Hi all,

 

I went and saw Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11 in a packed theatre in Irvine, California over the weekend.  It was a 2:15PM showing that, despite the generally conservative Orange County atmosphere, managed to trigger two lines covering the theatre’s side of the shopping complex — one line for ticket holders, the other for ticket buyers — both for the same show time.  The line for the show following mine was twice as long on both sides.

 

People attending were mostly White and Asian, yet of many ages (MANY elderly, in fact).  People were crying, laughing, gasping and cursing at the screen for two solid hours.  The loudest they got was after the segment image of George W. Bush was shown attempting empathy with the parents of lost military personnel in Iraq and Afghanistan — people screamed obscenities in a visceral, pre-riot manner reminiscent of a WTO protest.  Haven’t seen anything like that in the community of Irvine before, and I lived there for 5 years.

 

During the film’s image of the Iraqi parent crying and screaming appeals to God in Arabic upon the loss of her child, a few Arabic or Mid-Eastern audience members (presumably) repeated her words in Arabic by yelling in the theatre.  I sense it was these same people, a few elderly Mid-Easterners, who were crying upon exiting the theatre.

 

Indeed, upon exiting, I hung out for a bit.  Fifty and sixty-something American parents were crying and cursing, while still a few guys were shaking their heads and complaining over anecdotes like showing the vapid Britney Spears and the use of the “Bonanza” TV-theme and image.  Certain people huddled and talked about how they felt like they needed to see it again in order to fully absorb the information presented in the film on items such as The Carlyle Group, Unocal’s pipeline project in Afghanistan, the post-Iraq-invasion energy conference coverage and other rarely publicly exhibited current affairs tidbits. 

 

I also spoke with the voter registration crew out in front of the theatre.  They informed me of the high value of registering for the November 2nd Presidential Election in a manner that would leave a PAPER TRAIL.  I.E. Registering via absentee ballot or being prepared to submit a paper ballot on election day.  Apparently, a voter machine company, local to Orange County, has been procured by the County for the elections…

 

Despite it’s “independent film” status and modest (by Spiderman, Dodgeball and White Chicks standards) national distribution, this movie was certainly an “event film”.  I would urge you to see it if you haven’t, and let other citizens know about it, especially any of your conservative friends, regardless of what anyone thinks of Moore.  There are certain indisputably important macro-economic and political issues touched upon in the film that I sense will rarely, if ever, appear in any prominent domestically produced audio-visual media product again.  I’m shocked yet impressed, frankly, that he was able to include some of these issues in the final cut.