I am pleased for Mr. Moore, but even more pleased for what the Palme d'Or being awarded to a documentary film--and an extremely partisan, political documentary at that--will do to increase the stature of documentary filmmaking in an industry that has historically shunned the documentary genre in favor of some very poor quality, amoral, and apolitical fantasy genres, including, ironically enough, the wildly popular genre of fantasy violence genre Mr. Tarantino, who was president of this year's panel of Palme d'Or judges.

The Palme d'Or has not been awarded to a documentary film in almost 50 years--since it was bestowed upon Jacques Cousteau for his film, "The Silent World".

"Bowling for Columbine" earned an unprecedented $58 million worldwide. But to presume that means that documentaries are easy to get distributed, as Blackcatter has suggested, is patently untrue, and I don't know where s/he gets ideas like that. Documentary films rarely receive national distribution even in art houses. "Bowling for Columbine" has helped the visibility of some American films in the US (like "Fog of War" and "Capturing the Friedmans"), but not a lot. And American film goers rarely see a non-US documentary on American screens, which is also a travesty.

I doubt "Fahrenheit 911" will open as scheduled over the 4th of July weekend/US Independence Day, because that is a mere six weeks away. It just isn't likely to get picked up, the promotion package done, and the film be distributed that quickly, without severely compromising the number of theatres it can open in. Theatres are already booked for that weekend, and with no distributor today, a 4th of July opening would be more detrimental to the film than accepting a late August, Labor Day or later opening. The political timing of that would make sense too, since it would carry the buzz surrounding the film right smack dab into the height of the election campaign.

Would that hurt Bush? Maybe. But it is a big risk also for Moore, who could easily suffer from well-financed neocon backlash, and much greater censorship in the US with a late summer/early fall release than would have been the case with a 4th of July release date. The original date would have had at least had some protection being released in the same month as the Democratic National Convention. But it being forced to open later means it would open around the same time as the Republican National Convention in NYC, with all of it's 9/11 neocon symbolism front and center. Moore's film, if it is in competition with that, could be successfully crushed by the media moguls, merely by setting the sycophantic neocon media darlings loose on it.

Moore is going to more than earn his millions trying to promote this film in the US, because the neocons believe their very survival is at stake, and damn the consequences.