The first festival turned out to be in Telluride, Colorado, over Labor Day weekend. The festival paid my way (as I was truly broke by then). Some of my crew got out there and back on the money they’d raise by hawking handmade silk-screened T-shirts and buttons of the movie’s logo on the streets of Telluride.
The week before the festival I went into a panic that I had picked the wrong title for the film. I called up the festival organizer, Bill Pence, and told him that I was changing the name of the film to Bad Day in Buick City.
“No, you are not,” he said quite forcefully into the phone. “The name of this film is the one you gave it—Roger & Me—and that’s the perfect name. You’re not changing it. Besides, we already sent the program guide to the printer.” I was bummed out but afraid to say anything else. I hung up the phone.
When I arrived in Telluride and was handed the program guide, I noticed something awful: the festival had decided to schedule my opening at the same time as their big opening night gala film, The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover by the British director Peter Greenaway. The opening gala film would be held in the town’s historic Opera House. My film would have its “world premiere” in Masons Hall down at the other end of town. Masons Hall! Was I supposed to feel good about this? Like, be thankful it’s not the Kiwanis? Or, God forbid, the Elks Lodge? I tried to see all the positives in that. Well, I mean, after all, who was I? No one here knew me, I had never made a movie, and, let’s be honest: it was a documentary! So I guess I understood why its opening was being buried. Oh well.
Before the Telluride Opening Night Gala, the town blocks off the main street and throws an opening night party for all the filmmakers and passholders to the festival. My sisters and their husbands and kids had driven all the way from San Diego—they were following through on their promise to each other to be there in Telluride to catch me when I fell. My crew and I showed up to the party early and availed ourselves of the free food (while selling more buttons and T-shirts). It was then that I spotted the film critic, Roger Ebert, who, along with his TV co-host Gene Siskel, were the most well-known film critics in the country. I decided to approach him and invite him to my movie.
“Hi,” I said. “My name is Michael Moore. I’m from Flint, Michigan, and I have a film here in the festival. It’s called Roger & Me. And I’d really love for you to see it!”
“I am going to see it—tomorrow at noon at the Nugget Theater,” Ebert responded, as he reached for another hors d’oeuvre. I was impressed that he already knew about me!
“Well, it’s going to have its world premiere tonight, in about an hour, at Masons Hall. I’d love for you to be there.”
“Thank you, but I have tickets for the opening night gala at the Opera House.”
“That’s what I figured, but I think you should be at the very first screening of my movie. I think you’ll really like it. And you can say you saw it here first!”
“Like I said, I have tickets to the opening. I’ve already spent something like eight hundred dollars for them.”
“But Roger,” I pleaded, using his first name as if we knew each other, something that he clearly didn’t like. “I just know you will want to be at the premiere of this. You haven’t seen anything like it. It’s about the Midwest where we’re both from. It—”
He cut me off.
“Listen,” he said pointedly, “I said I would see it tomorrow and I will, and that is that. And now if you’ll excuse me.” And with that, he walked away from me, perturbed, annoyed, maybe even pissed: Who was this jerkoff from Flint bugging the shit out of me?
I felt like an idiot. Now, I’d be lucky if he even came tomorrow, let alone end up liking the movie. Why did I have to slide into that stalker voice? Oh, the desperation that was painted like a billboard across my face!
One of my buddies who worked on the film, Rod Birleson, tried to console me. “Don’t worry, Mike. He said he’d come tomorrow and he will. He probably appreciated your enthusiasm.”
“Yeah,” I said. “The enthusiasm of a serial killer.”
The street party was drawing to a close, and the well-heeled were heading into the Opera House for the gala. The rest of us wandered down to the end of Main Street, to where the Order of Masons meet, to unspool our masterpiece.
Remarkably, when we got to the “theater,” even though we were put up against the opening night film, the place was packed.
About five minutes before showtime, I looked out the window of the hall and saw a lone figure, a stout man, waddling down the street toward Masons Hall. It was none other than Roger Ebert. He walked in the door and saw his stalker standing there.
“Don’t say a word,” he ordered, putting his hand up and averting his eyes from mine. “I’m here. That’s all that needs to be said.”
“But—” I said, disobeying him—and being cut off by him in the same instant.
“I’m only here because there was this strange look in your eyes, a look that told me maybe I better be there. So here I am.” He went into the theater and took the last available seat, three rows from the back. No pressure now.
I went in and took my seat in the last row. My sisters had positioned themselves on each side of my seat so they could both sit directly next to me, to comfort me in their role as the good sisters that they were (and are), to be there for me in my moment of impending embarrassment and failure. The lights in Masons Hall began to dim, and as the theater went dark, Anne and Veronica each grabbed a hand of mine and held it tightly. All would be well, no matter what.
At that moment, the music began and the title of the film appeared on the screen.…
Michael Moore is a filmmaker and author. He was born in Flint, Michigan.
Notes
Epilogue: The Execution of Michael Moore
1. I am still banned from one of these networks for liberating their footage of Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz licking his comb, and George W. Bush making faces and clowning around just seconds before he went live on national TV to announce the bombing and invasion of Iraq.
2. It went on to become the largest-grossing documentary in the history of cinema, and the largest-grossing Palme d’Or winner ever (a list of winners that included films like Apocalypse Now and Pulp Fiction).
3. Right-wing groups and talk-show hosts weren’t the only ones behind the attacks. Corporate interests began to spend large sums of money to stop me. When I announced that my next film would be about health care in this country, a consortium of health insurance companies and drug manufacturers formed a group to try and stop the film, mainly by spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on a disinformation campaign intended to discredit me and the film. And if that plan didn’t work, then they would do what they had to do to “push Michael Moore off the cliff.” Wendell Potter, the vice president of CIGNA Insurance, blew the whistle on this to the journalist Bill Moyers and in his own book, Deadly Spin.
A Holy Thursday
4. She did not use the F word. I just thought it would be cool if she did.
The Exorcism
5. Yes, in the more violent future that lay ahead of us, this sort of thing would have resulted in my expulsion and jail time. But in 1969, it was just funny.
Zoe
6. I was a practicing Catholic who went to Mass every Sunday. But this is what I believed: Human life begins when the fetus can survive outside the womb. Until then, it is a form of life, but not a human being. A sperm is life (after all, it’s not swimming with a battery pack on its back), an egg is life, a fertilized egg is life, a fetus is life—but none of these are a human being, none of these are human life—just as a seed or a stem is not a flower. When you are born, you are a human being. That’s why your driver’s license lists your birthday as the day you came out of your mother’s womb, not the day you were conceived. Some people, I guess, just like to be the uterus police, the bossypants of other women’s reproductive parts. And that has always struck me as really, really weird.
Two Dates
Hot Tanned Nazi
8. Less than a decade later this book would become an inspiration for a young man and his Ryder truck full of fertilizer in Oklahoma City.
Parnassus
9. That, um, never happened. With their massive amounts of drug-related violence, they did start to resemble America’s inner cities.
10. In 2010, Barack Obama appointed Jim Kolbe to his Advisory Committee for Trade Policy and Negotiations. The reader can draw his or her own conclusions.
Gratitude
11. Ron Shelton would go on to write and direct Bull Durham and White Men Can’t Jump, and Roger Donaldson would direct the remake of Mutiny on the Bounty (“The Bounty”) and the Kevin Costner thriller No Way Out.
12. When the movie was released, the White House called the production office and asked if a print of the film could be sent up to Camp David for the weekend, as the president wanted to have a screening for the family of the movie Kev worked on. I tried to get invited to this, but that was not going to happen. I later asked Kevin if he’d heard anything. “I think they admired my camera work,” he said in typical fashion. “Otherwise I guess it was pretty silent.” I told him that someone from the studio heard that there was one family member who really loved it and was howling hysterically throughout. “Apparently it was one of Bush’s sons,” he said. And apparently the laughter may have had some pharmaceutical assistance (yes, his name was George, too). I told the studio rep, “It must be sad to be the son of the president and then end up never amounting to much?”
ALSO BY MICHAEL MOORE
Nonfiction
Dude, Where’s My Country?
Stupid White Men
Downsize This!
Anthologies and Guides
Mike’s Election Guide 2008
The Official Fahrenheit 9/11 Reader
Will They Ever Trust Us Again?: Letters from Soldiers
Adventures in a TV Nation (with Kathleen Glynn)
Stories
Also By Michael Moore
Title Page
Dedication
A Note from the Author
Frontispiece
Epilogue: The Execution of Michael Moore
Crawling Backwards
Search Party
The Canoe
Pietà
Tet
Christmas ’43
A Holy Thursday
The Exorcism
Boys State
Zoe
Getaway Car
Two Dates
Twenty Names
Milhous, in Three Acts
Crisis Intervention
A Public Education
Raid
Bitburg
A Blessing
Abu 2 U 2
Hot Tanned Nazi
Parnassus
Gratitude
About the Author
Copyright
Copyright © 2011 by Michael Moore
All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
Grand Central Publishing
Hachette Book Group
237 Park Avenue
New York, NY 10017
www.HachetteBookGroup.com
www.michaelmoore.com
First eBook Edition: September 2011
Grand Central Publishing is a division of Hachette Book Group, Inc.
The Grand Central Publishing name and logo is a trademark of
Hachette Book Group, Inc.
The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not
owned by the publisher.
“Subdivisions” words by NEIL PEART
Music by Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson
© 1982 Core Music Publishing
Used by Permission of Alfred Music Publishing Co., Inc.
All Rights Reserved
Dialogue from the film Stardust Memories, used with permission
from its writer/director Woody Allen
e-ISBN: 978-1-455-50857-0
eBook production by Dave Cramer (Hachette Book Group) in Greenfield, Massachusetts
Table of Contents
Also By Michael Moore
Title Page
Dedication
A Note from the Author
Frontispiece
Epilogue : The Execution of Michael Moore
Crawling Backwards
Search Party
The Canoe
Pietà
Tet
Christmas ’43
A Holy Thursday
The Exorcism
Boys State
Zoe
Getaway Car
Two Dates
Twenty Names
Milhous, in Three Acts
Crisis Intervention
A Public Education
Raid
Bitburg
A Blessing
Abu 2 U 2
Hot Tanned Nazi
Parnassus
Gratitude
About the Author
Copyright
Table of Contents
Also By Michael Moore
Title Page
Dedication
A Note from the Author
Frontispiece
Epilogue : The Execution of Michael Moore
Crawling Backwards
Search Party
The Canoe
Pietà
Tet
Christmas ’43
A Holy Thursday
The Exorcism
Boys State
Zoe
Getaway Car
Two Dates
Twenty Names
Milhous, in Three Acts
Crisis Intervention
A Public Education
Raid
Bitburg
A Blessing
Abu 2 U 2
Hot Tanned Nazi
Parnassus
Gratitude
About the Author
Copyright
Here Comes Trouble Page 35