CANNES, France (AP) — U.S. filmmaker Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11," a scathing indictment of White House actions after the September 11 attacks, won the top prize Saturday at the Cannes Film Festival.
"Fahrenheit 9/11" was the first documentary to win Cannes' prestigious Palme d'Or since Jacques Cousteau's "The Silent World" in 1956.
"What have you done? I'm completely overwhelmed by this. Merci," Moore said after getting a standing ovation from the Cannes crowd.
Source: CNN
I was hoping Moore would win. But, all I want to do is be able to SEE it. Thanks Michael Eisner! Moron. The Weinsteins might privately buy it, but when can I see it?
Originally posted at Breaking Windows.
Article comments
— go to most recent comments1 - Maradona
good good michael moore won....now the americans should apologise to the french for the good advice they gave regarding to the usa b4 the war :) ...if i had my way,the american soldiers who abused the iraqis like graner and sivitis and england and sabrina should be given severe beatings around the clock...then placed in prison and the key thrown away...only then justice will be done to dumb americans...
2 - Jim Carruthers
Excuse me, Maradona, but doesn't fish rot from the head down?
All show trials do is perpetuate a fraud. While the guilty take off stage left.
3 - RJ Elliott
"now the americans should apologise to the french for the good advice they gave regarding to the usa b4 the war :)"
Maybe the US should apologize to the pacifists for failing to take their good advice regarding WWII...
"if i had my way,the american soldiers who abused the iraqis like graner and sivitis and england and sabrina should be given severe beatings around the clock...then placed in prison and the key thrown away...only then justice will be done to dumb americans..."
So...we should punish prison abuse by...abusing prisoners? Yeah, that makes sense...
4 - Steve
It is not surprising that Michael Moore's "Farenheit 9/11" received a standing ovation in Cannes, from a crowd that consists of mostly French Europeans and liberal, anti-Bush Americans.
Until I have the opportunity to examine the allegations, the sources, and the journalistic integrity of the film, I cannot comment on its' content, but I must begin as a skeptic. It is well documented that Michael Moore has been known to stretch the truth and outright lie both in film and in interviews on more than one occasion, and he makes no pretense of having an anti-Bush, anti-conservative agenda in making this "documentary."
It always amazes me the extent to which people on all sides of a political issue intone the "truths" that support their previously held agenda and conveniently disregard the rest.
5 - Natalie Davis
the us should apologize to the pacifists (and so many other humans) for a seemingly infinite number of reasons...
congrats to mike moore! just bought bowling for columbine for my nephew and with any luck, he and i can see fahrenheit 9/11 together soon.
6 - RJ Elliott
Bowling For Columbine was full of lies. You knew that, right?
7 - Natalie Davis
i know that moore is flawed. i also know that the "lies" are in premises he sets up -- the major facts presented are, indeed, facts. even his egomania doesn't stop him from getting facts right. my nephew, a most intelligent and honorable 19-year-old progressive, knows all this too. both of us are measured in our support for moore.
8 - RJ Elliott
He pretty much lied several times in BFC. Eric Olsen has posted a link which itemizes the fraud. I cannot refer you to the link, but maybe he can...
9 - Natalie Davis
Not necessary. I read it long ago.
10 - RJ Elliott
Then why do you still believe this putz (MM) has anything of value to say?
11 - Natalie Davis
Because Moore does have valuable things to say, whatever his flaws and whether Eric or you like him or not. The fact that you would ask me that shows me that you have no interest in what Moore gets right, and that tells me it's not worthwhile discussing the matter with you.
12 - RJ Elliott
Look, Moore hates Bush. That's fine. So does 1/3rd of the USA.
But I detest lies. Moore lies quite frequently. His movies are based on lies. So I can't see why anyone would put any stock in him.
That's all.
13 - Natalie Davis
But there's no denying the truth behind the facts -- and I find them endelessly valuable. More valuable, in truth, than most anything coming from the mouth or keyboard of the great majority of Republicans and faux progressives and those who cleave to the mainstream. YMMV -- no surprise there.
Similarly, your Bush lies. From his address last night: "The terrorists and Saddam loyalists would rather see many Iraqis die than have any live in freedom. But terrorists will not determine the future of Iraq.''
Excuse me, but didn't that phrase come from the mouth of a terrorist who seems hellbent on determining the future of Iraq?
Moving on, Mr. Elliott, how do you know that Moore hates Bush? That is quite the presumption. To criticize the Shrub and his policies and his myriad flaws or to define him accurately is one thing; hating him is quite another. Even telling him to fuck off (as Moore did in Stupid White Men) does not necessarily mean that one hates him -- I say that to Spousal Unit all the time.
Frankly, I am sick and tired of the right-wing defining the emotions/positions of those from other persuasions.
14 - Al Barger
There's a major underlying issue of DISHONESTY with Moore that disqualifies him from any credibility whatsoever. This is not because he's a liberal, but because he is a LIAR.
By that, I don't mean that he spins things peculiarly, but rather that he makes up stuff that didn't happen, and readily and systematically misrepresents things that did.
Natalie's purely silly here:
Similarly, your Bush lies. From his address last night: "The terrorists and Saddam loyalists would rather see many Iraqis die than have any live in freedom. But terrorists will not determine the future of Iraq.''
Excuse me, but didn't that phrase come from the mouth of a terrorist who seems hellbent on determining the future of Iraq?
There's no rational basis for an accusation of "lying" there. There are apparently some number of insurgents and general terrorists bent on causing misery for as many people as possible.
That she simply chooses to willfully misapply the label to President Bush does not constitute a "lie" on his part.
And she's simply being dishonest with this stuff about not knowing whether Moore hates Bush. I mean, come on.
When I hear someone praising Michael Moore at this point, it mostly indicates to me that they are more interested in having their left wing hatred stoked than they are in considering F-A-C-T-S or serious proposals for how to actually run the country.
15 - Segredo Absoluto
Michael Moore lies doesn´t kill people. Bush´s lies do.
16 - Mark Edward Manning
To anyone who has any figment of a brain at all, Michael Moore is a bitter, lying punk who will do anything to make Americans look bad, especially abroad where his books sell better than in the U.S. itself.
To all those who say the Americans were dumb and should be beaten 24/7: They are disgraced and should be dishonorably disharged from the military, employment prospects severely diminished. But two wrongs don't make a right. People like Maradona like to gloss over this fact, caught up in soul-consuming anti-Americanism as they are.
It has come to light that Polish soldiers contributed to the Iraqi POW abuse. So, Maradona, let's hear your best Pollack jokes. C'mon, you know you want to ...
17 - Josh Wills
>Michael Moore lies doesn?t kill people.
Yes they do. He encourages anti-american hatred in an age of mass terror. Essentially, he is the Nazi Jew-baitor in 1938 Germany.
Moore fosters hatred, bigotry and stereotypes. He's a hatemonger demigogue.
http://moorestinks.blogspot.com
18 - Mark Saleski
question:
Do conservatives still watch black & white TV's?
just curious.
19 - Josh Wills
Moore ridicules 9/11 victims:
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=30367
"Moore went into a rant about how the passengers on the Sept. 11 planes were scaredy cats because they were mostly white," Alibhai-Brown writes. "If the passengers had included black men, he claimed, those killers, with their puny bodies and unimpressive small knives, would have been crushed by the dudes, who as we all know take no disrespect from anybody."
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=9104
More bizarre still are Moore’s theories about the attacks of September 11, an event that has plunged the filmmaker into an agony of cognitive dissonance, an ideal breeding ground for the paranoid conspiracy theories that come so naturally to him. In hundreds of letters, interviews, and articles, Moore shows no sign of having read the first thing about al-Qaida, militant Islam, or the Middle East. That hasn’t stopped him from concluding that bin Ladin is no danger. â€"Ooh . . . he’s everywhere,†he joked at Stanford University, waving his arms bogeyman-like. â€"Usama bin Ladin—he could be here tonight!†â€"What if there is no terrorist threat,†he has asked, and the Bush administration simply wanted an excuse to curtail civil liberties while it pursued its corporate interests?
Moore seems to forget his own stoking of fears of terrorism. â€"There is a rage building in this country, and if you’re like me, you’re scared shitless,†he wrote in Downsize This!. â€"I believe thousands of Americans are only a few figurative steps away from getting into that Ryder truck,†like the one packed with explosives by Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh. Terrorism by downsized white Americans is one thing: that’s scary. But external threats by foreign terrorists? It just cannot be. â€"Many families have been devastated tonight. This is just not right,†Moore wrote on September 12, 2001, as the World Trade Center and the bodies of 3,000 lay in smoking ruins. â€"They did not deserve to die. If someone did this to get back at Bush, then they did so by killing thousands of people who DID NOT VOTE for him. Boston, New York, D.C., and the planes’ destination of California—these were the places that voted AGAINST Bush.†In Moore’s Manichaean world, if Republicans alone had died on September 11, they would have had it coming.
Moore’s moral stupidity, so ratcheted up by September 11, is likely to drive his next film, a documentary about the â€"twin errant sons of different oilmenâ€â€”George W. Bush and Usama bin Ladin. The filmmaker is hoping to release the movie, called Fahrenheit 9/11, a few months before the presidential election, to â€"make sure that Bush isn’t returned.†All signs point to his usual techniques—facts stripped of context and detail, dark insinuations, and outright lies, all leavened by pop music and Strangelovian irony.
Tracing some of Moore’s recent comments, one can piece together the argument—or rather the hazy impressions, for Moore never constructs an argument—that will make up this so-called documentary. Moore will insinuate that the United States created Usama—â€"or USA-ma, which is more appropriate considering we trained him to be a terrorist.†He will tell us that in the late nineties the oil firm Unocal held a meeting with Taliban representatives in Houston, â€"when Bush was governor,†to talk about building a pipeline through Afghanistan. He will imply that this project was the reason the U.S. gave humanitarian aid to the Taliban, until â€"the deal went south,†and â€"suddenly the Taliban were evil.†And thus, Michael Moore will finally reveal the awful truth that only he is courageous enough to admit about why the United States really went to war with the Taliban.
20 - Mac Diva
Lord! We now have college students, and, presumably, college graduates, who do not know what creative license is. What Michael Moore is doing is well within literary traditon. Tristram Shandy, anyone? If Moore were purporting to be Edward R. Murrow, then he could be held accountable for not sticking to the facts. Journalists have a duty to do so. But, that is not what Moore is claiming to be doing at all. He is blending fact and fiction to reach a result that he believes conveys a greater truth than can be reached with just one of the two. Many of the world's best artists have done the same thing.
21 - Mark Saleski
it just cracks me up to see people get the 'ole bulging forehead vein about moore's 'lies' when folks like ann coulter, sean hannity and bill o'reilly do it on a daily basis.
22 - Mac Diva
I don't recall the name of the person who set up the drive to try to have Moore's Oscar revoked, though I blogged it at the time. Perhaps it was Josh Wills. Perhaps not. Anyway, Wills has a site totally dedicated to attacking Moore. It is called, in a show of the profound intelligence and endless insight we are coming to expect from him, "Michael Moore Stinks." Explains the shrillness and reference to the far Right opinion rags Front Page and WorldNet Daily.
Obviously, Moore is doing something right if he has the troglodyte faction in such a frenzy.
23 - John
Two words for Moore: Fat idiot.
I'm amazed at how all of these celebrities and wanna-be's do all of their anti-american shit on foreign soil.
24 - Mac Diva
Is that a threat to harm Michael Moore, John?
25 - John
Where did you read a threat idiot!!!