Michael Moore

I saw John Dean interview Michael Moore at UCLA last night. I won't get into the politics (it was a friendly Los Angeles audience), but he did have a funny story about how Fahrenheit 9/11 was funded.

The folks at Icon, a film production company in Australia, loved his Bowling For Columbine documentary and wanted to fund his next one. The owner of Icon, Mel Gibson, was in Italy shooting his own movie. When he came back to Australia, he asked what was going on at the company. He freaked out when he learned what Michael Moore was filming, and, on Passover, called Moore's agent, Ari. They decided that Icon would not fund the movie, so, on Passover still, Ari called the Weinstein brothers over at Miramax and an agreement was quickly reached. That went well for a year and a half until Michael Eisner, who runs Disney and oversees Miramax, freaked out. I think you may know the rest, but basically the Weinsteins formed their own company to distribute Fahrenheit 9/11.

By the way, Bowling for Columbine was originally going to be a diary of Michael Moore running for President of NRA and then dismantling it. Didn't quite end up that way.