The latest Bloomberg Businessweek documents how the slovenly filmmaker’s dubious work product helped inspire some competition, including Dinesh D’Souza‘s “2016: Obama’s America.”
David Bossie, president and chairman of the conservative advocacy group Citizens United, produced 2008’s Hillary: The Movie, a film that led to the landmark Supreme Court case Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, which cleared the way for corporations to spend unlimited amounts supporting candidates. Bossie argues that this year’s election season is especially rife with polemics thanks to Michael Moore, whose anti-Bush Fahrenheit 9/11 earned more than $119 million domestically in the summer of 2004. (It remains America’s highest-grossing political documentary.) “Moore’s success from crossing the political Rubicon to pop culture gave me the idea for our Supreme Court case,” Bossie says. “I’m a political guy. I saw his 90-minute film, and I said, ‘Oh my goodness. There’s no response. There’s nothing in the marketplace of ideas to counter that. And we must have a response.’?”
John Sullivan, co-director of 2016: Obama’s America, agrees. “To be honest, we kind of followed Michael Moore’s template,” he says. “If you’re going to do something of this nature, you’re going to look for where there’s the most interest, and you’re going to release something like that.”
While traditional media outlets have largely dismissed 2016: Obama’s America (“A nonsensically unsubstantiated act of character assassination,” observed Entertainment Weekly), and more conservative outlets offered praise (“The author’s film deserves to be part of the electoral discussion,” argued the site Big Hollywood), the Obama campaign’s official website publicly panned the movie as “an insidious attempt to dishonestly smear the president.” The directors couldn’t have asked for more. “That obviously means … he doesn’t want you to see it,” says Bob Angelotti, a film marketing consultant. “That’s a marketing dream.”
