Last night I was flipping channels, and I came across a segment on my local Fox affiliate’s 10:00 news that had Michael Moore answering questions sent in by viewers. Most of these questions reflected the slant that you’d expect from the Fox News audience–my favorite: “Why do you hate America so much? Why don’t you go live in a country that you love, like Cuba, or Iran?–but Moore managed to deflect the criticism professionally (at least, he made it through the segment without cussing). The closest thing to a supportive question came from a viewer who wanted to know if the director thought that Sicko had been leaked onto the internet by insurance company operatives in order to sabotage the film’s commercial release. Moore basically responded, “Yes, that’s exactly what I think,” and then sort of backtracked and admitted that piracy is a major problem for the whole industry, blah blah blah.

As I said yesterday, I think Moore is a genius at turning a profit by painting himself as a victim, so watching the segment last night, I just figured he was taking an opening to do what he does best, and left it at that. But then this morning, I came across this post at Hollywood Elsewhere, wherein Jeffrey Wells presents a nugget of (debatably solid) evidence to support the sabotage theory:

A line from a recent news story about the YouTube offering of Sicko wasn’t used for obvious reasons, but the reporter passed it along. “While the motivation of the leaker(s) remains unclear,” it read, “one full copy of Sicko uploaded to a pirate website includes ’suckourdicks’ in the file name.” Does that suggest anything to anyone? “Suck our dicks” as in “fuck you, Moore!!…and we hope this hurts as a kind of payback for stretching the truth and flim-flamming in order to push your cause in Bowling for Columbine and Fahrenheit 9/11“…or words to that effect

This isn’t the most airtight argument I’ve ever seen, but it’s interesting that this story is floating around the very same week that Eli Roth encourages his fans to use filesharing to combat Hostel 2 piracy. In a way, the actual motives behind the Sicko leak don’t really matter–the idea that some entity is trying to enact revenge on Moore via piracy will now become part of the lore of the film. The only question is whether or not Moore can use it to his advantage.

Above: A bizarre clip in which perennial possible presidential candidate Fred Thompson implies that Michael Moore belongs in a mental institution.