Left-wing, dedicated anti-Bushite checking in here.
The film’s not out in Ireland yet but I’ve long been aware of this lack of reaction on Bush’s part and I’ve never understood why some people think it’s a big deal. People react to horrifying news in unpredictable ways; maybe he was too shocked to know what to say or do, maybe he felt a need to keep the kiddies calm - who knows? It’s a silly thing to make an issue out of.
Here’s an editorial bitchslapping that editorial:
Defending Truth: Slate’s Chris Hitchens does a hatchet job on Michael Moore
I agree in part. I don’t think Moore’s movie in and of itself will change opinions because of the “preaching to the choir” issue. Republicans going to see a Michael Moore movie? It’s just not going to happen in large numbers. People don’t use proof to form their opinions…they bend the proof to fit what they already believe.
But I do see where the move to the left COULD be taking place: those interviews with soldiers talking about firing Rumsfeld, questioning their reasons for being there, and commenting that the whole effort was a useless loss of lives. Those are changed votes (IMHO). And anyone in the families of those soldiers can also most likely be counted as changed votes.
I’m a left-wing, anti-Bush liberal who was raised in a family of staunch republicans. My sister has changed her political leanings (and her upcoming vote) because of this unjustified attack.
Insofar as Michael Moore was able to convey what the soldiers were dealing with personally, I feel that’s a real changing point…if the word gets across.
God, I hope it does. Another four years of this and I’m moving to Canada.
There’s a thread in Great Debates to discuss the issues of this film; I suggest folks wanting to talk politics jump into that one.
As for the cinematic aspects of Fahrenheit 9/11… well, it’s all fairly pedestrian filmmaking. There are no grand sweeping revelations, no amazing cinematography, no radical new camera-editing techniques. Moore does have a good sense of ironic comedic timing, however – check out the scene where he reveals the one state trooper who has to guard the Oregon coast from terrorists. “…part-time,” indeed!
And while Moore has (rightly) gotten a reputation in the past for playing fast and loose with the facts, I don’t think that’s going to stick here. Almost all the stuff he’s bringing up in the film are either items in the public record, such as newspaper articles or film/video archives, or comments from authority figures themselves. It’s hard to accuse Moore of distorting someone’s words when he’s saying them, right there, on the screen.
I don’t expect the die-hard Bush supporters to see the film; I do expect it to rally the liberals, and I think swing voters will go to see it, if only to see what all the news and controversy is about. Even if they don’t completely buy into Moore’s arguments, he’s raised issues for them to mull over.
I just got back from the matinee a little while ago. It was a full house that laughed and applauded a lot.
I thought the stuff at the beginning about the Bush/bin Laden family connections was a little labored and overlong. Not there weren’t some good points but I thought he beat it to death.
The best stuff was the Iraq material- the civilian and US casualties, the interviews with soldiers and especially the mother who lost her son. That was all very effective and not really subject to Bush apologetics.
The video of Bush in the classroom was very disturbing. It wasn’t that he didn’t leap out of his chair, it was the total absence of any emotional reaction to the news that the US was under attack. The completely vacant facial expression for seven solid minutes as he continued to labor his way through My Pet Goat made me physically ill.
The more you see of Bush, the less intelligent he appears.
It’s an effective movie. It evokes emotion. I just hope that at least a few of the pro-Bush loyalists will have the courage to see it.
Saw it, liked it, although I thought BfC was the better film. There was no simple answer given to its’ central question “why do Americans kill each other so much more than other Western world types?” F9/11 uses the device of rhetorical questions that offer only one plausible answer. For example, in the " Bush sits like a lump in front of third graders" bit, Moore narrates(roughly) " I wonder what he was thinking…was he thinking about how it would look if it turned out the scion of his dad’s business partners’ was responsible…?" and uses that as the launch into the details of Bin Laden clan/Saudi investment in companies that had varying degrees of Bush attachment. The details described are verifiable; The Economist reports that on 9/11/01 Bush Sr. was in a Carlyle meeting with a Bin Laden brother. What one interprets from the facts shown is their own matter. (Diog, it may have seemed overlabored to us because we know this stuff. For many it will be new information. )
The *Economist * article asks if it was appropriate for a former president to receive intelligence briefings that could be used to benefit the company he then worked for. The movie asks the same question. I had no idea the Economist was a socialist agit-prop rag! 
The film was most effective when MM shut his piehole and let others speak. In the scene with the bereaved mom confronting a yeah-Bush passerby, Moore stayed out of it (except for an out-of-shot-question to the mom). For all his alleged grandstanding, he knows when to get out of the way of the message. When mom comes to the White House and finds it is surrounded by an opaque fence blocking it from view (and presumably, vice versa), it speaks more of the alienation of the American citizen from its rulers than anything Moore could say.
Who knew John Ashcroft had a good singing voice?
I’m no Bush fanatic by any means, but I do have to take issue with what’s being reported about the classroom Bush is visiting. I think people are misinterpreting what’s going on in the scene, including filmmaker Michael Moore and other commentators, like Chicago Sun-Times’ Roger Ebert, who says,
I recognized the book that the president was holding. It is part of the SRA Reading Mastery series. The students are using a phonics based reading program called Direct Instruction, the Rainbow Edition, for k-6 classrooms. When Bush first sits down, the teacher is to the left of the president, and the students are seated in front of them, and he has a copy of the textbook they’re reading from in hand, presumably so he can follow along. The seating is also consistent with maximizing the instructional time as per SRA guidelines. Now, while it’s been extensively reported that Bush is reading to the class, that’s doesn’t appear to be true. The whole point of the SRA Reading Mastery series is the the students do the reading using decoding and phonics skills while the teacher monitors their progress, keeps them focussed and makes corrections, not the other way around. To the casual eye it may appear as if he’s reading to the class but that’s not the case. Bush is not reading to the children; they’re reading to him and the classroom teacher. If you get an opportunity again, look at the back of the children’s heads during that scene, and you will see that they’re not looking at the president at all; they’re bent down reading the textbooks in their laps. Look again and you’ll see that the president may look dazed, yes, but consider the news he’s just gotten.
While that may not seem to be a big distinction, it clarifies a few things.
Moore says in the narrative that the president was informed of the first plane slamming into the World Trade Center prior entering the classroom, yet the president chose to go on with the visit anyway. There are many differing accounts when precisely Bush was informed of the first crash, but it seems likely he was informed while in the motorcade, or perhaps upon entering the school. It is almost certain he knew about it before sittng down with the children for the photo-op.
At no time does it appear that Bush was ever an active participant in the learning going on in the classroom during the reading lesson. He’s an appreciative audience, occaionally asking questions of the students, but mostly listening.
Apologists who claim the president would have alarmed the children by leaving don’t realize how focussed the reading instruction is. He could have easily excused himself if he so desired, especially if he was just observing and listening anyway. Instead he chose to sit and continue with the photo op. It’s more likely the presient didn’t want to alarm the 100-plus reporters in the room.
Considering the nature of the news he’s received it may be understandable that he was momentarily frozen, perhaps processing the news and considering his course of actions. (Or as Moore put it, thinking about the Sauds and wondering, IIRC, “Which of these guys screwed me?”)
Another obvious possibility is that The Secret Service may not have wanted the president to leave until the 20 minute photo-op’s scheduled conclusion, because they needed to further secure the perimeter before leaving or execute some other arcane contingency plans. There is some speculation there may have been an assassination attempt on the president while he was in Florida, that the Service might have been instrumental in foiling.
Anyway – my two cents about that scene.
He and Orrin Hatch should do duets.
The nerve damaged soldier vowing to become an active Democrat also got a round of applause from our audience (Albany, NY, 7pm show). I also found it kinda weird, because I don’t think one half of the twoparty is better than the other. There was a fair bit of laughter, as well. The only two examples that stuck in my mind were based on audience participation. One had nothing to do with the movie: a preview for Metallica’s Kill the Monster comes on… ends with “see it in theaters <$date>” to be met with “Bah, just download it.” The second occured while Britney Spears was telling everyone we should do whatever Dubya says… “Farking Whore” quoth some wag in the 5th row.
I liked the way he presented 9/11. Let’s you supply whatever imagery you found most memorable/traumatic. I thought of the anchorman comparing it to a banana.
I’ve heard the US release has been edited… I’d presume there’s more war footage, but I’m curious to know what’s may have been cut.
I dunno, I saw it in Canada. Did the version you saw have the photos of GHW Bush and Prince Bandar making out on the boardroom table at Carlyle? 
Please note the above comment was satire. The comment was not a true representation of the relationship between the Bush family and any member of the Saudi royal family, not that there’d be anything wrong with that if that’s the kind of fellows that they are etc etc
A good friend of mine, who’s far to my right on the political spectrum, preemptively emailed me and asked if we could agree not to discuss Fahrenheit 9/11. He said something like, “I’m glad to live in a country where Michael Moore has the right to make this movie, but I don’t have to see it.” I wrote back: “I understand. I feel the same way about The Chronicles of Riddick.”
My roommate and I saw it this afternoon at the Del Mar in Santa Cruz. Being such a liberal Bush-Hating town, I figured there would be frothing at the mouth during the movie. = )
I have conservative leanings (but hate Bush) and my roommate is very liberal (and hates Bush more than I do), but during the movie we both laughed at the same scenes and each walked away with a similar impression of the movie.
I thought it was an entertaining film and was glad I got to see what all the hype was about. If someone asked me to recommend it, I would just say “meh”, go watch Napoleon Dynamite instead. = )
If you want unbiased political journalism, go read a highly respected political journal or something. If you want to be entertained then watch Fahrenheit 911.
The most annoying part is that it is not playing in a theater near me. It is only in 800+ theaters in the country. I’ll have to download it now.
Weighing in from San Diego, here. Audience factors were pretty much what’s been posted here already - jam-packed theatre (they added another screen between the time I bought my tickets this morning and the time we got there - there were 2 lines for F9/11 at the same time), laughing, applause, especially at the end. When we left, the line for the 10:55 show was snaking around the corner, and again, 2 screens.
My favorite part, comedically, was when Moore was interviewing some senator (?)who blustered that anyone could call him about the issue on his 800 number. Moore informed us in subtitles at the bottom of the screen that “This is a lie” and then thoughtfully provided the guy’s backline phone number.
My girlfriend, who was in the Air Force expressed much concern for all the military folk Moore interviewed: “Their careers are over.” I hope he sets up a trust fund for them because he’s going to make a hell of a lot of money on this movie.
And there were very gory parts. Most of them I could anticipate enough to look away, but some of them were horrific.
Moore may well be preaching to the choir, but let’s face it, the choir’s been in a fucking coma for quite some time.
That got a big laugh at my screening too.
My favorite throw away cheap shot was when Moore was going over GWB’s ANG records and mentioned the part about Shrub having been grounded for missing a mandatory medical exam (meaning a drug test). At that point, the guitar riff from Eric Clapton’s “Cocaine” played on the soundtrack. It was only the riff, played once, and I wondered how many people in the theater even recognized it or got the implication. It got a big laugh, so I guess most of them must have gotten it.
Equipoise posted a link to an article rebutting Christopher Hitchen’s in Slate:
http://www.hollywoodbitchslap.com/feature.php?feature=1150
In it, the other reports that just yesterday the Carlyle group bought Loew’s theatre chain. Does anyone have another cite for that besides the Hollywood Bitchslap?
Wrap me in tinfoil if you want, but that’s kinda scary. :eek:
I have to say that I was not much impressed at the beginning, then I began to wonder how Michael Moore was going to show visually the difference between Afghanistan and Iraq, and then there was the sequence of Bush and the members of his administration talking and putting Al-Queda and Saddam-Iraq together, and implying many times that they were allies. Then, there was a “simple” scene of Iraqi kids happily flying kites, before the war started…
Many forget that the Taliban became infamous, not only for their close support to Al-queda, their treatment of Women, and the destruction of other religion’s symbols, but also for banning kites!
That “simple” scene symbolized the huge difference that was between Iraq and Afghanistan, and emphasized the now obvious deception Bush and his henchmen made to convince the American public that Al-queda and Saddam were birds of a feather.
Nice touch, and from there, the movie really began to pick up.
Oh, I dunno – can you imagine the big stink the Pentagon would get if word gets out that so-and-so got busted for appearing in Moore’s film? “Iraq Soldier Reprimanded For Appearing in ‘Fahrenheit 9/11’” is just going to get folks pissed off.
In a related topic, did anyone else think this film really deserved its “R” rating? Having seen the film, I don’t agree; this could have been released as-is with a strong PG-13. I don’t think there’s anything here that’s worse than what most teen slasher films would depict, aside from the issue of being based on real-life events.
And IMO, the funniest bit remains “Part-time.”
How’d I get from “author” to “other”? :smack:
Sorry!
This could be quite true. It is illegal for military personnel to make disparaging comments about the Commander-in-Chief.
I can understand the logic, since speaking against the President would have propaganda value to the Enemy. But it’s ironic that those who are charged with protecting our freedoms are prohibited from exercising our most basic one fully.
Article 88 applies to commissioned officers. I don’t know if there is a similar law covering enlisted personnel.