IRREVERENT Magazine - Features

As you may have noticed, my goal with this little excuse to repeal the First Amendment is to help you determine when someone is distracting you with something "shiny, shiny" while they merrily help themselves to the contents of your wallet. Typically I expect the culprit to be one of the usual suspects: government, business, or the media. Imagine my surprise when, after staggering home one night from a glorious victory in a savage round of Saké Saké OhNoNo¹ at the local karaoke bar (sorry Suntori, I play to win), I saw that this turd had flushed its way into my inbox. I had always believed that Michael Moore was on our side in the fight against the shadows and now I had to face the fact that he was involved in the sleaziest and foulest marketing campaign since Microsoft convinced us that Windows would make us more productive.

Now as you might expect, Mr. Suntori, always eager to earn a quick consultation fee by giving me unsolicited advice, cautions that the last thing I want is to suggest anything libelous that might draw the ire of Mr. Moore’s lawyers. "All media corporations are powerful," Mr. Suntori reminded me. "You should proceed with caution." I have to say that this time Suntori-San earned his Kobé beef. I had forgotten that despite all of his down home, aww shucks, just an independent filmmaker stickin’ up for the little guy demeanor, Michael Moore is a major player in a game so vile and underhanded that Mafia boss Antonio Visconti told his brother "You go to California you stay the fuck out of that whole movie ting...go into politics instead huh? Ya fuckin’ mook." The brother’s witness protection name? Arnold Schwarzenegger...and that's the rest of that fuckin’ story. Clearly I had to be more careful than a pervert who bookmarks Emma "Hermione Granger" Watson Is Fuckable countdown sites, as if any of them have a chance in Dante's Inferno.

Let me say that I normally don’t pay attention to what Michael Moore is doing. I hadn’t heard of the new movie until I read the email, and, when I saw the title, my nose started twitching as I began to smell a "shiny, shiny" marketing scam. I took a step back from the piece and downed a couple of quick scotches. Then, like an impressionist painting, all the tiny dots resolved themselves and I saw the brilliance of the whole scheme. It’s all in the fundamental theme of the posting. The entire premise is about official suppression of a piece of art named Fahrenheit 9/11. A title eerily reminiscent of the classic Ray Bradbury story about...ta da! official suppression of works of literature. I’m not going to take the time go into the plot of Fahrenheit 451 for you. Presumably you left school without being tainted by the Bushies’ "No Penny Left Behind" educational plan and have actually read the book. Obviously Moore had his "shiny, shiny" planned from day one. On a side note, my own little "shiny, shiny" if you will, you can see what Ray Bradbury thinks of all this thanks to our friends at Google.

So at this point as I read the e-mail, I’m wondering why Michael doesn’t pull a Mel Gibson and distribute this film himself. O.K. maybe the Passion of Christ self-distribution and financing model doesn’t necessarily apply since Americans are obviously going to flock to a deicidal snuff film but will stay away in droves from a movie that repeats, again, Moore’s schtick of getting amusingly thrown out of the corridors of power. That can be easily fixed though, add people jumping from World Trade Center windows, autopsy photos showing bodies laminated to concrete blocks, and, for the kids, footage of prisoner abuse in Iraq. Yeah that’s right, Slappy, Moore says in an interview published in the San Francisco Chronicle that he had proof of prisoners being abused by US soldiers "months before the story broke on 60 Minutes II" but that he didn’t want to say anything for fear of being called a publicity seeker. Yep, the guy gave an interview in a major US daily, it was picked up by the AP, run in newspapers all over the world, but no publicity seeker him. Besides the film needed to appear to be under the threat of suppression, not actually suppressed as "material evidence," so it wouldn’t have done to tell anyone what he was sitting on.

Still the question remains: why he didn’t buy the film back himself and go independent with it? Suntori and I kicked this around the karaoke bar a bit and right after a rousing rendition of Roxanne by the Police (a song with about eleventy billion chords) we came up with two answers: money and money. Self distribution meant risking the SEVERAL MILLION DOLLARS Michael Moore, Filmmaker for The Common Man^TM has accumulated from his two best-selling political manifestos, Stupid White Men, and Dude Where’s My Country. Let’s also not forget the money he made from victims of unemployment (Roger and Me) and violence (Bowling for Columbine: $4 MILLION to make, $120 MILLION in receipts). Gibson at least had the balls to back his Passion with his own filthy lucre.

Moore’s so cagey about the whole plan, that, after announcing that Fahrenheit would open on 700 screens, he needed a new villain attempting to bury the movie. Enter the MPAA.Moore, well not so much. He is a big "L" Liberal after all, and that means spending someone else’s money. In this case it meant Harvey and Bob Weinstein’s money. These two are the execs of Disney subsidiaries Miramax and Dimension films respectively. They formed a third company, curiously named Fellowship Adventure Group (so many jokes, so little time) to buy Fahrenheit from Disney for an estimated $6 MILLION dollars. They then put together a syndicate with Lion’s Gate Films, Cablevision’s IFC and Viacom’s Showtime to handle the advertising and placement of the movie. All of these players have a finger in the profit pie, but nobody’s saying how much. One safe bet is that Michael Moore is driving a new H2 this fall.

The second problem Mr. Mike would have had going the Mel Gibson route would’ve been wasting all the effort he put into claiming the film was being repressed. What’s the point of singing "Poor, Poor Pitiful Me" like a Saké Saké OhNoNo edition of Linda Ronstadt in order to increase the buzz about your movie if you just go and put the flick in theaters on your own? Moore’s so cagey about the whole plan, that, after announcing that Fahrenheit would open on 700 screens, he needed a new villain attempting to bury the movie. Enter the MPAA.

These are the guys that decide which movies those free spending Under Seventeen demographics have to lie to see. They slapped Fahrenheit with an "R" rating meaning that the kiddies have to get mummy’s permission to feel hip and counter-culture. The rating also means that not enough cash will be flowing in to make the money men happy so they’ve enlisted as part of the "shiny, shiny" no less a personage than Mario "Hey Kerry! Need a Veep?" Cuomo. His job is to spearhead the effort to appeal the MPAA’s rating decision. I can hear the Hoovers revving up already. As of this writing, the appeal hasn’t been heard. Don’t hold your breath.

As I watched all of this unfold in the months since I got the email, I discovered that there is one form of publicity the Mikey doesn’t like, and that’s the type that treats him like he treats opponents. It seems that there’s a little movie called Michael Moore Hates America (www.michaelmoorehatesamerica.com) put together by a guy in Minnesota named Mike Wilson. Wilson has been trying for years to get Moore to agree to an interview with no success. Wilson ambushed the filmmaker at a booksigning and received a stream of invective in response. Of course Wilson’s karma ain’t completely clean either. Seems he was having trouble getting financing to finish his little movie until an undisclosed "investor" recently came forward with the dosh.

Wilson also somehow found enough dough to buy a sponsored link for his website on Google. You see it everytime you search "Michael Moore". Yeah I smell it too: GOP soft money trying to put up a counter campaign to Moore’s propaganda piece. Maybe Rush has some extra cash now that he’s not buying so many drugs. Leni Riefenstahl never had to work so hard.

So by now you’re probably thinking that I’m being unfairly harsh and cynical. After all, Fahrenheit 9/11 did win the Palme d’Or at Cannes, it’s been critically well received, and let’s face it, it doesn’t tell us anything that we don’t already know thereby making it inconsequential. Well rest assured, Jocko, that I’ve heard that from better people than you. I’ll give Michael Moore his due as an entertaining filmmaker in an "in your face, let’s expose these wrongdoers" sort of way, and I can certainly appreciate a good story about the lies and deceit that go into making modern society go round. You should appreciate that those who live by the sword run the risk of dying by the sword. Indeed I run that very risk myself. You see the dirty little secret around here is that McGuffey’s Tavern has threatened to end IRREVERENT’s drinks subsidy if the editor prints my column this month. If you’re reading this somewhere other than that "benighted argument against high speed Internet access" that passes for a webzine, then you’ll know that they got to him.

Now...where’s my Billy Joel’s Greatest Hits album....