Michael Moore

IT SEEMS LIKE the Bush administration is bowling for Michael Moore's head. Hopefully, they'll throw a gutter ball. Last week, it was announced that the Treasury Department is investigating filmmaker Michael Moore for going to Cuba as part of his new documentary "Sicko," which will debut this month at the Cannes Film Festival. In March, Moore took several 9/11 first responders who allegedly developed chronic respiratory problems due to toxic conditions at Ground Zero to Cuba for medical care.

FILMMAKER/agitator Michael Moore may not have much nice to say about George W. Bush, but he also once referred to Bill Clinton as a "sad, pathetic man. " But if you were expecting nasty glares Sunday when Moore shared a breakfast podium at BookExpo America with former Clinton Secretary of State Mad-eleine Albright, think again. Their dislike of Bush united them. Noting the success of his book "Stupid White Men," Moore mocked Bush for backing a tax cut that primarily helps wealthy people . . . like Michael Moore.

MICHAEL Moore's anti-Bush documentary "Fahrenheit 9/11" premiered at the Cannes Film Festival yesterday and received a 15-minute standing ovation. "You see so many movies after they've been hyped to heaven and they turn out to be complete crap, but this is a powerful film," said Baz Bamigboye, a film columnist for London's Daily Mail. "It would be a shame if Americans didn't get to see this movie about important stuff happening in their own backyard. " While Moore is usually a key player in his films ("Bowling For Columbine," "Roger & Me")

IN AN EFFORT to once again mobilize irate Republicans to storm the polls and vote against any candidate he may support, Michael Moore plans a follow-up to "Fahrenheit 9/11," to be ready in two to three years. Moore told Daily Variety the film will be called "Fahrenheit 9/11 1/2. " "Fifty-one percent of the American people lacked information (in this election) and we want to educate and enlighten them," Moore said in yesterday's Variety. "They weren't told the truth. We're communicators and it's up to us to start doing it now. " The problem, as Tattle now sees it, isn't that 51 percent of Americans lacked information in the last election.

GUESS WHERE I spent Monday afternoon? Some clues: Mine was the only "W" bumper sticker in the parking lot. I stood in a ticket line next to one middle-aged woman whose legs have never seen a razor, and another wearing a Ben & Jerry's shirt. Seated next to me was a guy with "Squash Hunger" emblazoned across his chest, and all around me were Birkenstocks. Was I at: a) church; b) Great Adventure; c) the National Constitution Center; or d) a theater showing "Fahrenheit 9/11"? I know.

Is Michael Moore not a nice man? Could Moore be a boor? The New York Daily News reports that the portly director of the dissentious anti-Bush documentary Fahrenheit 9/11 was unutterably rude to CNN staffers Monday in Boston after he gave an interview on the Democratic National Convention's main floor for the cable channel's American Morning show. To be on the floor, you need a coveted, priceless credential - and only a limited number are distributed. CNN gave Moore a floor pass so he could do the interview.

When the Bloodhound Gang - whose multi-platinum body of work includes the album Hooray for Boobies and songs such as "A Lap Dance Is So Much Better When the Stripper Is Crying" - takes a political stance, you know the 2004 presidential race isn't your typical quest for executive power. The group allowed Michael Moore to use the frat-house anthem "Fire Water Burn" at several points in his Fahrenheit 9/11 for considerably less than its normal licensing fee. The band, fans of Moore's ability to simultaneously incite, educate and entertain, didn't need much convincing, particularly given the film's negative portrayal of President Bush and the war on terror.

Sara Berg praised filmmaker Michael Moore for not releasing publicly an interview with her brother, Nick Berg, whose videotaped beheading by Islamic extremists was shown on an Arabic Web site. The approximately 20-minute interview, shot during the making of his documentary Fahrenheit 9/11, has added to the mystery surrounding the life and death of Nick Berg, a West Chester businessman. "It's an incredible coincidence, isn't it?" said Sara Berg by phone from Virginia. In another coincidence, while studying at the University of Oklahoma in Norman, Nick Berg's e-mail password was obtained by someone who passed it on to Zacarias Moussaoui, who is awaiting trial on charges of assisting in the Sept.

If you judge a man by those who fear him, then Michael Moore is wicked powerful. To whisper the name of the guerrilla filmmaker in the corridors of corporate America is to hear executives howl in terror. Moore's target is corporate greed, and with Roger & Me, his 1989 documentary about how General Motors fiddled around moving plants to Mexico while Flint, Mich., got burned, Moore struck a bull's-eye. A man for all media with the Emmy-winning TV Nation and the bestseller Downsize This!

When President Bush called on Americans to "finish the work of the fallen" in Iraq, he did not reckon that filmmaker Michael Moore would answer. Moore has more than answered. He has responded with a vengeance in Fahrenheit 9/11, a blistering polemic that charges the administration with aiding war profiteers in Iraq while failing its soldiers, and was reportedly conceived expressly to drive Bush from the White House. No, no, that wasn't the main objective, corrects Moore by phone from New York, where he's readying Fahrenheit for its national rollout on Friday.

The most shocking thing we learn in Michael Moore's new movie is that the notorious lefty agitator wasn't always a rebel. Flashback biography of his blue-collar upbringing in Flint, Mich., shows Moore to be a contented kid who worshipped his autoworker dad and admired the Catholic priests from whom he received his sense of social justice, and whom he cites for his thesis in "Capitalism: A Love Story" - that all capitalism is evil. OK, but where were the nuns? I ask because Moore is known for two things - the religious fervor of his class activism and his accompanying lack of discipline.

Since losing his Senate seat, Pennsylvania's Rick Santorum has been wearing a lot of hats. He's a consultant, public speaker, television commentator, businessman and Inquirer columnist. And yesterday, he appeared before the breakfast meeting of the Pennsylvania delegation to the Republican National Convention to promote a movie, coming soon to a theater near you. The film, An American Carol, opens Oct. 3 "in theaters everywhere," as the saying goes. Made from an explicitly conservative point of view, it's a takeoff on the work of leftist filmmaker Michael Moore; actor Kevin Farley plays the Moore role.

Michael Moore, who's not exactly built like David Beckham, is using a soccer metaphor. The portly documentarian - who discovered "these things called fruits and vegetables," and began a walking regimen, when he was making Sicko, his stirring screed against America's health-care industry - wants us to follow him as he dribbles, kicks and trots. "I'll be the first one to take the ball down the field here," he says. "But people have got to come along. And that's why, in this film, I expect the audience to be the protagonist, not me. " In Sicko, unlike his groundbreaking 1989 doc Roger & Me, or his Oscar-winning 2002 doc Bowling for Columbine, the baseball-capped Michigander doesn't go waddling into the marbled lobbies of corporate America demanding face time with the CEOs.

Michael Moore, who's not exactly built like David Beckham, is using a soccer metaphor. The portly documentarian - who discovered "these things called fruits and vegetables," and began a walking regimen, when he was making Sicko , his stirring screed against America's health-care industry - wants us to follow him as he dribbles, kicks and trots. "I'll be the first one to take the ball down the field here," he says. "But people have got to come along. And that's why, in this film, I expect the audience to be the protagonist, not me. " In Sicko , unlike his groundbreaking 1989 doc Roger & Me , or his Oscar-winning 2002 doc Bowling for Columbine , the baseball-capped Michigander doesn't go waddling into the marbled lobbies of corporate America demanding face time with the CEOs.

IT SEEMS LIKE the Bush administration is bowling for Michael Moore's head. Hopefully, they'll throw a gutter ball. Last week, it was announced that the Treasury Department is investigating filmmaker Michael Moore for going to Cuba as part of his new documentary "Sicko," which will debut this month at the Cannes Film Festival. In March, Moore took several 9/11 first responders who allegedly developed chronic respiratory problems due to toxic conditions at Ground Zero to Cuba for medical care.

SUBJECTIVE documentarian Michael Moore has a new movie due this summer. And the federal government is unwittingly going to help him promote it. Or is wittingly trying to sabotage it. Depends on your point of view. The Associated Press reports that Moore is under investigation by the U.S. Treasury for taking ailing Sept. 11 rescue workers to Cuba - the U.S. has a trade embargo restricting travel to Cuba - for a segment in "Sicko. " "Sicko" purports to go after the health-care industry the way "Fahrenheit 9/11" went after President Bush.

Filmmaker Michael Moore has set up two $2,500 annual scholarships for students "who have done the most to fight for issues of student rights" at California State University, San Marcos, the school that canceled his talk in October, when administrators said the school could not spend state money to finance partisan political activity. A rep for the college refused to comment on the merits of the scholarship, which encourages student dissent. "Mr. Moore has the right to do whatever he wishes to do," Rick Moore (no relation)

Sorry, folks, but award-winning filmmaker, self-promoter extraordinaire, and champion bloviator Michael Moore ain't going away. Now that President Bush has recaptured the White House, Moore says he will continue to docu-taunt Bush and his administration with Fahrenheit 9/11 1/2. (That's clever! Though it could trigger eyestrain) Moore tells Variety magazine that he'll start shooting the sequel posthaste for an '06 or '07 release. "Fifty-one percent of the American people lacked information [in this election]

IN AN EFFORT to once again mobilize irate Republicans to storm the polls and vote against any candidate he may support, Michael Moore plans a follow-up to "Fahrenheit 9/11," to be ready in two to three years. Moore told Daily Variety the film will be called "Fahrenheit 9/11 1/2. " "Fifty-one percent of the American people lacked information (in this election) and we want to educate and enlighten them," Moore said in yesterday's Variety. "They weren't told the truth. We're communicators and it's up to us to start doing it now. " The problem, as Tattle now sees it, isn't that 51 percent of Americans lacked information in the last election.

Perhaps it was inevitable. The scene of President Bush reading The Pet Goat while the World Trade Center was under attack has been reborn as a DVD menu loop. Put on the new Fahrenheit 9/11 DVD, and there's the menu page, a continual vamp of the President having the news of the attack whispered in his ear. There he sits in front of the second-grade class. He's biting his lip. Picking up the book. Opening the book. Pursing his lips. Staring off into space. Aides whisper to each other.