Here Comes Trouble - Michael Moore [6]
In the midst of all this turmoil I began shooting Fahrenheit 9/11. My crew found Bush White House footage that the networks wouldn’t run. I lifted it from their news departments because I thought the people had a right to see the truth.1 I told everyone on my crew to operate as if this was going to be the last job we were ever going to have in the movie business. This wasn’t meant to be an inspirational speech—I really believed that this was going to be it, that we were lucky to even be making Fahrenheit considering all that had rained down on me. So let’s just make the movie we want to make and not worry about our “careers.” Careers are overrated anyway! And so we spent the next eleven months putting together our cinematic indictment of an administration and a country gone mad.
The release of the film in 2004, just a little over a year after the start of the war, came at a time when the vast majority of Americans still backed the war. We premiered it at the Cannes Film Festival after the Walt Disney Company had done everything it could to stop the film’s release (our distributor, Miramax Films, was owned by Disney). We went to the New York Times with the story of how they were silencing the movie, and the Times, still smarting from the revelation that their pre–Iraq invasion stories were false, put the whole sordid affair on the front page. That saved us and the film, and we got to Cannes—where the movie received the longest standing ovation in the festival’s history. We were awarded the top prize, the Palme d’Or, by an international jury headed by Quentin Tarantino. It was the first time in nearly fifty years a documentary had won the prize.2
This initial overwhelming response to Fahrenheit 9/11 spooked the Bush White House, convincing those in charge of his reelection campaign that a movie could be the tipping point that might bring them down. They hired a pollster to find out the effect the film would have on voters. After screening the movie with three different audiences in three separate cities, the news Karl Rove received was not good.
The movie was not only giving a much-needed boost to the Democratic base (who were wild about the film), it was, oddly, having a distinct effect also on female Republican voters.
The studio’s own polling had already confirmed that an amazing one-third of Republican voters—after watching the movie—said they would recommend the film to other people. The film had tiptoed across the partisan line. But the White House pollster reported something even more dangerous: 10 percent of Republican females said that after watching Fahrenheit 9/11, they had decided to either vote for John Kerry or to just stay home.
In an election that could be decided by only a few percentage points, this was devastating news.
The Bush campaign was strongly advised to get out ahead of the movie and make sure their base never even thought about checking it out. “You must stop them from entering the theater. Republicans and independents must not see this movie.” Because if they did, a certain, small percentage of them would not be able to overcome their “emotional” reaction to the death and destruction the movie attributed to George W. Bush. Although they knew most Republicans would dismiss the movie sight unseen, nothing could be left to chance. The pollster himself sat in the back at the screenings and saw firsthand what he called “the fatal blows” the film delivered, especially when it went to a scene with the mother of a deceased American soldier. It was too devastating for a small but significant part of the audience. “If we lose the November election,” he told me shortly after the film’s release, “this movie will be one of the top three reasons why.”
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