Moore Courts Fahrenheit Victory
A federal judge has just cooled off a critic of Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11.
Boston-based U.S. District Justice Douglas Woodlock on Wednesday dismissed a lawsuit filed by an Iraq war veteran accusing Moore's movie of manipulating a TV interview the soldier gave to make it seem like he was bashing President Bush and his military policies.
Sergeant Peter Damon, 34, had sued Moore for $85 million over a 16-second clip of Damon's appearance on NBC Nightly News in which he talked about his injuries. The Massachusetts National Guardsman, who lost both arms when a tire blew up as he repaired a Blackhawk helicopter, said he never gave permission for the interview to be used in Fahrenheit 9/11 and claimed as a result to have suffered a "loss of reputation, emotional distress, embarrassment, and personal humiliation."
After hearing arguments, Woodlock summarily tossed the complaint, ruling that, in the context of the film, moviegoers had no trouble discerning Moore and Damon's differing views on the war and that the Oscar-winning filmmaker did not defame the soldier by quoting Damon verbatim in the brief segment.
"It doesn't seem to me to be in any way an endorsement of the thrust of what the movie was about," Woodlock said in his opinion.
The judge also noted out that Moore is allowed wide latitude under the First Amendment.
While Damon said he wasn't happy being on the losing end of the decision, he expressed satisfaction that thanks to the publicity over the case, people won't mistake his opinions for Moore's.
"We took action not only to hold Michael Moore accountable but also to clear my name and to let everyone know that I do not hold the same positions as Michael Moore on the Iraq war or on President Bush," the serviceman told the Associated Press.
Damon's claims essentially echoed criticism that Moore's detractors have long lodged against him—that he employs clever editing tricks to cut together footage to support his ideological viewpoints, but often at the expense of the truth.
In this case, the NBC reporter questions Damon about a new painkiller that the military was giving wounded vets. Damon replies by talking about the "excruciating type of pain" he's endured following the loss of his limbs but says that the painkillers have helped "take a lot of the edge" off. The accompanying footage shows him on a hospital gurney at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Maryland and saying that he felt like he was "being crushed in a vice."
According to Damon's lawyer, Moore twisted that response in Fahrenheit by sticking it after a clip of Representative Jim McDermott (a Democrat from Washington state) lashing out at the Bush administration, saying, "You know, they say they're not leaving any veterans behind, but they're leaving all kinds of veterans behind."
Damon claimed the juxtaposition made it sound like he was essentially abandoned by the military to deal with his life-changing injuries by himself, when, per his lawsuit, he "agrees with and supports the President of the United States' war effort and was not left behind."
Moore's attorney, Jonathan Albano, said Damon's clip was not taken out of context and accounts for only 16 seconds of a 130-minute film.
Moore, whose Fahrenheit 9/11 has grossed over $222 million worldwide, is currently at work on Sicko, a critical look at health care in the U.S. That documentary, which already has drug companies mobilizing in opposition, is slated to be released in summer 2007.
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