Burning Bush: Michael Moore on Fahrenheit 9/11

By Jason Anderson

If America’s invasion and occupation of Iraq is a nightmare from which the country is struggling to awake, then it’s understandable that Michael Moore chooses to ease viewers into Fahrenheit 9/11 with a reverie of his own. The film’s first images are of Al and Tipper Gore presiding over an election-night victory party in November 2000. These absurd but true pictures prompt a host of fantasies about what kind of America the Gores might have ruled. While it’s unlikely that the 9/11 hijackers cared which party was in charge of the Great Satan, perhaps the embattled America of 2004 would’ve looked a little more like the festivities we see here—with cake, punch, and civil liberties for all. For Moore, it’s a seductive vision that he’s not eager to abandon. “Did the last four years not really happen?” the director asks in his familiar, facetious tone, which he thankfully holds in check for most of the keenly focused polemic that follows. “Was it a dream?”

Alas, all the confetti in the world couldn’t protect the winner of the popular vote from the prehistoric nuances of the electoral college, the Florida officials who rigged procedures both before and after election night, or the Republican-stacked Supreme Court. In Moore’s view, the theft of the election serves as the original sin that created the environment for the countless immoral acts that followed. Because if Bush, Cheney, Rove, and the rest realized they could steal an election with only modest peeps of protest, what else would they be emboldened to do?

First order of business: go on holiday. Moore states that President Bush spent 42 percent of his first eight months of office on vacation. That too presents a tantalizing alternate reality—Bush not as warrior king but absentee landlord. Of course, the former persona establishes itself in the wake of the attacks on September 11, which Moore—cribbing from Alejandro González Iñárritu’s archly minimalist contribution to 11’09”01 (2002)— portrays using a black screen, panic-stricken audio clips and finally the shocked reactions of dust-covered witnesses.

Moore follows his stark representation of catastrophe with footage of Bush spending his morning in an elementary school classroom. When his photo-op is interrupted for the second time by an aide bearing news of the second plane hitting the World Trade Center, the commander-in-chief decides that the best course of action is to sit quietly and continue reading My Pet Goat for nearly seven more minutes. Of all the choice TV clips collected in Fahrenheit 9/11, the sight of a flummoxed and tragically puppeteer-free president is potentially the most damaging to his election chances.

And convincing voters of the administration’s unworthiness is clearly the point of this exercise. Cannes jury president Quentin Tarantino was talking out of ass when he told Moore that Fahrenheit 9/11 won the Palme d’Or for reasons other than its political stance. Politics are everything in Fahrenheit 9/11. A straightforward documentary, it takes few of the stylistic risks of Bowling for Columbine (2002) or Roger & Me (1989). Nor does Moore offer much room for the audience to make conclusions of its own. Then again, the film’s utter lack of ambiguity on these points may be its greatest strength. Likewise, Fahrenheit 9/11’s urgency and ferocity make it a much more exciting film than its often scattershot predecessors. Now that it’s largely been freed from his sometimes aggravating smugness, Moore’s rage has never been more compelling.

He’s also smart enough to realize he’s not the star of this movie. The barrage of incendiary found material and damning (if selectively presented) facts leaves little room for his TV-friendly pranks. Moore can’t resist baiting Congressmen on Capitol Hill—first by reciting the Patriot Act on a van’s loudspeaker (most signed the act without reading it), then by soliciting them to sign up their children for active duty. But Moore is more interested in presenting new footage of human-rights abuses on par with the Abu Ghraib photographs, an appalling Christmas Eve raid of an Iraqi household, and the story of a Flint, Michigan working mother named Lila Lipscomb. Like many mothers of soldiers claimed by the Iraq conflict, she has come to question the reasons why the Bush administration has sent so many young (and principally working-class) Americans off to be maimed or killed.

Since the weapons of mass destruction failed to materialize, Moore considers other motives for the war in Iraq, the most serious charge being that the administration has cynically directed attention away from the real parties responsible for the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Fahrenheit 9/11 speculates about the connections between the American government and the Saudi royal family, whose investments count for as much as seven percent of the US economy. The film also states that Saudis poured $1.4 billion into the Bush family circle. Little of this material will be unfamiliar to viewers of international news coverage of the war or readers of Seymour Hersh’s recent New Yorker reports or books such as Bob Woodward’s Plan of Attack, Chris Unger’s House of Bush, House of Saud, Richard Clark’s Against All Enemies. (Fans of The Daily Show may also recognize many of the movie’s most ludicrous Bush clips.)

It’s easy to say that Moore is hollering at the converted, but his film is also clearly designed for an American audience that has made the mistake of trusting its news sources (especially the Fox News Channel) and believing that its government will always do the right thing. In Fahrenheit 9/11, that attitude is best expressed by Britney Spears when she tells CNN blowhard Tucker Carlson, “Honestly, I think we should just trust our president in every decision he makes and should just support that, you know, and be faithful in what happens.” With a sense of vigour and discipline, Moore illustrates that the consequences of Britney’s misplaced faith are unjustified deaths, needless devastation, and a new generation of extremists who will ensure that Bush’s war on terror is a war without end. It’s enough to make a party hosted by Tipper Gore look like fun.

*****

Cinema Scope: In your previous films, you’ve often included yourself as part of the action on camera. Why did you largely choose to do otherwise in Fahrenheit 9/11?

Michael Moore: I hope as a filmmaker that I continue to examine how I construct these films and how they reach people. I learned a lot from Bowling for Columbine—why that reached three times as many people as Roger & Me. I would like this movie to reach even more people than Columbine. A lot of thought went into constructing this film that way. On a personal level, I just don’t like looking at myself. Does anybody like having their picture taken? How about blowing it up to 40 feet? I have a little sign in the edit room that says, “When in doubt, cut me out.” While I was making it, I’d show Harvey Weinstein different cuts and he’d go, “Well, where are you?” I’d say, “I’m there.” It’s clearly my voice—not just my physical voice but my spiritual voice.

Scope: Does this decision have anything to do with any discomfort you might feel over your visibility or increasing celebrity status?

Moore: Obviously, I want to reach as many people as possible and I’m not uncomfortable with the fact that my books are read by millions. I want them read by even more millions of people—same thing with the films. As for me being in the film, I don’t want this character of Michael Moore to be the focus. I want Lila to be the focus. And I have no problem with letting Bush drive the humour. The more I tried doing other things, the more I realized that nothing tops Bush swinging that golf club after he talks about the terrorist threat. That was better than anything I could do.

Scope: What kind of effect do you hope to see from the movie?

Moore: I hope that whoever goes to see it will feel like their money was well spent and they had a good night out. Secondly, if they can leave there talking or discussing the issues or thinking about what they should do as citizens, all the better. If it makes a contribution to getting the country back in our hands, even better. I don’t want to presume anything. I mean, c’mon, it is just a movie on some level. Occasionally in my lifetime I’ve seen a book or film have such an impact that it does alter things. I remember as a kid in junior high reading Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring. It had a profound impact in creating something. You can cite a few examples like that—To Kill a Mockingbird, Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle.

Scope: Do you think it’s impossible for you to make a movie with an American studio?

Moore: If I distance myself in the right way, I’ve got another good 13, 14 years of filmmaking left before I can’t get distributed in America. That is, if I burn them at appropriate intervals—not all at once. I’m down to four studios that still talk to me and are very positive—one of their conglomerates publishes my books and another one distributed Bowling for Columbine. Disney/Miramax is the first American money that’s been in the driver’s seat of any of my projects. I funded Roger & Me. The BBC was the driving force behind TV Nation. The Awful Truth was Channel 4 and Canada’s Salter Street. The Big One (1997) was funded entirely by the BBC. Canadian Bacon (1995), PolyGram, a Dutch company. Bowling for Columbine, Canadian money from Salter Street and Alliance Atlantis. So I decided a long time ago that I would have more freedom to say what I want to say if I wasn’t taking American money. Even this one started out with Australian money [from Mel Gibson’s Icon Pictures].

Scope: Do you think some day your filmmaking will be able to embrace a more international view of the world or is it necessary to continue speaking from an American perspective?

Moore: I wish it were that way, that I could be a world voice. I’ve wanted to make this film about Israel and the Palestinians for some time. But I’m trapped because things just keep getting worse in America, and what America does to the rest of the world keeps getting worse. How can I not deal with that? Very few Americans have been dealing with this, though, as you’re seeing, more documentaries and more people are doing these things. When Stupid White Men came out, there hadn’t been a book from that perspective on the bestseller lists from ages. I think you’d have to go back before Reagan to find a number one bestseller from the left. Now there are all these other books, and the more others can do it, the more I don’t have to. But I’m trapped by my own…I don’t know what the word is. It’s not my nationality, but I am an American and I pay taxes so I fund the invasion of Iraq. I’m partly responsible for it and I have to do something about it. But I would like also to be the other way.

Honestly, it’s different when these people applaud here in France or when Canadians respond to my work. Sitting there watching my movie, you already know a lot of what I’m saying. That’s not true for the American audience. We showed the film to a couple of audiences in Michigan and they were like this (Moore’s jaw drops). I was at the back watching them shake their heads and they weren’t shaking because they’re disagreeing—they’re going WHAAT? They’re kept in the dark. They’re not shown these things. Growing up 60 miles from Canada and watching the CBC as a kid gave us a whole different view of Vietnam than watching it through the American networks’ eyes. What you see on the nightly news now is not necessarily what we’re seeing.

Scope: What else do you hope?

Moore: I hope I’ve made an entertaining film and that for two hours you sat there and you laughed, even though you knew it. When Bush strikes the ball with the club after warning everyone about terrorism, I hope you laughed. And I hope some of you were moved by Lila and the reading of her son’s letter. I’m not like a lot of old-style documentary makers. Back then, you would go in first and do all these recordings on tape and get the whole story, then use that if you needed sound to cover picture. That was because you did it on film, which was 10 minutes per roll and $400 to buy and develop. So I would have known already what Lila was gonna say and what was in that letter. But I didn’t know—she’s reading that to me cold. I’m sitting there hearing him from the grave asking us not to return Bush to office. I was sitting there crying. I’m going, “Fuck! Stop! I can’t concentrate.” I was too broken up.

Scope: How did you find Lila?

Moore: We just started calling families of people who had died. They all were more than willing to talk and all going through their own transitions from being conservative people. It’s my hope that people who watch this film, like Lila, will go through a similar transition. You see it from that soldier who’s there with the nerve damage and he’s on morphine. He says, “I’ve been a Republican all my life—not any more.” When I went on tour with Dude, Where’s My Country, I saw that it was already percolating beneath the surface—this low-level anger of people starting to figure out they were lied to, that there were no weapons of mass destruction, that there was no connection between Saddam and Al-Qaeda. Regardless of their political stripes, they don’t like being lied to, especially if they’re working class or poor. They don’t want their kids over there dying for nothing. I think he’s doomed for what he’s done. He’s losing his own support.

Scope: How did you get the footage of the Christmas Eve raid?

Moore: That was shot by a freelancer who was already there and already embedded. I’m not sure if we contacted him or he contacted us, but he licensed the footage to us. The footage you see of Iraq we got a number of ways. There were people who were already embedded and totally independent who sold us footage. There were people we got embedded. Then there were people who were already there and contacted us halfway through and we made a relationship with them. There’s a whole variety of ways that we had to work around US government restrictions. We actually found a way to sneak me in, but what we couldn’t find was a way to sneak me out! So I had to get creative. With the celebrity thing, I’ve had to do that more because it’s hard for me now to get into places. So, for instance, that business conference in the film, obviously I can’t be in there. I have to be outside the building. We’ve got a two-way or it’s over the phone line or I’m some place else—there are any other number of ways that I don’t really want to discuss. I’m trying to direct a movie without physically being in the room. Otherwise, I’d be booted out.

Scope: What led to the decision to present the 9/11 attacks with a black screen?

Moore: When I interviewed the families of victims, they would all ask me, “Please don’t show that—you wouldn’t want to watch the death of your loved one over and over again like that.” The more I thought about it, the more I realized that people were probably thinking, “Michael Moore, he’s gonna get the real footage.” And I did. Of the bodies, of dozens and dozens of jumpers. And the plaza that’s just littered and strewn with bodies and body parts. But isn’t the reason we all like to go to the movies is to have our expectations confounded and to be taken places we don’t necessarily expect to go? I thought, “Why don’t I do the opposite of what people are thinking and not show it at all?” So there’s a minute and ten seconds of black. And I believe that sound is more powerful sometimes than the picture. Let people conjure their own images, which are sometimes more horrifying than the repetitive image of the plane going into the tower.

Scope: How long have you had footage of the soldiers humiliating prisoners?

Moore: We had that footage before the scandal broke. We were sitting on it trying to decide what to do with this footage. We had soldiers touching the private parts of the prisoner and joking around with the guys with the hoods over their heads. We were thinking, “We should just release this because it should be known.” But here’s where I get hemmed in by the celebrity part. The American press would rip me apart because here I am in April releasing this, before going to Cannes.

Scope: Another thing your opponents try to do is to discredit your films by saying you get your facts wrong.

Moore: That’s why I brought a fact-checking bible. It’s 400 pages but I have a 25-page version of it. Anything you need, any question you have, I will give you the documentation on it. My facts aren’t wrong. We can go through all my projects. After Roger & Me, total number of lawsuits against me: none. Total number on TV Nation: one, which we won against a company down in Texas that was spreading manure all over cow fields. Total number of lawsuits after two seasons of The Awful Truth: zero. I’m not even talking about winning or losing—just cases filed. I’ve written four books now. Total number of lawsuits against me on the books: zero. Total number of lawsuits on The Big One: zero. Total number of lawsuits on Bowling for Columbine: zero, until a few months ago. The brother of the guy who blew up the building in Oklahoma City says I tricked him into taking me into his bedroom to show me his gun. Believe me, if I had given the NRA any window to make me look bad—even to just file a nuisance suit to tie me up—do you think they’d stop for a second going after me?! They can’t because my films are airtight—they’re solid, they’re factually correct. This time, we hired the lawyer who is general counsel for the New Yorker and she brought in New Yorker fact checkers. I just said, “Tear this apart.”

I’m not going to allow the right to try to shift the debate from the issues. They cannot debate me on the issues. If I say, “There’s something wrong with having a quarter-billion guns in our homes,” that’s the issue. Debate me on that. They know I have the higher moral ground. What’s their debate gonna be? (In a redneck voice) “We need more guns!” They know they’re not going to win over public opinion, so they have to go after me by saying, “He brought that gun into the bank in that opening scene! He had to wait six weeks before he got that gun.” That was an absolute lie. On my website for Bowling for Columbine, I took each of the six big lies and put up the documentation and all the outtakes that show stuff that’s not in the film. I’m not going to tolerate this. I did have one wrong fact in Bowling for Columbine. I said that Willie Horton committed murder when he was out on furlough. He was a murderer before. He’s not a double murderer—he’s only a single murderer. He raped and attempted murder while he was out on parole. So I issued an apology to Willie Horton and his family for calling him a double murderer. That was the only fact wrong and it was corrected for the DVD.

Scope: You’re the most visible person on the left in the US. What’s the personal price of this position?

Moore: The personal price is that I have less privacy and I feel more of the burden that I spoke of: the feeling that I have to do this. In just two years, I’ve had Bowling for Columbine, Fahrenheit 9/11, Stupid White Men, and Dude, Where’s My Country? And I did a five-week show at the Roundhouse in London. This has taken a lot out of me and that has to change. I’m working around the clock, seven days a week, and not taking care of myself. Other than that, of course I get hate mail, and after the Oscars, there wasn’t a day that went by that someone didn’t threaten me on the street. I started losing weight last year because I was walking several miles a day, but I had to stop because each time I’d go out there’d be at least one person who’d get right in my face, want to start a fight, or would spit in my direction. Mostly, they’d just scream: “Fuck you! Fuck off! You fucker! Move to France, move to Canada, get outta here!” I was going through LaGuardia and some person comes up from behind me and says, “You should be exiled.” I said, “I’m glad you know the difference, because as a citizen I can’t be deported.” Even in their anger, they get the legal nuance correctly! But it changed. Look, they were deceived. As the old lady says in the film, we were duped. By the end of last summer, I went from pariah to prophet. I couldn’t walk down the street because people wanted to shake my hand.

Scope: Are there speculations that you didn’t allow yourself to include in Fahrenheit 9/11?

Moore: I just deal with the facts. Just the facts—what they are. I laid out what we know. Are other facts possible in the future? Sure.

Scope: Do you have your own theories?

Moore: I’ll answer this with a question: Have you ever seen the plane fly into the Pentagon? Now, how many times have you seen the planes fly into the World Trade Center? Now, there are at least a hundred video cameras recording things at the Pentagon. I’m not saying it didn’t hit it—it did. But why haven’t we seen that footage? Why doesn’t anyone ask for it? I’ve got two assumptions. There’s no factual basis behind it, it’s just a theory. Number one, it’s embarrassing. They were able to penetrate the military headquarters of the only superpower and they don’t want that footage being shown. Number two, common sense will tell you to fly a plane at 500 mph and to hit a target that’s five stories high, you’ve got to be really good. The person who flew that plane didn’t learn to fly at some dipshit flight training school in Florida on a videogame, okay? This is common sense, not a conspiracy theory. So I think that if we saw the tape, we’d see the skill of this individual, and that means that person was trained in the military.

And the question then becomes, which military trained him? I don’t have the answer, but you could start with the most obvious one, which would be the Saudi military, considering how 15 out of 19 of them were Saudis. I’m not saying Saudi Arabia as a government attacked America, but clearly there’s so much dissension and division within the Saudi regime. I’m just saying that this is how my mind works and why my films are the way they are. I start with a very simple question: “Where’s the plane that went into the Pentagon? Because there is footage—why won’t they show that to me? What will it tell me?” And I go from there.

Scope: Will you be adding anything else to the film before its theatrical release?

Moore: I have another powerful piece of footage that I think I will add before the film’s release. Actually, I have two pieces. They’re something no one else has.

Scope: Can you describe them?

Moore: If I give you a hint you’ll know. It’ll blow your mind. Ah, that’s just rock and roll talk.