'Fahrenheit 9/11' on the Hot Seat

By Bill Berkowitz, AlterNet. Posted June 17, 2004.

Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 won't rake in as much money as Shrek 2, the Spiderman sequel, or the latest installment in the Harry Potter saga, but it could make its mark on the November presidential election. And that's what Team Bush and their right-wing surrogates are concerned about. Worried that Moore's new film, Fahrenheit 9/11 -- fresh off its award-winning debut at Cannes and set to open in hundreds of theaters across the country on June 25 -- will be a political poison pill for the Bush campaign, conservatives have launched a preemptive strike aimed at discrediting Moore and bullying a number of big movie chains into not running the film.

Even before its release, Moore's film had stirred up a fair amount of controversy. The back-story, while nothing like the hullabaloo surrounding Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ, has nevertheless engendered its own drama, including a major freak-out by the Disney Corporation which under the bold leadership of Michael Eisner, refused to distribute the film.

Now, with distributors Lions Gate Films, IFC and Bob and Harvey Weinstein's newly formed Fellowship Adventure Group in place and committed to spending up to $10 million on marketing, a California-based group called Move America Forward, which claims its goal is "supporting America's war on terrorism," has launched a campaign to prevent Moore's film from being shown.

At its website, Move America Forward is urging its supporters to "Stop Michael Moore" by taking "action against the release of his anti-American movie Fahrenheit 9/11." Claiming that the film is "an attack on the U.S. Military, the heroic men and women of the Armed Forces and our Commander-In-Chief," Move America Forward points out that Moore "and his anti-American film distributors are hoping to cash in to the tune of millions of dollars and also change U.S. politics."

Former GOP California Assemblyman Howard Kaloogian, and Melanie Morgan, a right wing talk show host on San Francisco's KSFO 560 AM are heading up the anti-Fahrenheit campaign. "Michael Moore has the right to free speech," MAF chairman Howard Kaloogian told Daily Variety. "But so do millions of Americans who find his anti-military propaganda and attacks on our troops offensive."

Another major participant in the campaign, according to the Political Strategy website, is Sal Russo, a longtime veteran of Republican Party politics. According to the Washington Post, Russo's Sacramento, CA-based political consulting firm, Russo Marsh & Rogers, helped create the Move America Forward website. Russo, who ran Bill Simon's unsuccessful campaign for Governor against Gray Davis, was an adviser to the Recall Gray Davis Committee.

Kaloogian, the Chairman of Move America Forward, claims that "we are winning the war on terrorism," and that the group's Web site is aimed at "report[ing] on the 'good news' you don't hear about."

(Snuffing the film from America's movie theatres is not the only controversy surrounding the film's release. Last week it was saddled with an "R" rating by the MPAA, meaning that children under 18 cannot see the film without being accompanied by an adult. According to a USA Today report, Moore has brought former New York Gov. Mario Cuomo on board "to help fight the movie's R-rating." At a press conference, Lions Gate Films chief Tom Ortenberg said that the distributors "want teens today, who will be required to fight in the next war, to be able to see" the movie. IFC president Jonathan Sehring pointed out that a PG-13 rating could add as much as 20% to the film's receipts.)

More often than not, censorious campaigns like the one carried out by Move America Forward are destined for the dust heap of history and often succeed in drawing more attention to a project than it otherwise might have garnered. "Any time any organization protests against a movie, they ensure that the movie will do better at the box office than it would have done otherwise. If they have any doubt about this, just ask Mel Gibson," said John Fithian, president of the National Association of Theater Owners. (Since its opening in February, Gibson's The Passion of the Christ has grossed $370 million domestically.)

Bill Berkowitz is a freelance writer covering right-wing groups and movements.

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