I ran right out to see Fahrenheit 9/11, last weekend, with all the hordes of other New Yorkers. I lucked into a 3:40 show at the Lincoln Plaza, when every show before and after was entirely sold out. In the massive Cineplex on 42nd Street the next day, three theatres worth were also entirely sold out. It was, in fact, the top grossing film in the nation last weekend with ticket sales of $23.9 million. In small towns all over the United States, many of them conservative, people are going to see the movie. The Odessa American in Odessa, Texas reported that the movie was top-grossing film at the Century 12 Theatres there, despite petitions from the Concerned Citizens of Odessa that threatened “Showing this movie could have a detrimental effect on your profits."
It's a great response to Disney's refusal to distribute it, because on some level there has got to be a certain amount of regret that they missed the opportunity to get their hands on all that money.
I liked the film immensely after I saw it, especially the discussion of the Carlyle group, and its interests in the war in Iraq. I was one of about 70 people who were arrested without good reason across the street from their offices in April, 2003. Upon reflection I had moments of doubt, though. Moore makes a lot of assertions that he doesn't fully substantiate and one could argue that the facts as they exist on the surface are bad enough without digging for conspiracy theories. One of his critiques, that the evacuation of the Bin Laden family on September 13, 2001 indicates a cozy relationship between the Bushes and the Bin Laden's has been explained away by Richard Clarke, who said it was he and he alone that authorized the flights.
But he sets forth important footage that hasn't gotten any airtime elsewhere, including a keynote at a convention of corporations with potential economic interests in post-war Iraq in which the speaker says something along the lines of "just wait until all of that money gets flowing..." (I'll have to check on this exact quote) and interviews with blue haired ladies who might well be sitting at a church potluck who are just disgusted by the war and its consequences. Another really powerful bit was the footage of marine recruiters hanging out in the parking lot of a mall in poor neighborhoods and aggressively up chatting young men and women up for enlistment.
Clearly the high number of tickets sales is something of a phenomenon. Even the finest documentaries with great commercial appeal and relevance to diverse audiences didn't cultivate this type of response (think Hoop Dreams) The film taps into something that documentaries generally do not. When do people go out in droves on Saturday night to consider the consequences of American foreign policy? In Odessa, Texas, the audience, apparently a majority of them senior citizen, applauded the film at the end.
There's lots of interesting reviews popping up in the media and on the web. Christopher Hitchens pans the film, saying that "Fahrenheit 9/11 is a sinister exercise in moral frivolity, crudely disguised as an exercise in seriousness." Matt Taibi rebuts very eloquently on behalf of Moore, saying:
"Michael Moore may be an ass, and impossible to like as a public figure, and a little loose with the facts, and greedy, and a shameless panderer. But he wouldn't be necessary if even one percent of the rest of us had any balls at all.
If even one reporter had stood up during a pre-Iraq Bush press conference last year and shouted, "Bullshit!" it might have made a difference." (Via Unfogged)
Paul Krugman, makes a similar point in today's New York Times, albeit more gently, saying, "Mr. Moore's greatest strength is a real empathy with working-class Americans that most journalists lack. Having stripped away Mr. Bush's common-man mask, he uses his film to make the case, in a way statistics never could, that Mr. Bush's policies favor a narrow elite at the expense of less fortunate Americans — sometimes, indeed, at the cost of their lives."
My fascination is in the coverage of the films in local papers in small towns all over the United States. Stay tunes for updates.
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