal Makarovich, co-owner of a Hampden store called Junque. "I like things that are left-leaning, that ridicule the powers-that-be. That's just my side of the propaganda."
And that of many others who came as well. The audience laughed often, usually at the expense of Bush. They applauded several times, too, notably after a Marine said he wouldn't return to Iraq to kill poor people.
Afterward, several viewers said they had been surprised by how moving Moore's film was, particularly in his treatment of a mother of a young American soldier killed in Baghdad. "I knew it was going to be anti-war and anti-Bush, but I didn't really believe it would be so heartbreaking," Makarovich said.
Kate Green and her 15-year-old son John drove from their home in Eldersburg to attend the first showing. The night before they had seen Moore on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, and decided to head for Baltimore first thing in the morning. Green, an interior designer and anti-war Democrat, knew going into the movie that it would reflect views that she already held. But she said she was surprised by the power of the film. "I'm depressed," she said afterward. "I feel like President Bush is just a disgrace."
Vivian Brand took off a day of work from her job as an administrative assistant in the city Health Department. She had heard a lot about the movie, but what really piqued her interest was hearing a Bush aide on television saying he had no intention of ever watching Moore's film. "The more they were saying not to see the movie, the more I wanted to find out for myself," Brand said.
Suzy Filbert, a self-described "recovering Republican" who wore a button that said "Mothers Opposing Bush," was eager to see a film reflecting her dissenting views. "Peace is patriotic," the speech pathologist said. "When has it not been patriotic to question an American administration? Yes, we're in a time of war, but it's a war that he created."
Don Golden, who works for a international relief agency, was one of the few in the audience who said he had voted for Bush in 2000. Seeing Fahrenheit, he said, may alter his choice next time around. "It was arresting," he said of the film. "It showed the underside of American power."
If there are many more viewers like him, Moore will be a happy man come November.
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