'Fahrenheit 9/11' Raising Conservatives' Temperature
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By AVERY JOHNSON and MERISSA MARR
Staff Reporters
The Wall Street Journal
(June 30) -- Conservative anger over "Fahrenheit 9/11," the anti-Bush movie by filmmaker Michael Moore, is reaching a fever pitch -- but figuring out how to prevent the movie from becoming an even wider cultural phenomenon is dividing the political right.
Some activists want to confront the movie's controversial assertions or even stop theaters from showing it; others, including the White House, are keeping a low profile to avoid hyping the film and thus broadening its potential audience four months before Election Day.
The Bush administration has kept largely silent about Mr. Moore's film, which portrays the president as out-of-touch, accuses him of connections with the bin Laden family and questions whether he is beholden to Saudi interests. A Republican National Committee spokeswoman says the committee believes the movie won't affect voters' decisions come November and doesn't plan to dignify it with a response. The White House has declined to comment, saying it doesn't "do movie reviews."
"The eagle doesn't talk to the fly," says Keith Appell, a Republican consultant and the senior vice president of Creative Response Concepts, a public-relations firm based in Alexandria, Va. Perhaps not. But some eaglets -- conservative groups operating without sanction from the White House -- have started a late-game campaign to remove Mr. Moore's movie from theaters and its advertisements from television sets. Move America Forward, a new conservative group based in Sacramento, Calif., and formed to support U.S. troops abroad, lobbied movie houses last week to ban the film and urged viewers to boycott it. Citizens United, a conservative grass-roots group based in Washington, filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission last week saying the movie's promotional ads, if they continue to run past the end of July, will violate campaign-finance laws.
Such moves may be playing right into Mr. Moore's hands -- and his pocketbook. "I want to thank all the right-wing organizations out there who tried to stop this movie either through harassment campaigns, going to the FEC to get our ads removed from television, or the things said on television," says the filmmaker. "They have only encouraged more people to go and see it." Mr. Moore points to explosive opening weekend box-office sales to show that the movie is reaching beyond its presumed liberal audience. It brought in $23.9 million in U.S. box-office ticket sales in a nationwide opening this past weekend that smashed previous records for a feature-length documentary film. Including the take from its preview showings in New York last week, and Monday's ticket sales, the movie raked in a total of $28.5 million.
The movie showed best in liberal strongholds such as New York, which accounted for 12.25% of ticket sales, and Los Angeles, with 11.25%, but it also opened well in Peoria, Ill., the quintessential bellwether city, where theaters were sold out.
Key to the movie's long-term success -- and its ability to go beyond preaching to its liberal base -- will be how the movie performs this weekend when the number of screens is expanded to 1,700, up from 868 last weekend. States such as Mississippi, for example, had only one location showing the movie last weekend. Next weekend, the state will have five or six.
Considerable media attention this week is also likely to draw a bigger pro-Bush audience wanting to know what all the fuss is about. Attempting to build the hype further, the distributors are planning new television spots to run later this week, featuring interviews of moviegoers as they exit theaters.
Most Republican strategists maintain the movie will have scant political effect beyond those voters already committed to ousting Mr. Bush. Behind the scenes, though, the Bush administration debated how to spin the Moore film and ultimately decided to ignore it as late as last week, according to a Republican strategist.
Mr. Appell, whose company helped promote "The Passion of the Christ," estimated that the buzz created around that movie by protest groups added between 20% and 30% to the film's take. He urged conservatives to ignore Mr. Moore and says he's proud that most have.
However, if the movie starts to resonate with a broad section of voters, conservatives may have no choice but to switch tactics.
Indications that Republicans are attending the film are largely anecdotal. Steve Moore, president of the conservative Club for Growth in Washington, says he plans to see the movie and knows other Republicans will too. "It's like eating Ben & Jerry's ice cream," he says. "You want the ice cream but you don't like the political statements."
Michael McHenry, a 31-year-old former banker and a registered independent who leans toward the Bush camp, saw the movie in New York with friends. He says the movie was entertaining but he was skeptical about the cherry-picking of events and said ultimately it won't change his vote.
"I don't think it's going to change who wins the election," he says. But he acknowledges the film slightly influenced his view of President Bush for the worse. He particularly noted a scene when President Bush is told about the second plane hitting the Twin Towers while he is sitting in a classroom of children. The president continues to listen to a teacher reading a story about a goat for many minutes until he excuses himself.
Reactions like Mr. McHenry's to the film concern some conservatives, who argue that not explaining the president's actions will allow doubts to percolate in the minds of voters.
Alfred Regnery, the publisher of the conservative magazine American Spectator, worries that the movie's message could sway crucial independent voters. "For the most part he's preaching to the choir, but Michael Moore can be very persuasive," says Mr. Regnery. "I think a good many people who don't have an opinion will go and see it and think, 'wow, this is really terrible.' "
Howard Kaloogian, who runs Move America Forward, says Mr. Moore's film rode into the weekend on an uninterrupted public-relations blitz, but now conservatives aim to correct the record. That said, the group, which participated in a previously successful effort to persuade Viacom Inc.'s CBS to drop a television program on Ronald Reagan, weren't able to persuade theater owners to stop screening Mr. Moore's film. |
