Here Comes Trouble

by Michael Moore

  But one night in 2004, he accidentally fired off a round inside his home from one of his AK-47s. A neighbor heard the shot and called the police. The cops arrived and found the treasure trove of weapons, ammo, and bomb-making materials. And his hit list. And off to jail he went.

  I got the call some days later from the security agency.

  “We need to tell you that the police have in custody a man who was planning to blow up your house. You’re in no danger now.”

  I got very quiet. I tried to process what I just heard: I’m… in… no… danger… now.

  For me, it was the final straw. I broke down. I just couldn’t take it anymore. My wife was already in her own state of despair over the loss of the life we used to have. I asked myself again, What had I done to deserve this? Made a movie? A movie led someone to want to blow up my home? What happened to writing a letter to the editor?

  It seemed that my crime was bringing questions and ideas to a mass audience (the kind of thing you do from time to time in a democracy). It wasn’t that my ideas were dangerous; it was the fact that millions suddenly were eager to be exposed to them. And not just in the theater, and not just at lefty gatherings. I was invited to talk about these ideas on… The View! On The Martha Stewart Show. On Oprah—four times! Then there’s Vanna White, turning the letters of my name on Wheel of Fortune. I was allowed to spread the ideas of Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn, of I. F. Stone and the Berrigan brothers, everywhere. This drove the Right totally batshit crazy. I didn’t mean for that to happen. It just did.

  And so the constant drumbeat against me grew louder, with conservative talk radio and TV describing me as something that was subhuman, a “thing” that hated the troops and the flag and everything about America. These vile epithets were being spoon fed to a poorly-educated public that thrived on a diet of hate and ignorance and had no idea what the word epithet meant. Here’s Bill O’Reilly making a crack to Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, live on his Fox News TV show, in February of 2004:

  “Well, I want to kill Michael Moore. Is that all right? All right. And I don’t believe in capital punishment—that’s just a joke on Moore.” Ha ha.

  As the months wore on, even after Bush’s reelection, the campaign to stop me only intensified. When Glenn Beck said over the airwaves that he was thinking of killing me, he was neither fined by the FCC nor arrested by the NYPD. He was, essentially, making a call to have me killed, and no one in the media at that time reported it. No FCC commissioner condemned it. It was simply OK to speak of me in this manner over the public airwaves.

  And then a man trespassed on our property and left something outside our bedroom window when I wasn’t home. It terrorized my wife. He even videotaped himself doing this. When the police investigated, he said he was making a “documentary.” He called it Shooting Michael Moore. And when you went to his website, and the words Shooting Michael Moore came on the screen, the sound of a gunshot went off. The media ate it up, and he was asked to be on many TV shows (like Sean Hannity’s). “Coming up next—He’s giving Michael Moore a taste of his own medicine! Moore now has somebody after him!” (Cue sfx: KA-BOOM!) He then provided video and maps of how to not only get to our house, but how to illegally get onto the property. He failed to mention, though, what the ex-SEALs would do to you when they caught you.3

  And now a man from Ohio had drawn up plans and gathered the necessary materials to do to our house what Timothy McVeigh did in Oklahoma City.

  “He’ll be going away to prison for a long time, Mike,” the security chief reassured me. “The reason that he and others always fail is because of the systems you have in place.”

  “And because he had a nosy neighbor who called the cops,” I added.

  “Yes, that too.”

  I will not share with you the impact this had, at that time, on my personal life, but suffice it to say I would not wish this on anyone. More than once I have asked myself if all this work was really worth it. And, if I had it to do over again, would I? If I could take back that Oscar speech and just walk up on the stage and thank my agent and tuxedo designer and get off without another word, would I? If it meant that my family would not have to worry about their safety and that I would not be living in constant danger—well, I ask you, what would you do? You know what you would do.

  For the next two and a half years, I didn’t leave the house much. From January 2005 to May 2007, I did not appear on a single television show. I stopped going on college tours. I just took myself off the map. I wrote the occasional blog on my website, but that was pretty much it. The previous year I had spoken on over fifty campuses. For the two years following that, I spoke at only one. I stayed close to home and worked on some local town projects in Michigan where I lived, like renovating and reopening a closed-down historic movie palace, starting a film festival, and trying to sleep at night.

  And then to my rescue rode President Bush. He said something that helped snap me out of it. I had heard him say it before, but this time when I heard him, I felt like he was speaking directly to me. He said, “If we give in to the terrorists, the terrorists win.” And he was right. His terrorists were winning! Against me! What was I doing sitting inside the house? Fuck it! I opened up the blinds, folded up my pity party, and went back to work. I made three films in three years, threw myself into getting Barack Obama elected, and helped toss two Republican congressmen from Michigan out of office. I set up a popular website, and I was elected to the board of governors of the same Academy Awards that had booed me off the stage.

  And then Kurt Vonnegut invited me over to his house one night for dinner. It would be one of four dinners I would have with him and his wife in the final year of his life. The conversations were intense, funny, provocative—and they resuscitated me, literally breathed life right back into me, and brought me back to a place in the world.

  He told me he had been observing for some time “the crucifixion” (as he called it) that I was experiencing—and he had a few things he wanted to tell me.

  “The extremes to which the Bush people have gone to get you, they directly correlate to just how effective you’ve been,” he told me over his third after-supper cigarette one night. “You have done more to put the brakes on them than you realize. It may be too late for all of us, but I have to say you have given me a bit of hope for this sad country.”

  One night I went to his house and he was sitting out on the stoop by himself waiting for me. He told me that he had stopped contemplating the “meaning of life” because his son, Mark, had finally figured it out for him: “We’re here to help each other get through this thing, whatever it is.” And that’s what he was doing for me.

  Vonnegut had, in his final years, turned to writing nonfiction.

  “This has been my greatest challenge,” he told me, “because the current reality now seems so unreal, it’s hard to make nonfiction seem believable. But you, my friend, are able to do that.”

  We went for a walk to meet his wife and some friends for dinner. I asked him if any of this—the writing, the movies, the politics—was worth it.

  “No, not really,” he replied in typical Vonnegut style. “So you might as well quit complaining and get back to work. You have nothing to worry about. No harm will come to you.” And then, realizing I might not be buying it, he added with the voice of God: “SO SAYETH I!” I stood there on East Forty-eighth Street looking at this mad son of Mark Twain and broke down into laughter. That was all I really needed to hear. If not the voice of God, then at least a gentle plea from Billy Pilgrim. And so it goes.

  That night he gave me one of his drawings with the inscription, “Dear Iraq: Do like us. After 100 years let your slaves go. After 150 let your women vote. Love, Uncle Sam.” He signed it, “For Michael Moore, my hero—KV.”

  I came back alive. I chose not to give up. I wanted to give up, badly. Instead I got fit. If you take a punch at me now, I can assure you three things will happen: (1) You will break your hand. That’s the beauty of spending just a half hour
a day on your muscular-skeletal structure—it turns into kryptonite; (2) I will fall on you. I’m still working on my core and balance issues, so after you slug me I will tip over and crush you. It won’t be on purpose, and while you are attempting to breathe, please know I’ll be doing my best to get off you; (3) My SEALs will spray mace or their own homemade concoction of jalapeño spider spray directly into your eye sockets while you are on the ground. I hear this is excruciatingly painful. As a pacifist, please accept my apologies in advance—and never, ever use violence against me or anyone else again. (SERMON ALERT)

  Only cowards use violence. They are afraid that their ideas will not win out in the public arena. They are weak and they are worried that the people will see their weakness. They are threatened by women, gays, and minorities—minorities, for chrissakes! You know why they’re called “minorities”? Because they don’t have the power—YOU do! That’s why you’re called the “majority”! And yet you’re afraid. Afraid of fetuses not coming to term, or of men kissing men (or worse!). Afraid someone will take your gun away—a gun that you have in the first place because you’re… afraid! Please, please, for the sake of all of us—RELAX! We like you! Heck, you’re an American!

  One night in Aventura, Florida, I took my new buff self, along with a friend, to the mall alongside the William Lehman Causeway to see a movie. A young guy in his thirties passed by me, and as he did, he had this to say: “Shithead.”

  He continued on his walk. I stopped and turned back toward him.

  “Hey! You! Come back here!”

  The guy kept walking.

  “Hey, don’t run away from me!” I shouted louder. “Don’t be a chicken. Come back here and face me!”

  “Chicken” is a dish not well served to the gender with testosterone for their fluid. He abruptly halted, turned and headed back toward me. As he got five feet from me, I said the following in a gentle voice:

  “Hey, man—why would you say such a thing to me?”

  He sneered and steeled himself for a fight. “Because I know who you are, and you’re a shithead.”

  “Now, there you go again, using that word. You haven’t the foggiest idea who I am or what I’m really about. You haven’t even seen one of my movies.”

  “I don’t need to!” he replied, confirming what I already suspected. “I already know the anti-American stuff you put out there.”

  “OK, dude, that’s not fair. You can’t judge me based on what someone else has told you about me. You look way smarter than that. You look like a guy who makes up his own mind. Please watch one of my movies. I swear to God, you may not agree with all the politics, but I can guarantee you that (1) you will instantly know that I deeply love this country; (2) you will see that I have a heart; and (3) I promise you’ll laugh quite a few times during the film. And if you still wanna call me a shithead after that, then fine. But I don’t think you will.”

  He calmed down, and we talked for at least another five minutes. I listened to his complaints about the world, and I told him that we probably have more that we agree on than disagree on. He relaxed even more, and eventually I got a smile out of him. Finally, I said I had to go or we were going to miss our movie.

  “Hey man,” he said, holding out his hand to shake mine. “I’m sorry I called you that name. You’re right, I don’t really know anything about you. But the fact that you just stopped and talked to me after I called you that—well, that’s got me thinking—I really didn’t know you. Please accept my apology.”

  I did, and we shook hands. There would be no more disrespecting me or threatening me—and it was that attitude that made me safe, or as safe as one can be in this world. From now on, if you messed with me, there would be consequences: I may make you watch one of my movies.

  A few weeks later I was back on The Tonight Show for the first time in a while. When it was over and I was leaving the stage, the guy who was operating the boom microphone approached me.

  “You probably don’t remember me,” he said nervously. “I never thought I would ever see you again or get the chance to talk to you. I can’t believe I get to do this.”

  Do what? I thought. I braced myself for the man’s soon-to-be-broken hand.

  “I never thought I’d get to apologize to you,” he said, as a few tears started to come into his eyes. “And now, here you are, and I get to say this: I’m the guy who ruined your Oscar night. I’m the guy who yelled ‘ASSHOLE’ into your ear right after you came off the stage. I… I… [he tried to compose himself]. I thought you were attacking the president—but you were right. He did lie to us. And I’ve had to carry this with me now all these years, that I did that to you on your big night, and I’m so sorry…”

  By now he was starting to fall apart, and all I could think to do was to reach out and give him a huge hug.

  “It’s OK, man,” I said, a big smile on my face. “I accept your apology. But you do not need to apologize to me. You did nothing wrong. What did you do? You believed your president! You’re supposed to believe your president! If we can’t expect that as just the minimum from whoever’s in office, then, shit, we’re doomed.”

  “Thank you,” he said, relieved. “Thank you for understanding.”

  “Understanding?” I said. “This isn’t about understanding. I’ve told this funny story for years now, about the first two words you hear when you’re an Oscar winner—and how I got to hear a bonus word! Man, don’t take that story away from me! People love it!” He laughed, and I laughed.

  “Yeah,” he said, “there aren’t many good stories like that.”

  Crawling Backwards

  THE FIRSTBORN OF MY FAMILY was never born.

  And then I came along.

  There was another baby on the way, a year before me, but one day my mother felt a sharp pain and, within minutes, Mike the First expressed second thoughts about his much-anticipated debut on Earth, shouted “Check, please!” and was out of the uterus before the audience with their applause decided who was Queen for a Day.

  This sudden and unfortunate development greatly saddened my mother. So to console her, my grandmother took her on a pilgrimage to Canada to beg for mercy from the Patron Saint of Women in Labor, the mother of the Virgin Mary herself, Saint Anne. Saint Anne is also the patron saint of Quebec, and a shrine had been built in her honor at the Basilica of Sainte-Anne-de-Beaupré in the province of Quebec. This holy site contained some of the saint’s actual bones plus other holy items encased in the Holy Stairs on the grounds of the shrine. It was said that if you climbed these stairs on your knees, the mother of the Blessed Virgin would help you do what virgins don’t do, which is to conceive.

  And so my mother ascended each of the twenty-eight stairs on her knees—and within weeks, as sure as God is both my witness and fertility specialist, I was conceived on a hot July night, first as an idea and then… well, the rest I’ll leave to your imagination. Suffice it to say that within nine months the fertilized egg grew into a fetus and that eventually became an eight-pound-twelve-ounce baby boy that was born with the body of a linebacker and the head of Thor.

  They knocked my mother out cold so she wouldn’t have to experience firsthand the miracle of life. Me, I wasn’t so lucky. They poked and prodded and pushed and, instead of letting me get around to the business at hand in my own goddamned time, they grabbed me and yanked me out into a world of bright lights and strangers wearing masks, obviously to conceal their identity from me.

  And before I could feel the love in the room, they gave me a serious 1950s old-school wallop on the behind. Yeow! “WAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!” That fucking hurt. And then, get this—they severed my most important organ—the feeding tube to my mother! They just cut me right the fuck off from her! I could see this was not a world that believed in prior consent or my necessity for a nonstop 24/7 supply of fundamental nourishment.

  After permanently separating me from the only person who ever loved me (a good and decent woman who was drugged, then mugged, and was still out cold a half hou
r later), it was now time for the comedy show. The nurse joked that she thought I was “big enough to be twins.” Laughter! The doctor remarked that at least five of those nearly nine pounds had to be in my head. Huge guffaws! Yes, these guys were a riot!

  I’ll admit I had an unusually large-sized head, though this was not uncommon for a baby born in the Midwest. The craniums in our part of the country were designed to leave a little extra room for the brain to grow should we ever have a chance to learn anything outside of our rigid and insular lives. Perhaps one day we might get exposed to something we didn’t quite understand, like a foreign language, or a salad. Our extra cranial area would protect us from such mishaps.

  But my head was different than the other large-headed Michigan babies—not because of its actual weight and size, but because it did not look like the head (or face) of a baby! It looked as if someone had Photoshopped an adult’s head onto a baby’s body.

  The hospitals in the 1950s saw themselves on the cutting edge of post-war modern society. And they convinced the women who entered their establishments that to be “modern” meant to not breast-feed your baby—that breast-feeding was passé and trashy. Modern women used the Bottle!

  Of course, modern was the wrong word. Try evil. They convinced our mothers that if a food item came in a bottle—or a can or a box or a cellophane bag—then it was somehow better for you than when it came to you free of charge via Mother Nature. There we were, millions of us in diapers and blankies, and instead of being placed on our mother’s breasts, bottles were inserted into our mouths, where we were expected to find some sort of pleasure from a fake rubber nipple whose coloring resembled that of a loose stool. Who were these people? Was it really that easy to con our parents? If they could be fooled so easily on this, what else could they be convinced to try? Creamed corn in a can? Chemlawn? A Corvair?