Michael Moore's Patriot Act

Back in the mid-eighties, a filmmaker named Kevin Rafferty decided he wanted to include footage from a Ku Klux Klan rally in his documentary about white supremacists. A colleague suggested Rafferty give Michael Moore a call. The editor of a progressive weekly newspaper in his hometown of Flint, Michigan, Moore regularly embarrassed neo-Nazis and other right-wingers on his local radio show, so he was able to set up a lunch date with the grand wizard of the Klan and secure an invitation to a weekend rally. There would be Klan weddings, cross burnings, lectures. Even a barbecue! But when Rafferty's crew arrived from New York, they got cold feet. "They didn't want to be on camera, because they thought the Klan guys might come after them," Moore recalls today. "So I said, 'I'll do it. I'm not afraid to be on camera.' "

As they say in the business, the kid was a natural. Early in the film, Moore tells a tan, attractive blonde wearing an SS armband, jackboots and a stylish blue neck scarf, "You don't look like a typical Nazi."

Flattered, the woman giggles sweetly.

"You could be on a Coppertone commercial," Moore continues.

The woman beams. Then, though Moore has not asked, she says softly, "I'm not just against Jewish people. It's also blacks."

Working on Blood in the Face inspired Moore to make his own documentary. A year later, before he began Roger and Me, Moore called on Rafferty for a tutorial. Rafferty taught Moore how to use a camera and helped to shoot and edit the film. Moore subsequently discovered not only that Rafferty had friends in high places but that the phrase "friends in high places" was a gross understatement: Rafferty's uncle is George Herbert Walker Bush.

There's a scene in Fahrenheit 9/11 where George W. Bush, during an early campaign event, spots Moore in the crowd and shouts, "Why don't you go find real work?" "Right before that line, he was going, 'Heyyy, Mike,' " Moore says, accentuating his Dubya impression with a wink and a stagy finger-point. "Kevin's his cousin. They had a screening of Roger and Me at Camp David." Moore chuckles, then continues, deadpan, "I'm grateful to any family that helped me become a filmmaker. I can never forget that."

Unless you're the democratic candidate for president, you have probably formed an opinion about, and perhaps even seen, Fahrenheit 9/11. (John Kerry has repeatedly insisted that he has no plans to see Moore's film, though it would seem his speech writers have seen it: A line about the Saudi royal family in Kerry's acceptance speech at the Democratic convention drew huge applause, and, more recently, he's been referencing Bush's white-knuckled, seven-minute reading of "The Pet Goat" on the morning of September 11th.)

The movie's success -- it had grossed $115 million at press time, making it the most profitable documentary ever -- has made Moore a real-life summer action hero for the left. Who needs Bruce Willis running from a fireball when you can watch a fat guy in jeans and a Michigan State Spartans cap taking on an entire Republican administration? Meanwhile, on the right, Fahrenheit 9/11 has spawned a mini cottage industry of anti-Moore propaganda, including the best-selling book Michael Moore Is a Big Fat Stupid White Man, co-written by an attorney who represented the National Rifle Association. "I'm honored," Moore says. "To be the object of so much venom from all the wrong people, you get the sense that you might be doing something right."