Fahrenheit This!

By Bill Berkowitz, WorkingForChange.com. Posted August 4, 2004.

He claims that the title of his film is more satire than publicity-seeking hyperbole. He says he's not out to get Michael Moore, he's just trying to reinvigorate the public discourse. He enlisted a number of ultra-right-wing commentators for his "journey across the nation" to help him "find out whether the American Dream is still alive." Bandwagon jumper or serious filmmaker? What is Michael Wilson, the director of the forthcoming Michael Moore Hates America up to?

"I think he [Michael Moore] demonstrates a distrust of America when he manipulates facts so that they skew his point. I think that's distrustful," Wilson told The Daily Show's Samantha Bee during a segment titled "Dislike Mike" in which Wilson goes to New York City to hunt down Moore. "I'd like to do to Michael Moore what he's done to others," Wilson added.

It's morning in America for conservatives who don't like Michael Moore or his politics. Moore's Oscar-winning documentary Bowling for Columbine got the ball rolling, and this year's Cannes Film Festival top prize-winning film, Fahrenheit 9/11, sealed the deal. A number of web sites dedicated to debunking the lefty filmmaker and setting the record "straight" have been established including MooreWatch; mooreexposed.com; and Bowling For Truth.

There are also web sites, Wilson said in an e-mail exchange, "where people don't actually offer any sort of debunking of Moore, but rather call him names from the anonymity of cyberspace and offer him tickets to Iraq."

The astonishing success of Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 – which has grossed more than $100 million domestically, and millions more internationally since its late-June debut – is no doubt helping drive the Moore-thumping.

A recently published book, Michael Moore is a Big Fat Stupid White Man, has taken Moore-bashing to bestseller lists across the country. Michael Wilson hopes his film will excite late-summer moviegoers looking for an antidote to Moore's extraordinarily popular documentary.

'Michael Moore Hates America'

With hopes of getting his film into theaters by late Summer, filmmaker Michael Wilson is currently putting the finishing touches on Michael Moore Hates America. The movie is intended to celebrate America, rather than to bash Moore, Wilson claims. "Contrary to its title," he writes at his web site, MichaelMooreHatesAmerica.com, the film "isn't a hatchet job on the filmmaker. It's a journey across the nation where we meet celebrities, scholars and average folks alike, and we find out whether the American Dream is still alive! In the process, we'll look at Michael Moore's claims about the country, its people, and our way of life."

"My film is different" from the Moore-debunkers and Moore-bashers "in that I'm trying to be respectful of Michael Moore the person," Wilson said. "I'm focusing on what he has said and done in his body of work, and holding it up against the light of experience – both mine and that of hundreds of other Americans I've met on this journey." While Wilson respects Moore's passion, he wonders "whether that passion clouds his honesty... and [that is] one of the themes I'm exploring in the flick."

Why such a hyperbolic title? "The title isn't a thesis," Wilson pointed out. "It's a satirical swipe at some of the shrillness that has engulfed this big American conversation. I think audiences (especially audience members who are expecting me to do nothing but lay into Moore) will be very surprised at how it plays out in the film. And I'm not giving that part away."

Wilson has tried in vain to get Michael Moore to sit down for an interview. "The closest I got," he told a reporter for the Pioneer Press, "was I did run into him at the (University of Minnesota) when he was on his book tour, and he started screaming at me." According to Wilson, "the screaming began when [he] mentioned the title of his film in the middle of asking a question. 'It was quite a sight... 7,000 Michael Moore fans, just booing me,'" Wilson said. (The Daily Show's hysterical send-up of Wilson's attempt to track down Moore in New York City is posted online.)

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

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