Here Comes Trouble (48 page)
Read Here Comes Trouble Online
Authors: Michael Moore
Tags: #Non-Fiction, #Philosophy, #Biography, #Politics
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
7.
This was in the days before instant replay, DVRs, and other devices that kept memories for you. In 1971, you were forced to use brain matter and to keep pleasure stored for long periods of time.
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?”
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