Here Comes Trouble - Michael Moore [152]
Silence.
“You were there?” I pressed.
More silence, then a drag off his cigarette, then the exhaling of the smoke. “Yes, I was there.”
“On the stage?”
Another drag. “Yes.”
“Jeez! How cool! What the hell were you doing up there? How’d ya get in?”
A sigh.
“My uncle is the president of the United States.”
“Hahaha. That’s a good one. My uncle’s Dan Quayle!”
“No. I’m not kidding,” he interrupted. “My uncle is George Bush, the president. My mom and Barbara Bush are sisters. His four sons and his daughter are my first cousins. I’m a member of the family. That’s why I was there.”
I’ve had many things told to me over the years: personal things, shocking things, the kinds of things everyone gets to hear at some point or another from someone—“I’m gay.” “I’m leaving you.” “Only Austrians may depart this plane.”—but nothing in life had prepared me for this piece of news. What Kevin was saying to me was that he had been working with me for nearly three years, first with me helping him with his movie, then him shooting my movie, then editing the first part of my movie—but, more important, being my mentor, my one and only teacher, a one-poorly-dressed-man film school—and now he was telling me that his uncle was the President of the United Friggin’ States of America??????????????????????????????????????????
My head was spinning.
“Look,” he said, “I know you’re probably pissed at me for not telling you. But try to look at it from my vantage point. Whenever someone finds out who I am, they immediately start acting different, treating me different, judging me, wanting something from me—you name it, it’s a drag to have this around my neck. And frankly, I thought you knew. I thought I told you—or tried to tell you. But you wouldn’t believe it. I thought Anne might have told you or someone had or you figured it out—but when it became clear to me that you didn’t know, well, I liked it that way. Because right now, now that you know, you’re sitting there thinking, He’s one of those fucking Bushes!”
I jumped in. “No, no, none of that! I don’t make those judgments. But Kevin—shit, man! You could have told me.”
“Yeah, well, I thought I did.”
“I mean, so during this whole time, your uncle was the vice president and now he’s the president? What were you thinking whenever I said something negative about him or Reagan?”
“Nothing. I agreed with you. I don’t share his politics. And to be honest, the family stuff is complicated. Personal. And I don’t want to talk about it.”12
“Sure, I get it. This is still fucking me up a bit. I’m just being honest. A member of the Bush family has been a significant part of not only making this movie but also teaching me how to be a filmmaker. Whew. Fuck. I mean, really, fuck!”
“Well, there you have it. Do with it as you will.”
“This changes nothing, Kevin. Don’t worry. And I’m glad you finally told me.”
Seven months later I finished the film. I had shown a cut of it to three film festival selection committees—Telluride, Toronto, and New York. They all liked it and accepted it to be shown at each of their festivals in September 1989. I had also shown an early rough cut of the movie to my two sisters. They sat with me in our parents’ home and watched it. They said nice things to me and encouraged me to keep working on it. What they didn’t tell me (until years later) was that they were mortified about how poorly put together they thought the film was. They spoke quietly to one another—“What should we say to him? How can we let him down easy?”—but they couldn’t find a way. They didn’t want to burst my bubble as I seemed so excited about what the final film would look like. So they said nothing. But they did make a pact with each other to be there at the first film festival screening so that I wouldn’t be alone in my moment of public humiliation.
The first festival turned out to be in Telluride, Colorado, over Labor Day weekend. The festival paid my way (as I was truly broke by then). Some of my crew got out there and back on the money they’d raise by hawking handmade silk-screened