Documentarian Michael Moore is ready to do to Donald Trump what he attempted to do to George W. Bush. With his new film, which premieres at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival, “Fahrenheit 11/9,” Moore is venturing into familiar ground, as he takes on the current sitting President of the United States with a scathing profile of where the country stands. However, some might be surprised to find what the content of his latest doc actually does and doesn’t show.
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In a new interview with THR, Moore says, “If people think this is Michael Moore’s Trump film and that they’re going to get two hours of Trump, Trump, Trump, I’m sorry but I’m not going to give you a simplistic film like that. Yes, I will show you some stuff about Trump that you haven’t seen, but if you’re coming to see the pee tape, you’re going to the wrong movie.”
Instead, what the filmmaker is attempting to do, and what can be seen in his first trailer for the film, is show audiences how someone like Trump was elected and what that means for the future of the United States. While he’ll go down the path of showing how he predicted the way our society would elect Trump, Moore actually, almost jokingly, says that the real person responsible for Trump’s election is none other than singer Gwen Stefani.
Moore says that when Donald Trump was just a celebrity host of a reality show for NBC, the future-President was made aware that Stefani’s performance fees were larger than what he was being paid by the network. Trump then held his press conference from Trump Tower to prove to NBC that he was more popular than the singer. Moore explains, “He’d been talking about running for president since 1988, but he didn’t really want to be president. There’s no penthouse in the White House. And he doesn’t want to live in a black city. He was trying to pit NBC against another network, but it just went off the rails.”
As for how “Fahrenheit 11/9” came to be, the film wasn’t always a sure thing. Moore says that originally the film was to be made for The Weinstein Company, but before the production could get completely underway, the Harvey Weinstein sexual assault scandal broke. “We laid off everybody and had to bury the film,” says the filmmaker.
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When asked about Weinstein, himself, Moore likens him to the current President, as you might expect he would. “Harvey being the evil genius that he is, found a way so that people did not know, but eventually people like him don’t get away with it. And that’s going to be true of Trump, too,” explains Moore.
While “Fahrenheit 11/9” takes a look at how the United States is now, everyone is looking towards 2020 to see if Trump will get re-elected or not. Moore says that everyone should go on the assumption that Trump will be a two-term President, but if the Democrats want to beat him, “we need beloved figures running. Say what you want about Trump, but tens of millions watched his show. We need Tom Hanks, Oprah, Michelle Obama. Who would not vote for Michelle Obama?”
“Fahrenheit 11/9” debuts at TIFF, which begins tomorrow.