Mike's Message [May 6, 2004]

Friends,

Last night the ghost of Walt Disney hovered over me in a dream. I said, “Go back to hell where you belong, you child-molesting Nazi sympathizer!” This morning, I woke up with a chill in my bones, and not just because my butler had accidentally turned the central air down to 65 degrees. Note to self: Find a better butler.

I’d hoped by now that I would be able to put my work out to the public without having to engage in a self-serving, highly coordinated media campaign that depicts me as an innocent victim of rapacious corporate censorship. But as often happens in the lives of martyrs, circumstance has once again forced me into the spotlight that I so dread.

Yesterday, or possibly six months ago, I was told that Disney, the studio that owns Miramax, has officially decided that it will prohibit the distribution of my new film, Fahrenheit 911. This film, which, by the way, is hilarious, shockingly reveals that George W. Bush’s family has shady connections with Saudi elite families, including the bin Ladens. It’s obvious to me that Michael Eisner is afraid I’ll compromise the profitability of Disneyland Riyadh, slated to open on September 10th of this year.

The whole, unbiased story to extinguish my, no, our vital voice will be told in the hours, days, and months ahead, as the buzz around my film continues to grow out of proportion with its importance. The struggle to make Fahrenheit 911, and, indeed, the struggle of my entire life, is a testament to the suffering a great artist must endure to affect political change in a bourgeois democracy. All I can say is, thank God for the thousands of hours of TV interviews I’ve done to help keep my message alive. Otherwise, the world might not know the name Michael Moore. And that would be the greatest tragedy of all.

There is much more, but right now I’m eating a delicious breakfast of Ding-Dongs covered with chocolate milk. That’s the kind of all-American food that I won’t be able to get during the next month, when I take my film to Cannes and other international festivals, all the while spinning myself as the one person on Earth unafraid to tell the truth about America. I’ll accept the standing ovations on behalf of us all.

My film rocks! You can’t stop it! You can’t stop the truth! After all, we live in the greatest country in the world, don’t we? Or do we?

Yours,
Michael Moore