In an interview with Piers Morgan, Michael Moore was asked a question from a Twitter user who pointed out the seeming incongruity of the filmmaker’s personal wealth and his criticism of capitalism. Morgan seemed intrigued by the line of questioning and pressed Moore on the issue. After saying “that’s not true” to the assertion that he’s worth millions, Mr. Moore had this to say:

Well, then, if you believe that about me, then that’s really something, isn’t it? That, even though I do well, that I don’t associate myself with those who do well. I am devoting my life to those who who have less and who’ve been crapped upon by the system. And that’s how I spent my time, my energy, my money on trying to upend this system that I think is a system of violence; it’s a system that’s unfair to the average working person of this country, and it was a mistake to ever give me a dime, from the day Time Warner, actually, gave me money to buy Roger & Me… I hope they rue the day that they ever allowed me up on the movie screens.

Mr. Moore has, in the past, charged up to $40,000 for speaking engagements.

Mr. Moore owns a $1.9 million dollar home in New York and a $1.2 million one in Michigan.

Mr. Moore has sued both the magazine Mother Jones and the Weinstein brothers, seeking $2 million and $2.7 million, respectively. The latter was for further compensation than his director’s fees for the 2004 blockbuster documentary ‘Fahrenheit 9/11′. The film’s production budget was $6 million.

Mr. Moore protests a smidgen too much.

Watch more of the interview here.

The Palme d’Or prize was accepted Sunday by two “Tree of Life” producers, Dede Gardner and Bill Pohlad, for the notoriously press-shy Malick, who has skipped all public events at the glamorous Cannes festival.

Malick is “infamously shy and low profile … (but) I know he would be thrilled with this,” Pohlad said.

“The Tree of Life,” which opens Friday in the United States, stars Brad Pitt, Sean Penn and Jessica Chastain in a far-flung story of family life that plays out against a cosmic backdrop, including glorious visuals of the creation of the universe and the era of dinosaurs.

Dunst won for her role in the end-of-the-world tale “Melancholia,” whose director, Denmark’s Lars von Trier, was banned from the festival after sympathetic remarks for Adolf Hitler at a movie press conference.

“Wow, what a week it’s been,” said Dunst, who plays a deeply depressed woman coping with her family’s foibles as a rogue planet bears down on a possible collision course with Earth.

“It’s an honor that is a once-in-a-lifetime thing for an actress,” said Dunst, who thanked festival organizers for allowing “Melancholia” to remain in the competition after von Trier’s Nazi remarks and offered warm words for her director. “I want to thank Lars for giving me the opportunity to be so brave.”

Von Trier was not allowed to attend Sunday’s ceremony.

Jean Dujardin claimed the best-actor prize for the silent film “The Artist,” in which he plays a 1920s Hollywood star whose career crumbles as talking pictures become the norm. In keeping with his singing, hoofing character, Dujardin did a little tap dance as he took to the Cannes stage.

Dujardin said he wanted to share his prize with co-star Berenice Bejo, who stood up and blew kisses at him on stage. The film was directed by Bejo’s husband, French filmmaker Michel Hazanavicius, who also directed Dujardin in the “OSS 117″ spy spoofs.

“I hope to make other silent films with you,” Dujardin told Hazanavicius.

Several well-received films, among them Spanish director Pedro Almodovar’s horror thriller “The Skin I Live In” and British filmmaker Lynne Ramsay’s “We Need to Talk About Kevin” went home empty-handed.

Malick, who has made only five films in a nearly 40-year career, previously won the directing prize in 1979 for “Days of Heaven” on his last trip to Cannes. “The Tree of Life” was shot three years ago and festival organizers had hoped to premiere it at Cannes last year, but it was not ready in time.

Prizes were awarded by a nine-member jury headed by Robert De Niro that included actors Uma Thurman and Jude Law.

“The Tree of Life” was the first American film to win top honors at Cannes since back-to-back recipients in 2003 (Gus Van Sant’s “Elephant”) and 2004 (Michael Moore’s “Fahrenheit 9/11″).

De Niro told reporters choosing the top winner was difficult because of the range and “great qualities” among the 20 competing titles but that “The Tree of Life” ultimately fit the bill.

“It had the size, the importance, the intention, whatever you want to call it, that seemed to fit the prize,” De Niro said. “Most of us felt the movie was terrific.”

The second-place grand prize was shared by Belgian brothers Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, two-time winners of the Palme d’Or, for their troubled-youth drama “The Kid With a Bike,” and Turkish director Nuri Bilge Ceylan for his meditative saga “Once Upon a Time in Anatolia.”

The third-place jury prize went to French actress-turned-director Maiwenn’s child-protection drama “Polisse.”

Despite a so-so reception from critics, von Trier’s “Melancholia” found favor with Cannes jurors.

“As far as I’m concerned, it’s one of the best films. I think it’s a great film,” said French director Olivier Assayas, a member of the jury.

Von Trier provoked a firestorm at the film’s press conference when he delivered rambling remarks about his German heritage in which he said he understood and sympathized with Hitler.

He also made wisecracks about Jews, comments that brought condemnation from Jewish and Holocaust groups and prompted Cannes organizers to boot him out, an unprecedented punishment for a filmmaker who won the Palme d’Or in 2000 with “Dancer in the Dark.”

Another Danish filmmaker, Nicolas Winding Refn, won the directing award for “Drive,” his action thriller starring Ryan Gosling as a Hollywood stunt driver caught up in a heist gone wrong. Refn gushed thanks for Gosling, who producers allowed to bring whatever director he wanted to make the film.

“He really wanted to make the movie and he really wanted to make it with me,” Refn said.

The screenplay award went to Israeli filmmaker

First, I see no problem with Moore suing the Weinsteins. If Moore’s audit showed irregularities, he should go after the dough. As someone who’s seen this very issue first hand, I can tell you that it is extraordinarily painful to see someone else spending your money on a big, expensive lunch, while smiling at you from across the table. Moore sued, they’ll likely settle, nobody will be happy, and in their unhappiness, they’ll all know they got a good deal.

But Mike Moore (and to some extent, the Weinsteins) has made a living espousing socialism and communism, wherein the government divvies up the money. You don’t like the result? Well, you can go fuck yourself, because you ain’t suin’ the government. And if you do, your monthly bag of government rice might come with a little hole in the bottom that allowed half of it to leak out during transit.

And that juxtaposition is what we in fly-over country most dislike about Hollywood. While we dig the music and the shallow celebrities we follow on TMZ and provide the bulk of the ticket receipts for the flicks, it’s the juxtaposition of big, rich guys using the system we espouse – where courts ARE one of the few Constitutional functions of government to help settle such disputes, and where we think Mike, Bob and Harvey should be able to make ungodly amounts of money and spend it however the hell they want – versus the ideology of slavish socialism they wish to inflict on those of us who can’t fly to Cannes on a private jet at any given moment.

It’s not just hypocritical (as my friend Penn says of hypocrites: “If someone does one thing and says another, it only doubles their chances of being half right”), but I think it’s immoral. It’s immoral to literally strive and campaign for your fellow Americans to lose their rights to do the things you have done to take yourself from being unemployed in Davison, Michigan to a “multi, multi-millionaire” (and let’s give Moore credit, he IS a self-made “multi, multi-millionaire”).

America can remain the place where you can say anything you want and even make a boatload of money doing it. We’re creative and innovate and brilliant. Sadly, now that he has everything he could want in life, Moore wishes to cast a cold, gray cloud of sadness over the shining city on the hill, so that no others may discover its wonderment.

And while the rest of us try to scrape by, Moore still wants his movie check.

Disney is famously apolitical. In fact, it probably prides itself as an anti-political organization. For years its calling card has been producing family oriented fare that would be welcome in any American household.  Indeed it famously declined to distribute Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11, which Moore managed to turn into a David v. Goliath story about censorship and corporate greed. This allowed the millionaire filmmaker to find another large corporation to distribute the documentary… whilst getting huge publicity railing against large corporations.  Disney managed to survive this potential blow to their non-political reputation and saved their brand.

But tomorrow, it appears, Disney will be suspending those principles and will engage in political programming. To mark Earth Day the channel is carrying a raft of programs which push the Green/Environmental agenda.

Why would the company that stood up to Michael Moore be willing to make such a bait and switch?  My best guess is that these shows will not appear to be political programming.  But this is a fallacy.  One of the great victories for environmentalists in recent memory is that they have been able to portray environmentalism as apolitical.  And this will be on full display tomorrow on Disney Channel.

Banning fossil fuels or pushing recycling or opposing dams or mining projects are deeply, deeply political actions. They damage communities, they chase jobs out of the country and they tell people where and when they can work and even if they can keep their jobs. When the likes of James Cameron flies to an impoverished region to stop a dam, he may feel good about himself but this means many people will suffer without clean water or cheap electricity.

Environmentalism is politics at its most basic.

Disney and America need to understand this

****

FROM THE EDITORS: Here are some more details into what is actually going on.  From the fan site Disney Dreaming:

Playhouse Disney will encore green-themed episodes of “Mickey Mouse Clubhouse,” “Handy Manny,” “Special Agent Oso,” “Imagination Movers” and “Jungle Junction” (8:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m., ET/PT).

Joe Jonas and Demi Lovato star in two new Disney’s Friends for Change: Project Green spots stressing the importance of protecting the planet’s oceans and waterways (6:25 p.m. and 6:55 p.m., ET/PT). Throughout the evening, Disney Channel will encore Disney’s Friends for Change: Project Green anthem, “Make A Wave,” performed by Jonas and Lovato, which will also be featured in the upcoming Disneynature film “OCEANS,” opening in theaters Earth Day 2010.

Disney Channel continues its Earth Day celebration with encore presentations of environmentally-themed episodes of hit series “Phineas and Ferb,” Hannah Montana,” “The Suite Life On Deck” and “Wizards of Waverly Place,” followed by an encore presentation of Disney Channel Original Movie “Minutemen” (6:00-10:00 p.m., ET/PT).

Of course, we haven’t seen any of the shows yet and there is certainly a chance Disney will have managed the politicize our kids’ television programming in a tasteful and educational way, but just in case they let us down, here are where we anticipate landmines:

-Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, 7:30am: Goofy is accidentally cloned.
-Special Agent Oso, 8am: Oso helps Joshua recycle.
-Imagination Movers, 9:30 am: The Movers teach our preschoolers how to save energy.
-Handy Manny, 9am: The Earth Day Challenge; Manny’s truck engine is replaced.
-Jungle Junction, 10 am: When Taxicrab’s cactus begins to wilt, he takes it back to the desert; Carla helps Crocker create a compost heap.

If these programs are political, as we suspect they will be, Disney Channel will be not only be targeting our kids, but our kids too young to attend school.  Only kids kindergarten-age or younger (as well as out elementary schoolers taking a “Mental Health Day”) will be home from school at 10am when Carla teaches The Crocker the importance of composting.

Make sure to keep an eye out for environmentalism in Disney Channel’s prime-time line up as well, as some of the shows that target older audiences might also have some green messaging.  As we learned two years ago, there isn’t anything cooler than “change.”

As always, we trust our readers to help us cover the Disney Channel, so let us know what you saw.

But you will look in vain for a DVD of the extraordinary and controversial Disney/ABC miniseries The Path to 9/11. 

Disney President and CEO Robert Iger

A $30+ million project that aired without sponsors on two September nights in 2006, The Path to 9/11 dramatized the historical thread that connected the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, Islamic attacks on American interests throughout the ‘90s, and the terrorism of that fateful morning in 2001. 

Prior to its premiere, the producers at ABC were so proud of the impending project that they had high hopes of airing Path every 9/11 anniversary and showing it in schools across this country as an engaging educational tool – until an accusation of “conservative bias” (horrors!) on the part of the filmmakers quickly spun into liberal hysteria that the project was actually a “well-honed propaganda operation” on the part of a secretive, right-wing network-within-a-network. 

(Honestly, how divorced from reality must one be to believe that a supposed stealth cabal of conservatives could conspire to get a $30+ million miniseries green-lit in Hollywood? That’s damn near impossible for liberals to achieve. The whole outrageous story is narrated in John Ziegler’s inimitable style in his riveting documentary Blocking the Path to 9/11.) 

Clinton administration alumni, fearing the miniseries would highlight their flaccid response to the growing threat of Islamic extremism and tarnish their political legacy, pulled out all the stops to suppress it. The show very nearly wasn’t aired at all – Robert Iger and Disney were pressured by the Senate Democratic leadership, led by Harry Reid – it hasn’t aired since, and today you cannot even obtain it on DVD.

And why not? Disney President and CEO Robert Iger explains without elaboration that it’s a “business decision.” Oh, well then, case closed. Not only does he refuse to re-air The Path to 9/11 or release a DVD, but he has no intention of even selling the DVD rights to another company. I’m no financial wizard, but I can recognize that, as business decisions go, willfully taking a $30+ million bath on your product when there is a vast audience hungry for it and distributors making offers, is not one of the more lucrative marketing strategies I’ve ever heard of. 

Tom Borelli, however, is not baffled by this business plan. Director of the National Center for Public Policy Research’s Free Enterprise Project and a Disney shareholder, Borelli knows that this has less to do with a “business decision” and more to do with an ABC television project that drove former President Bill Clinton to near-apoplexy in his infamous interview with Chris Wallace, and which by extension is perceived to be a threat to the political future of Mrs. Clinton. Borelli has pointed out that Iger has been a steady Clinton donor since before the former first lady was elected to the Senate, and has accused Iger of protecting Hillary’s presidential campaign at the expense of shareholders. (Path screenwriter/producer Cyrus Nowrasteh himself was told privately by an ABC executive that “If Hillary weren’t running for President, this wouldn’t be a problem.”)

Borelli has publicly pressured Iger at shareholders’ meetings and twice made formal offers to purchase the DVD rights, only to be ignored. He has become such a thorn in Iger’s side over this apparently touchy issue that, after Borelli finished a presentation at one shareholders’ meeting, the Disney chief responded to Borelli’s outstretched hand with an obscenity that would have set Mickey Mouse’s bow tie spinning. Borelli promptly returned to the podium and announced what had just happened, to the astonishment of the shareholders. A publicly cursing Disney head honcho more closely resembles a South Park parody than the squeaky-clean image Walt’s company has cultivated for many decades. 

And how has this corporate self-sabotage and political favoritism affected Mr. Iger’s standing in the industry? Well, this Saturday night, the Directors Guild of America will honor him with their Honorary Life Member Award at the 62nd Annual DGA Awards. The Award is given “in recognition of outstanding creative achievement, leadership in the industry, contribution to the DGA or to the profession of directing.” Past recipients have included Walt Disney, Darryl F. Zanuck, Barry Diller, and Jack Valenti. 

Tom Borelli

I can’t speak for how Mr. Iger has “contributed” to the DGA or to the profession of directing, but “leadership in the industry”? I would think that the most basic requirement of business leadership in the entertainment industry would be to ensure the highest possible profit for your company and its shareholders, not to suppress a product with significant market potential to protect your political friends. Above and beyond that, real leadership would be to stand behind one of the finest docudramas in television history, and to assert the primacy of free speech in the face of an hysterically politicized campaign for censorship. As Mr. Nowrasteh wrote in the Wall Street Journal: 

Corporate timidity is preventing millions of Americans from finding The Path to 9/11 on DVD – though other politically controversial movies are readily available, such as Loose Change, which argues that the Bush administration targeted American citizens for death in an elaborate and sinister plot; or Michael Moore’s unabashedly biased Fahrenheit 9/11. These highly-charged movies, which don’t even offer a pretense of balance, and others can be found online or in retail outlets and DVD rental stores across the country.

And so they should be – just as The Path to 9/11 should be.

Oh, you can be certain Moore’s fellow travellers in the entertainment media will try: “It’s the 5th highest grossing political documentary of all time!” But that’s like saying , “This is the fifth best car accident I’ve had this month!” A good rule of thumb is that after theaters take their cut, 55% of ticket sales make it back to the studio, and there’s no way $8 million is anything more than a sea of red.

After peaking with a near $120 million domestic take for “Fahrenheit 9/11″ in 2004, Moore’s subsequent fall from box-office grace has been sharp. 2007’s “Sicko” cleared a disappointing but respectable $24.5 million, “Captain Mike Across America” was so sure to lose money Moore ended up distributing his ego trip for free under the guise of a populist giveaway, and now “Capitalism” — which was about as timely as one could hope — makes about two-thirds of what ”Sicko” did and is unlikely to do very well in foreign markets.

Like DVD sales, Moore’s stock is plummeting. In a 50/50 country conservatives and we Red State Rubes aren’t necessary for box office success. Two million is a generous estimate of “Capitalism” ticket buyers, which means that less than 3% of the 66.8 million who voted for Barack Obama bothered.  

Like most everything political that comes out of Leftist Hollywood these days, even Leftists aren’t interested. No one enjoys propaganda or being spoon-fed dishonesty. Just because they vote for hollow slogans, empty promises and class warfare doesn’t mean they want to spend an evening with it. 

With his cherry-picked ”facts,” absurd arguments, and heavy reliance on emotional appeals and absurd stunts, Moore’s greatest achievement might be in exposing the only real way a Leftist can argue their case, but the fifty-five year old progressive muckraker appears to have lost his mojo … even with his base. Which only goes to prove that…

Capitalism works.

On the last day of the June session, the Supreme Court unexpectedly decided to order a rehearing of our case in order to reexamine two cases that are the pillars of some of the more restrictive provisions of campaign finance law, and that, I believe, are unconstitutional infringements on the First Amendment. 

Beginning with its decision in Austin v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce in 1990, the Supreme Court has systematically chipped away at the First Amendment’s protection of political speech, culminating in 2003 with McConnell v. FEC, the decision to uphold the McCain-Feingold Act.  These decisions have so restricted the right to participate in the political process that during the original oral arguments in our case, the government actually took the position that the First Amendment does not prohibit the government from censoring books that contain phrases such as “Vote for Candidate X” and are commercially published soon before an election.  

Think about that for a moment.  We, as a country, have reached a point where our government has asserted that the Constitution permits it to jail the CEO of a company for commercially publishing a book critical of a politician standing for election!  

I understand that many filmmakers in Hollywood are anathema to the films that I produce, and frankly, thinking about some of the people that inhabit that city, I’m comfortable with that sentiment.  What I am not comfortable with, however, is the idea that the government believes that it has the right, the ability, and the power to tell any of us what we can and cannot say in our films. 

Many Hollywood liberals who read about my case simply dismiss it as a film that criticized a member of an exalted Democrat family.  They see it, like the Federal Election Commission does, as a long campaign ad that should be banned from the airwaves.  What they don’t realize, however, is that if they do not stand up for the First Amendment today, it may not be there to protect them when they need it.  Regulating speech, especially political speech, is a very slippery slope fraught with unintended consequences. 

In our case, Citizens United produced Hillary The Movie, a documentary that focused on Hillary Clinton from an unabashedly conservative point of view.  We released our film in January of 2008, but the Federal Election Commission prohibited us from advertising the film on television and radio or showing the film through cable “On Demand” services.  We were allowed to make the film but were prohibited from telling anyone that it existed via broadcast advertising, and even those who would have sought out the film in an “On Demand” format were denied that opportunity to see it.  

While we may be pioneering the legal argument, we are hardly the first filmmakers to be censored by the Federal Election Commission.  Most people are not aware of this as the incident was not well publicized, but in 2004, shortly before banning Citizens United from advertising our first film, Celsius 41.11, Michael Moore was forced to take down his television and radio ads for Fahrenheit 9/11. If Michael Moore, the most commercially successful documentarian of our time can fall victim to government censorship, any filmmaker can. 

Denying me the ability to promote or broadcast my film is functionally the same thing as prohibiting me from making it in the first place.  If a film plays in an empty theatre because I’m not allowed to advertise it, or if viewers are denied the ability to watch on television, isn’t that pretty close to banning it outright?  Whether the documentary is anti-Bush, pro-Obama, or critical of a Clinton should make no difference.  Speech, and political speech above all else, should be protected. 

This issue is non-partisan.  People from across the political spectrum have every right to participate in the political process in whatever peaceful form they choose.  Groups as varied as the California Broadcasters Association, ACLU, the AFL-CIO, the Chamber of Commerce, the NRA, and the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press have all joined in fighting for the First Amendment rights of every filmmaker and every citizen.  

I am optimistic that the Supreme Court will side with the First Amendment in this case, but if we fall short, people must be aware of the dangers of this law and the extremes to which the government seems to be willing to go.  This is not simply a case about my organization’s right to air a documentary, this is about all of our rights to participate in the political process, and no one should give that up without a fight.  Citizens United Productions will release our 15th feature documentary this fall and we are determined to continue to exercise our right to free speech.

–

We’ve seen this film many times before from Mr. Moore. The Bush years were kind to him as he tapped into the fears of Americans as they questioned the post 9-11 world, or worried whether there were bogey men hiding in the front offices of America. Now, he’s able to exploit the recession and all the hardships we endure in one great big Mike Moore spectacular! In Moore’s world, free enterprise is unfair, health care is unfair, the 2nd amendment is unfair, life is unfair, paychecks, layoffs, mortgages and democracy itself is unfair — and America is the bad guy. 

While I was in the thick of working on media for George W. Bush’s re-election campaign, Fahrenheit 9/11 was released. A twenty-something who had been working for me went to see it one weekend. Thoughts raced through my head: “Was he a Michael Moore fan?” “does he really believe Moore’s outrageous conspiracy theories?!”  These thoughts quickly vanished when he strolled in the next morning and said, “My friends and I laughed. It was kinda funny — nobody actually believes all that crap.” Just another way to blow off some time on a Saturday night, go have some chuckles (after all it’s only sarcasm, which is the only way I can explain John Stewart’s popularity, come to think of it).

Let’s face it: Moore is one of the most successful documentary filmmakers of all time. But he’s done it by becoming the P.T. Barnum of the left, if you will. In the end, Moore’s message is just another second-rate side show for suckers-born-every-minute. And, boy, do those suckers buy tickets! No worries, though —  his over-the-top, skewed sensibilities are usually a bridge too far for most Americans. He’s regularly exposed by critics as horribly cherry picking his facts and heavily manipulating interviews. Moore’s stale formula is all so predictable, he even said it himself: “This issue informs all my other movies. I started thinking if I can only make one more movie – I started thinking this of course during the Bush years – what would that movie be?” Why, to insult America, of course! Bravo Michael Moore, you’ve outdone yourself again!

It’s all fine and dandy for Moore — he spends his spare time directing music videos for best-selling chart toppers like Rage Against the Machine and R.E.M. He’s sending his kid to private school. He owns a couple of homes.  His speaker’s fees for preaching the ills of capitalism usually runs tens of thousands of dollars per speech. And, sure, he can spot a greedy capitalist when he sees one — they’re his neighbors. He wrote, “I walk among them. I live on the island of Manhattan, a three-mile-wide strip of land that is luxury home and corporate suite to America’s elite….. Those who run your life live in my neighborhood.” Gee, Mike — next time you bump into them at the clubhouse, tell ‘em all us little people said ‘hi.’

Now, Moore works the glitterati circuit in Venice, Italy hobnobbing and schmoozing the press. He reveals his capitalism slam-piece may be his last documentary. Can we be so lucky?  But of course! Moore wants to direct features — after all, everyone knows that’s where the real money is!

Yet overseas, where big action films often earn 60% or more of their ticket sales, rah-rah American sentiment doesn’t play well. So those references have vanished from the advertising.

Big Hollywood’s John Nolte gave that theory a thorough fisking, providing numbers showing that while “rah-rah America” movies aren’t guaranteed big foreign box-office returns, they aren’t automatically guaranteed to fail. He also points out that many “anti-rah rah” movies have even less appeal.

Oh, is it still okay to say “foreign?” Just checking, seeing as many schools are replacing “foreign language” departments with World Language departments. We’re all just one, big, happy World Family, right?

Okay, back to the topic at hand. John’s post got me to thinking. If anti-war movies such as “Rendition” and “A Mighty Heart,” despite the hype and the A-list star roster didn’t bring in the beaucoup bucks, how about anti-American movies made by one of the biggest anti-Americans on the planet, Michael Moore?

Moore has made a career bashing everything essentially American while reaping the benefits of living in the (for now) freest nation on earth.  As we “all know” how much Europeans despise Americans, it’s almost a given that Moore’s films would break all foreign - oops, world box office records. Let’s take a look at the numbers:

Roger & Me: $1,000,000
Bowling for Columbine: $36,432,405
Fahrenheit 9/11: $103,252,111
Sicko: $11,515,086

Let’s cut MM some slack with “Roger and Me” – he was hardly a brand name in America at that time, let alone anywhere else. He starts to inch up the scale with “Bowling for Columbine.” The Columbine killings made headlines around the world, and naturally Euros were eager to know all about the curious American fascination with firearms – and of course, these things never happen over there, right?

Moving on to “Fahrenheit 9/11,” Moore was at the top of his game. The movie garnered an Academy Award and took the top prize at Cannes - yet it only took in $103,252,11 overseas. Come on, I thought everyone hated Bush and his crummy war – which is now Obama’s war, so it’s okay. Even “National Treasure,” starring the not-so-versatile Nicolas Cage, did better.But, my stars – domestic box office for ”Fahrenheit 9/11″ was only  $119, 194,771. Don’t people know quality filmmaking when they are told about it by their Hollywood betters?

Then, numbers for “Sicko,” considering Moore’s er, hefty star power, plummeted. Either foreign, I mean, worldmoviegoers were turned off by the sight of Moore putting on a rubber glove for that anal probe, or they knew from personal experience that his love fest for socialized health care ain’t all it’s cracked up to be. Or perhaps Europeans have figured out that Moore is a master of manipulation and don’t like being played.

So if the biggest “anti-rah rah” movie maker can’t match the overseas numbers (or even the domestic ones) of the likes of the films John points out, and some he didn’t point out, like ”Iron man,” what’s the anti-American left in Hollywood to do?

Why, make another anti-American film, of course! Or in this case, a film that pretty much trashes everything that makes Western civilization tick. Moore’s next project, due out in October, is entitled “Capitalism: A Love Story.” According to Moore:

It will be the perfect date movie. It’s got it all – lust, passion, romance and 14,000 jobs being eliminated every day. It’s a forbidden love, one that dare not speak its name. Heck, let’s just say it: It’s capitalism.” And, the movie focuses on “the disastrous impact that corporate dominance and out-of-control profit motives have on the lives of Americans and citizens of the world.

Does that mean we get to see it for free? I doubt it – Moore has his stock portfolio, Manhattan penthouse and ten-acre Michigan waterfront estateto worry about. Just an everyday schlub like you and me, trying to pay the bills in an unjust world. The ever-present baseball cap says it all. And no, he’s not even hiding an embarrassing bald pate like Ron Howard.

As the Brits would say, Mike’s dead chuffed at the fact that GM is now in the hands of the government. I can’t wait to see him put his money where his mouth is, and drive one of those little PUMAs we’ve heard so much about.

You know, considering how recent elections all over Europe showed a decided tilt to the right, I wonder how well MM’s new movie will do? We’ll have to wait and see.

–

From the USA Today:

The still untitled film, which opens Oct. 2, will zero in on the corporations and politicians he says caused the global financial crash.

Wall Street robber barons are Moore’s new on-screen enemy.

“The movie is not going to be an economics lesson; it’s going to be more like a vampire movie,” the filmmaker jokes. “Instead of the main characters feasting on the blood of their victims, they feast on the money. And they never seem to get enough of it.”

When the collapse walloped the country last September, Moore says he knew not only that it would matter to regular people, but also that the inherent decadence was ripe for his style of satire.

“If you go to see my movies, even if you don’t agree with everything in the movies, you’re going to have a good laugh,” Moore says. “I want them to walk out at the end saying ‘Wow, that was something!’ And in this case, maybe they also walk out asking the ushers, ‘Um, excuse me. Where are the pitchforks and torches?’”

Moore’s cinematic hey-day has hopefully passed. ”Sicko” made less than 25% of what “Fahrenheit 9/11″ cleared, and Moore’s last film, a love letter to himself, ended up being distributed on “Captain Mike’s” website … free of charge.

Admittedly, while I agree with nothing Moore stands for, that doesn’t mean he’s not a talented filmmaker. During the summer of 2007, the summer of the terrible threes: Spider-Man 3, Shrek 3, Oceans 3, Bourne 3, Pirates 3… “Sicko” was the rare entertaining bright spot.

As propaganda, however, “Sicko” failed and then some. If anything, the film’s lack of intellectual firepower and comically absurd portrayal of Cuba’s health care system probably set the socialized medicine cause back a few years.

As chance would have it, at the very moment Moore was summoning everything he had to convince me to back his cause, I was awaiting final test results regarding a spot on my lung. A big one. Combine my family history of cancer and my personal history of alarmism and you got yourself one sorry s.o.b. ready to renounce everything he’s ever stood for if it means just one more day of life. But even with the Grim Reaper sharing my tub of popcorn, Moore’s engaging but profoundly stupid propaganda piece only increased my gratitude for our wildly imperfect health care system.

The spot on my lung turned out to be nothing, by the way. But I am closer to Jesus.