Jmathews@ edit.nydailynews.com
jamibern@aol.com
What an UGLY beast she is, and that's her "air-brushed" version!!!
Posted on 06/23/2004 12:52:28 PM PDT by NYC Republican
* * *
Michael Moore's controversial "Fahrenheit 9/11" arrives today in a blaze of hype and glory.
This diatribe against the Bush family, and especially against George W's handling of America's response to 9/11, is powerful enough to turn the stomach, if not a few votes in the upcoming presidential election - particularly on college campuses where the movie's questioning of authority and mocking tone are like mother's milk.
The movie is unabashedly political, yet it is entertaining enough to possibly become the top-grossing documentary in history. The thing is, it's not really a documentary.
"Fahrenheit 9/11" is more reasonably seen as a filmic personal essay, drawing on all the things that make Moore both successful and infuriating - fun, provocative, messy, ingenious and slippery.
The movie is mostly an indictment of the Bush family's financial ties to the Saudis and the Bin Laden family. This complicated tangle of relationships - money and glad-handing, Moore argues - clouded the administration's judgment in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
By following the money trail, Moore makes a damning case for, at the very least, conflict of interest, and at worst, transgressions against the American people.
I was in tears after first seeing "Fahrenheit" at Cannes (the final version has been slightly tweaked since then). The images were powerful - a maimed Iraqi baby, a Michigan mother grieving for her dead soldier son before a cordoned-off White House.
My tears do not mean the movie is perfect. Moore goes off on tangents and takes cheap shots that could turn off even the people who side with him. Those shots may be okay for a popcorn movie, but they don't build a solid case. If Moore's intent truly is to unseat a government, he'll need more facts and footnotes, not just clips of Bush mangling the language and looking like a buffoon.
Statistics fly without attribution or substantiation - that the Bushes have accepted more than a billion dollars from the Saudis, that Saudi Arabia owns a hefty slice of America and receives unusual government perks as a result.
There is also a lack of context, particularly with footage somehow obtained from Iraq. An inert Iraqi detainee is shown being touched inappropriately and ridiculed by U.S. soldiers. Was the detainee beaten? Dead? (Turns out, Moore told a press conference, the detainee was merely drunk.)
Moore doesn't always fight fair - but he does fight funny, including a hilarious roll call of the Coalition of the Willing, those nations who pledged us their support. Amidst the fun, a higher truth emerges, one that is enraging, even if it's old news - little people are the ones who pay the price for the war in Iraq and the limits on personal freedoms under the Patriot Act. Meanwhile, the rich get richer, and the powerful even more so.
There is less of Moore on camera than in "Bowling for Columbine" and "Roger and Me," but he still can't resist guerrilla-style humor. In one effective stunt, he asks congressmen on the street to enlist their own children in the military to show support for a war that is killing so many other people's kids. Naturally, they decline.
The most devastating footage speaks for itself (even though Moore narrates over it).
Moore obtained the full reel of President Bush sitting for nearly seven long minutes in that Florida schoolroom chair after learning that a second plane had hit the World Trade Center. While everyone else in the world was rushing to a TV set or collapsing in grief, Bush continued to read "My Pet Goat."
That footage sums up the message of "Fahrenheit 9/11." The information here isn't necessarily new, but it is packaged in an acid-tongued way along with powerhouse visuals that drive home the filmmaker's nakedly political views. ________________________________________________________
Moore Does Less With Facts When I read in Lloyd Grove's column in The News last week about an encounter between Michael Moore and Bill O'Reilly in the lobby of the Ziegfeld Theater, I thought wouldn't it have been great if they'd put the gloves on and settled everything right there. They're two big guys, possibly the meanest and loudest voices of the political left and right, respectively. Let 'em punch it out and may the best man win.
But, wait.
There is no best man. Moore, the Sparkplug of Flint, and O'Reilly, the Factor Flash, are both ideological thugs who play loose with the facts while fostering hatred in an increasingly polarized country. We need to give them less attention, not more.
I don't want to raise or lower the temperature on the debate over Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11." I consider the movie to be neither the Kerry campaign pamphlet Bush supporters wish to label it, nor the courageous burst of singular outrage that Moore would have us believe it is.
Like his earlier essays on corporate greed and America's gun culture, "F 9/11" is a personal rant embellished with a mix of verifiable facts and eye-popping conclusions, seasoned with sarcasm and ridicule, heavily skewed with selective sources, and dressed out as a kind of feature-length editorial cartoon.
For a movie critic who shares Moore's political views but disdains his style, "F 9/11" presents a dilemma. Anything that helps convince people to vote against George Bush is good, but anything that flatters the pompous filmmaker is bad.
I was the movie editor at the Los Angeles Times when Moore arrived there with "Roger & Me" in 1989, and his Mr. Smith Goes to Hollywood act was fun for about 10 minutes, until it was clear how cannily manipulative he was of the press.
No sooner had "Roger & Me" caught the fancy of the country than Film Comment revealed how cannily manipulative Moore had also been with the facts, events and time references within the film - deceptive enough for the late Pauline Kael to denounce him as having broken faith with the audience. Moore and his many supporters brushed that criticism aside as nitpicking, as they would again when Moore was caught being maliciously creative in "Bowling for Columbine."
The transgression that stuck in most people's craws was his spectacularly boorish behavior with actor Charlton Heston, the celebrity head of the National Rifle Association. Moore wheedled his way into Heston's home for an interview, then demanded that Heston apologize to the people of Flint for making an NRA appearance there shortly after the shooting death of a 6-year-old girl. While Heston retreated, Moore chased after him holding up a picture of the dead girl and yelling shame.
It was later revealed that Heston had made no such NRA appearance in Flint. He'd shown up there months after the shooting as part of a three-state Republican get-out-the-vote rally.
In the publicity run-up to the release of "F 9/11," Moore has been dazzlingly obnoxious. He spent much of May bad-mouthing America to the delighted French and telling anyone who would listen that the American press could learn a little about hardnosed journalism from him (God help us).
Proving he still knows how to manipulate the media, he hoodwinked even The New York Times editorial page into accusing the Walt Disney Co. of censorship, after Michael Eisner refused to allow his Miramax division to release "F 9/11" - something Moore knew he was going to do a year earlier!
Moore is obviously aware of his credibility and image problems. To address the latter, he kept his own appearances in the new film to a blessed minimum. To address the former, he has hired a stable of fact checkers to counter any charges of breaking the faith, plus a trio of lawyers to sue anyone who dares libel him.
He has already been caught in one whopper of a factual error. He says in the film that members of the Bin Laden family were flown out of the country while airports were grounded in the aftermath of 9/11 and that they were not interviewed by the FBI. Wrong on both counts.
"I don't want to get lost in the forest because of a single tree," Moore said, when asked about this by a New York Times reporter.
I think that's two trees. But who's counting?
Jmathews@ edit.nydailynews.com
jamibern@aol.com
What an UGLY beast she is, and that's her "air-brushed" version!!!
Timesink- do you still maintain the "media shenanigans" list?
Our lovely hometown paper has not one, but two articles praising his movie... What a disgrace.
took some vacation last week with some "sheeple" friends of mine, who are totally detached from the news and the reality of the security challenges facing this country in the post 9-11 world. one observation I make regarding this film - the sheeple think this is some kind of "Saving Private Ryan" regarding the iraqi war and the war on terror. they view it as entertainment, rather then political propaganda. that sentiment may result in this film doing better at the boxoffice then we might think.
Would love to hear your opinion... Will this hurt the President, or will it backfire? I tend to believe that it will backfire big-time...
The other unfortunate thing is that Hollywood cleared the schedule (DodgeBall and WhiteChicks are the only 2 "main" films out this week), to give this maximum exposure.
USA Today's reviewer gave it 3 1/2 stars and was most impressed by Bush's "bewildered, dumbstruck" reaction to the attacks because he stayed in the classroom 7 minutes. No mention that after the big 7 minutes, Bush and Cheney took absolute control that day and promptly kicked butt in Afghanistan and Iraq despite all the naysayers. i'm glad the USA Today jerk knows what was going through Bush's mind during those 7 minutes. I'll reach my conclusions based on what he did immediately thereafter. I have never seen any report that Bush was other than decisive that day.
Wasn't Oliver Stone raked over the coals when he took liberties with history and sprinkled conspiracy theories on top? It seems liberals have had a change of heart since then, and now applaud taking liberties with the facts and shown disproven conspracy theories as if they are knoen facts.
The liberals want to simultaneously use Moore's propaganda movie as a recruiting tool and dissociate themselves from its pro-terrorist extremism. They've come up with a characteristic straddle on the order of "I oppose the war but support the troops". They deplore Lumpy personally, but find a lot of "food for thought" in his outright lies and cinematic manipulations. And they bravely defend his right to "speak out" against "right wing censorship". This stance is so predictable that the reviews pretty much write themselves.
Exactly
that same event is covered in the showtime 9-11 movie, I am not surprised Moore would twist it. Bush didn't want to frighten innocent school children, that's all that was about.
"Bush didn't want to frighten innocent school children, that's all that was about."
We know that is what happened. Why would Moore and other Bush-hating liberals bother themselves with facts?
Well and Bush did not want to cause a panic. Can you imagine if Bush rush out of the room like we were under some nuclear attack or something. There was nothing for Bush to do in those 7 minutes that wasn't being done.
Moore behaves as if none of the crap he puts out there can be refuted.
Filmatic personal essay being a fancy film-critic term for "total bull****."
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