FAHRENHEIT 9/11 - Notes
by Andre Soares
Fahrenheit 9/11 was voted best non-fiction film by the Broadcast Film Critics Association, Chicago Film Critics Association, Dallas-Ft. Worth Film Critics Association, Florida Film Critics Circle, Kansas City Film Critics Circle, Las Vegas Film Critics Society, New York Film Critics Circle, Online Film Critics Society, Phoenix Film Critics Society, San Francisco Film Critics Circle, Southeastern Film Critics Association, and Vancouver Film Critics Circle; also runner-up from the Los Angeles Film Critics Association
In April 2003, Mel Gibson’s Icon Productions rejected handling Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11 project. Moore later claimed that he had a signed contract with Icon before Gibson bowed out due to pressure from the Bush White House. Icon executives, however, deny that any such contract ever existed.
Fahrenheit 9/11 was the second documentary to win the Best Picture Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival, after Le Monde du silence / The Silent World in 1956.
Producing company Miramax was forbidden from releasing Fahrenheit 9/11 by its parent company, Walt Disney. When Michael Moore went public about the ban, Disney president Michael Eisner accused the director of cheap self-promotion, since the controversial documentary was to be shown at the Cannes Film Festival in a matter of days. Moore retorted that Eisner had vetoed the distribution of his film because the studio head was afraid that Florida governor Jeb Bush, George W.’s brother, would retaliate by axing tax breaks granted to Disneyworld and other Disney businesses in that state.
In an article for Slate.com, author Edward Jay Epstein states that Disney, which (through Miramax) sold the distribution rights to Fahrenheit 9/11 to Lions Gate and IFC, pocketed — after expenses — approximately US$46 million from the film’s theatrical release and DVD sales.
Fahrenheit 9/11 has been banned in Kuwait and in Saudi Arabia.
With more than US$220 million in worldwide ticket sales, Fahrenheit 9/11 has become the most financially successful documentary in history.
An illegal print of Fahrenheit 9/11 was aired on Cuban television in July 2004. Since the showing had not been sanctioned by the producers or the director, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences decided that the picture was to remain eligible in the documentary category.
Michael Moore, however, chose not to submit Fahrenheit 9/11 to the Academy’s documentary committee, since Moore wanted his controversial film aired on American television before the U.S. presidential election on November 5th. (At that time, an Academy rule prevented eligible documentaries — but not fiction films — from being shown on television until nine months after their initial theatrical release.) On his website, Moore stated that other worthy documentaries should get their share of attention, while adding that Fahrenheit 9/11 would still be eligible as Best Picture and in other categories.
Ultimately, Fahrenheit 9/11 failed to receive a single Academy Award nomination.
On November 1, an estimated 6.7 million German viewers, representing an 18.6% market share, watched Fahrenheit 9/11 in its first primetime showing on the commercial channel ProSieben, according to the ratings organization AGF/GfK. The documentary’s strong anti-Bush stance has been well received in Germany, where an overwhelming majority of the population opposed the Iraqi war. The film has amassed approximately US$7 million at the German box office, the second largest take for a documentary in that country, following Moore’s own Bowling for Columbine. Source: The Hollywood Reporter.
Fahrenheit 9/11was ineligible for a Writers Guild of America original screenplay award because in 2004 the WGA instituted a new "documentary feature" category. As a result, documentaries are not allowed to compete in the original screenplay category. In 2002, Moore won the WGA’s best original screenplay award for his documentary Bowling for Columbine.
In late March 2005, a New York Times article revealed that the FBI helped arrange chartered flights for dozens of well-connected Saudi nationals in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. As Michael Moore points out in Fahrenheit 9/11, among those the FBI helped leave the United States — without being interviewed before their departure and at a time when airplanes were grounded for almost everyone else — were several relatives of Most Wanted Man Osama bin Laden.
In Fahrenheit 9/11, Michael Moore alleges that the prominent Saudis were able to leave the U.S. because of the close ties uniting the George W. Bush White House and the Saudi Royal Family.
According to a Feb. 27, 2006, New York Times report by James Glanz, the U.S. Army "has decided to reimburse a Halliburton subsidiary for nearly all of its disputed costs on a $2.41 billion no-bid contract to deliver fuel and repair oil equipment in Iraq, even though the Pentagon’s own auditors had identified more than $250 million in charges as potentially excessive or unjustified." The same article states that Halliburton — a company with close ties to U.S. vice-president Dick Cheney — had been awarded the contract without competitive bidding. In Fahrenheit 9/11, Michael Moore accuses big American businesses of exploiting the war in Iraq to increase their profits.
Though officially a front in the Bush administration’s so-called "War on Terrorism," the occupation of Iraq has led to an explosion of terrorist attacks in that country. As a safeguard of sorts, Iraqis have begun buying terrorism insurance policies - the only such offerings in the world - that cover "the following dangers: 1) explosions caused by weapons of war and car bombs; 2) assassinations; 3) terrorist attacks." Source: Robert F. Worth’s Mar. 21, 2006, article "New Business Blooms in Iraq: Terror Insurance" in The New York Times.
Author Ray Bradbury has expressed his displeasure with Michael Moore, who adapted the title of Bradbury’s novel about censorship in a totalitarian state, Fahrenheit 451, without the author’s consent.
"The Iraq debacle ought to serve as a humbling lesson for future generations of American leaders — although, if our leaders were capable of being humbled, they could have simply looked back to Vietnam." New York Times Mar. 17, 2006, editorial
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Massachusetts National Guardsman Peter Damon, who lost both his arms in the Iraq war, has filed a US$85 million lawsuit against filmmaker Michael Moore. As per the lawsuit, Damon suffered "a loss of reputation, emotional distress, embarrassment and personal humiliation" because Moore included in Fahrenheit 9/11an interview clip in which the Guardsman appears to be voicing anti-war views. Damon says he was actually complaining of "the excruciating type of pain" from his injuries. He also asserts that Moore never asked him permission to use the clip. Via The San Francisco Chronicle, Jun. 1, 2006.
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"We estimate that as a consequence of the coalition invasion of March 18, 2003, about 655,000 Iraqis have died above the number that would be expected in a non-conflict situation." Gilbert Burnham of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in the United States. Via Reuters/Washington Post, Oct. 11, 2006.
Other sources estimate that approx. 40,000-50,000 Iraqis have died because of the conflict.
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Fahrenheit 451 is the temperature at which paper catches fire. According to Michael Moore, Fahrenheit 9/11 is the temperature at which freedom burns.
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