Film and Election Politics Cross in ’Fahrenheit 9/11’

By Michael Finnegan

June 11, 2004, Los Angeles Times

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0611-02.htm

There are movie campaigns and there are presidential
campaigns, and usually you can tell the difference. One
features a red carpet, the other a war room.

But "Fahrenheit 9/11," Michael Moore’s scathing new
documentary about President Bush, has both.

Its release later this month appears to mark the first time
that a film slamming a major presidential candidate has
opened on screens across the nation in the final months of a
campaign. At the same time, the movie is producing a global
publicity extravaganza for Moore and Miramax Film founders
Harvey and Bob Weinstein, who bought the film after Walt
Disney Co. refused to let Miramax release it.

The scramble to bring the dark, often satirical film to U.S.
movie screens is blending Hollywood and presidential politics
in ways never seen in a race for the White House. While the
filmmakers deny any overt effort to promote the candidacy of
the presumed Democratic presidential nominee, Sen. John F.
Kerry of Massachusetts, their efforts fall clearly in sync
with the campaign to unseat Bush.

To anticipate and fend off the criticism that already is
brewing, Moore has set up a "war room" populated by former
Clinton White House operatives plotting swift counterattacks
on Bush supporters who question the film’s credibility.

To lead the effort, Moore has hired Chris Lehane and Mark
Fabiani, former political advisors to Bill Clinton and Al
Gore. "Employing the Clinton strategy of ’92, we will allow
no attack on this film to go without a response immediately,"
Moore said Thursday. "And we will go after anyone who
slanders me or my work, and we will do it without mercy. And
when you think ’without mercy,’ you think Chris Lehane."

Moore also said he planned to use the film to register
thousands of voters, and will stage screenings to benefit
antiwar groups set up by families of U.S. troops in Iraq and
victims of the Sept. 11 attacks.

So far, the Bush reelection campaign has played down concerns
about the film’s effect.

"Voters know fact from fiction coming from Hollywood," said
Bush campaign spokesman Scott Stanzel. "It’s designed to
entertain. American voters want fact, not fiction, when
determining their vote. And everyone knows where Michael
Moore is coming from."

Others have been more aggressive in trying to discredit
Moore, who attacked Bush from the Oscar podium when he won
the feature documentary prize for his "Bowling for
Columbine."

Former President George H.W. Bush called Moore a "slimeball"
last month, dismissing the upcoming film as "a vicious attack
on our son," according to the New York Daily News.

Joining Moore as chief promoter of the film is Harvey
Weinstein, a top Democratic donor widely seen as the foremost
strategist in Hollywood’s annual campaigns - for Academy
Awards. Over the last decade, Weinstein and Miramax have
transformed the Oscar balloting into a bare-knuckle brawl
resembling a political campaign, with costly ads and
accusations of negative attacks dominating the race.

In the case of "Fahrenheit 9/11," the mounting publicity has
followed a dream script. It grabbed the media spotlight last
month with a New York Times story revealing that Disney was
blocking its Miramax division from distributing Moore’s film.
Moore’s agent, Ari Emanuel (whose brother, an Illinois
congressman, is another former Clinton White House
operative), charged in that story that Disney was concerned
that releasing the movie would imperil tax breaks for the
company’s ventures in Florida, where Bush’s brother is
governor. Disney denied it, and said it had informed Miramax
a year ago that it would be barred from releasing the film
because of its partisan nature.

The story broke just before the Cannes Film Festival, where
the documentary was a media and critical darling. It went on
to win the festival’s top prize, the Palme d’Or, and several
weeks later, the Weinsteins purchased the movie themselves
and lined up new distributors.

The film’s high profile has been rising ever since. To
promote "Fahrenheit 9/11," the producers are screening it in
New York and Washington next week for opinion makers in media
and politics. Television advertising begins this weekend on
national cable, along with posters and trailers before such
big-studio releases as "The Stepford Wives," starring Nicole
Kidman, and "The Chronicles of Riddick," with Vin Diesel.

Larry Noble, former chief counsel of the Federal Election
Commission, said the film’s ads, which are apt to paint Bush
unfavorably, risked drawing complaints that campaign spending
restrictions should apply to the movie’s promotion. But
unless the ads run in the final 60 days of the campaign and
specifically call for Bush’s defeat or the election of Kerry,
he said, the commission is apt to reject the complaints.

"We’re not campaigning for or against any political
candidates; we’re marketing a movie," said Tom Ortenberg,
president of Lions Gate Releasing, which is distributing the
movie with IFC Films.

Because the Weinstein brothers own the movie, they stand to
make a windfall if the film is a commercial success. The
film’s distributors will collect a fee based on its
performance, but all profits will ultimately flow to the
Weinsteins and Moore. The brothers purchased the film for
about $6 million - roughly what the documentary cost to make.

For Harvey Weinstein, the film offers a chance to profit
while enhancing both his Hollywood standing and political
clout. But he denies any overt political agenda.

"This is not about electing a candidate," he said.

Praising the film’s artistic value, Weinstein said he had
"shown the movie to people diametrically opposed to its
politics who walked away questioning things."

"I think it will have a huge influence on people’s minds,"
said Weinstein, who also is a producer of upcoming Los
Angeles and New York concerts to raise money for Kerry.

"Fahrenheit 9/11" casts a deeply unfavorable light on Bush’s
handling of the Sept. 11 attacks and the Iraq war, ridiculing
him and his top advisors with footage that catches them in
embarrassing moments clearly not intended for public viewing.
Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz uses spit to comb
his hair; Bush jovially asks news crews to watch him swing a
golf club seconds after sternly calling on the world’s
nations "to do everything they can to stop terrorist
killers."

Moore, who closes the film with the message "Do Something,"
is unabashed about his hope that the film will help dislodge
Bush as president.

"I hope this country will be back in our hands in a very
short period of time," he told hundreds of invited guests at
a celebrity-jammed Beverly Hills screening of the film on
Tuesday. The screening was part of an ambitious and unusually
fast rollout to get the movie into at least 650 theaters on
June 25-and possibly several hundred more.

"Are we conducting this like a campaign? Yes, we are," Moore
said Thursday. "But it’s not a campaign for Kerry."

How much influence the film might have is a matter of
dispute. Bill Carrick, a Democratic campaign consultant, said
its effect would be negligible. He likened it to the talk
radio shows of Rush Limbaugh and other hosts whose listeners
hold firm, unyielding opinions on Bush.

"I don’t think it’s a place where you’re going to persuade
anybody - a Michael Moore movie," Carrick said. "The audience
is too small. It’s a self-selecting group of people."

But in an election where turning out core constituencies
could be crucial to both Kerry and Bush, others see the film
as a potent tool for motivating Democrats - especially since
Republicans are typically more reliable for showing up at the
polls.

"Feeling motivated, to the extent you make that extra effort
to vote on your way home from work - that matters," said
Thomas Hollihan, a communications professor at USC’s
Annenberg School for Communication.

That potential is not lost on Moore, who plans to offer
ticket discounts and prizes to newly registered voters who
see the film or visit his Web site. "If it can encourage the
people who belong to the largest political party in America,
the non-voter party, to leave that party behind and do the
very minimum of what every citizen should do on Nov. 2, then
I hope that will be seen as a significant contribution to
this country," he said.

A main target of the film is younger voters, who tend to turn
out in low numbers. Studies have shown that younger voters
increasingly get election information from non-traditional
campaign media, such as late-night television comedy shows
and the Internet.

"For younger people, who may or may not be all that
interested in politics, these entertainment formats are a key
way to bring them into the political discussion," said
Stephen Farnsworth, a political scientist at Mary Washington
College in Virginia.

[Staff writer John Horn contributed to this report]