“I have invited my fellow documentary nominees on the stage with us, and we would like to … they’re here in solidarity with me because we like nonfiction. We like nonfiction and we live in fictitious times. We live in the time where we have fictitious election results that elects a fictitious president. We live in a time where we have a man sending us to war for fictitious reasons. Whether it’s the fictition of duct tape or fictition of orange alerts we are against this war, Mr. Bush. Shame on you, Mr. Bush, shame on you. And any time you got the Pope and the Dixie Chicks against you, your time is up. Thank you very much.”
I did not see much of the Oscar’s Sunday night, but I did happen to catch Michael Moore accepting the award for BOWLING FOR COLUMBINE. Despite admonitions from the show’s producers to not offend advertisers with messages about the war (including a blacklist of stars known to have liberal political views), Michael went before an audience of billions worldwide and voiced the seldom-heard opinion of a majority of Americans. Kudos to the big man from Flint. There is a memorable clip of his post-acceptance speech at the Oscar website. (Update: the clip has been removed.) The whole clip is about 11 minutes and well worth your time to watch. Here are some memorable quotes:
- “There is a squatter on federal land at 166 Pennsylvania Avenue.”
- “I would like the U.S. military to withdraw its troops from CBS, NBC, and CNN…”
- “I think anyone voting for me, for this film, knew they weren’t going to get a speech thanking agents, lawyers, agents of lawyers and lawyers of agents.”
- “All of us who work in non-fiction – you (the press) work in non-fiction – it’s important because it speaks truth to the fiction that’s out there. It’s so critical. We need to reclaim our country. I love my country and I love democracy.”
Meanwhile, a poster at sf.indymedia.org suggests drafting Michael as the Green Party presidential candidate for 2004. I think that’s a great idea! He’d be the first president ever to have won an Oscar (although Ronald Reagan did win the Worst Career Achievement Award in 1981).