The World According to Michael
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""I went to The Passion of the Christ on the second night, and there were two people speaking in tongues; other people had their rosary beads out. In this country 50% of the people go to church on a regular basis. And they went to that movie. My film has a much broader cross section of moviegoers—people from the general public."
Fahrenheit 9/11 is The Passion of the Christ of the left. Both films established a base in a devoted minority: the evangelical right and the political left. Both films were attacked in the major media and profited from it: the faithful were galvanized, the films got an underdog status, and uncommitted moviegoers paid attention. As church groups recruited members to attend Mel Gibson's film its first weekend, so too the liberal lobby MoveOn.org signed up 110,000 members who pledged early attendance at the Moore movie.
Hit movies typically breed clones. And in this election year, with stakes and tempers high, a potent nonfiction genre is emerging: the agit-doc, dealing with high-octane political issues, often in a confrontational tone. Trailing Moore's box-office clout, agit-docs are surging into the mainstream. One of them, The Hunting of the President, co-directed by Clinton pal Harry Thomason, was originally to go to 30 theaters; now its distributor has revved that number to 125 and has put the film's trailer on many screens showing Fahrenheit 9/11.
"We've underestimated the audience's desire to see [political] material," says Robert Greenwald, director of Uncovered: The War on Iraq, a sober and devastating critique of Bush's foreign policy. "I don't think it's about hating the President. It's that politics has been brought home to the deepest part of ourselves. People now feel Politics Is Me."
"I don't like this film being reduced to Bush vs. Kerry. The issues in it are larger than that ... When Clinton was President, I went after him. And if Kerry's President, on Day Two I'll be on him."
Fahrenheit 9/11 wants to reach a drowsy electorate—most of whom don't bother to vote—to rouse them with a jazzy reveille of facts and innuendos and get them involved. "There's millions of you on the sidelines," Moore notes, "and I'm like the coach saying, 'Come on, bench, get in the game!'" And play for which side? That's easy to guess. Moore's mantra is that he made the film to prevent Bush's re-election—or, as many Democrats would say, election, given that they believe the first time he was appointed by the Supreme Court.
To combat Fahrenheit 9/11, White House communications director Dan Bartlett quipped at a press briefing, "If I wanted to see a good fiction movie, I might go see Shrek or something, but I doubt I'll be seeing Fahrenheit 9/11." Otherwise, the Bush team's policy is public silence. "We thought about what they would want us to do," says a top adviser, "and then we did the opposite."
Moore does not spare the Democrats entirely in his film. Most Democratic Senators, including Kerry, not only voted for the Iraq war but until recently refused to criticize the President's decision to invade. Among the clips in Fahrenheit 9/11 is one of minority leader Tom Daschle last year urging other Senators to follow his lead and vote for Bush's Iraq war. Two weeks ago, at the Washington premiere, Moore sat a few rows behind Daschle. Afterward, says Moore, "he gave me a hug and said he felt bad and that we were all gonna fight from now on. I thanked him for being a good sport."
The Democrats may not know yet how closely they want to embrace a film that sometimes lunges at Bush without regard for niceties of context and counterargument. Democratic moderates may find Moore's style too extreme, pugnacious, rabble-rousing—even if his intention is to rouse the rabble to vote the Democrats back into office. So as Kerry strategists move their man to the center, they hope to benefit from the Fahrenheit 9/11 phenomenon and to keep from being tainted by it.
Meanwhile, Republicans are hoping that Kerry does what they most want: allow a photo-op with Madman Moore, or at least offer his film a rave review. As a high Bush campaign official says, "I can't wait to see what John Kerry says about the movie." Keep waiting. "John Kerry has not seen the movie," says spokeswoman Stephanie Cutter. "He has been busy," she says. Notes a senior Democratic strategist: "John Kerry has stayed away from Michael Moore, and that's very smart."
But it's possible that Fahrenheit 9/11 may be having an impact on Kerry's war chest. Last week, the day before the movie's surprise victory at the box office was announced, Internet donations to the Kerry campaign climbed to a two-day fund-raising record of $5 million, with no special push from the candidate. Moviegoers may be plunking down their $9 at the multiplexes, then going home and e-mailing more money to the Man Who Isn't Bush. Says former Kerry campaign manager Jim Jordan of the film: "It is an exaggerated message from an imperfect messenger, but it might be the phenomenon that finally poisons the political atmosphere for Bush."
Can a movie do what a million get-out-the-vote initiatives have failed to do? Will an evening's smashing entertainment turn couch potatoes into political activists? Could Michael Moore's dream be George Bush's nightmare?"
—Reported by Desa Philadephia and Jeffrey Ressner/Los Angeles, Jackson Baker/Memphis, Betsy Rubiner/Des Moines and John F. Dickerson and Adam Zagorin/ Washington, with other bureaus
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