On her blog, Variety’s Anne Thompson is linking to a subscription-only New York Times item which states that Lionsgate (who are distributing the pic in partnership with The Weinstein Company) have pushed up the opening of Michael Moore’s Sicko in response to the film’s widespread piracy. The health care doc will now open on one screen only in Manhattan this Friday, only to expand on its original opening date a week later.

I guess this is what passes as aggressive action against piracy these days, but I’m not sure what good it will do. It’ll force the Times to run their review a week early, possibly pushing Evan Almighty off the the Arts front page (which, if Nikki Finke is to be believed, could do further damage to the already poorly-tracking most expensive comedy ever made). I don’t know what the stats are regarding the rate at which online piracy decreases once a film is in theaters, but I do know that releasing the movie a week earlier in Manhattan just ensures that camcorder bootlegs will be available a week earlier on Canal Street. And by admitting that piracy is enough of a problem that they need to change their release date (I believe this is the first time a studio has shifted an opening date in response to a leak, but do let me know if I’m wrong), aren’t Lionsgate effectively letting the terrorists win?

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.

Poor, poor Michael Moore. The millionaire Oscar winner, whose Sicko opens June 29th, has already been saddled with the twin burdens of bailing The Weinstein Company out of their flop hole and saving a commercially sagging genre, neither of which will be an easy task considering the fact that Sicko is already available online. Then, this weekend, a reporter asked Moore to comment on an independent documentary critiquing his filmmaking methods. Moore responded by calling the makers of that film “f-ing liar[s]“, and went on to accuse them of spreading misinformation about “a fictional character that’s been created with the name of Michael Moore.”

The documentary in question is called Manufacturing Dissent, and it was one of the most talked-about films heading into the SXSW Film Festival this past March. The film aims to unmask Michael Moore as an unethical documentarian, a Capitalist hypocrite and, perhaps most egregious in the minds of the filmmakers, a not-very-nice guy. Dissent was dramatically billed as an attack on the Left (or, at least, on one of the American Left’s most visible icons) from the Left. Directors Debbie Melnyk and Rick Caine, self-professed ‘liberals”, start out as fans of Moore, but end up painting an unflattering portrait of the filmmaker after failing to secure access to his inner circle. The picture ends up vaguely alluding to some interesting academic questions about the nature of truth-telling on film, but is ultimately unable to accuse Moore of anything other than being a really, really good propagandist.

Dissent sparked a bit of controversy at SXSW, but not for the intended reasons. At the time, filmmaker AJ Schnack (who attended SXSW 2007 with his documentary Kurt Cobain: About a Son) pulled together a lengthy blog post summarizing some of the discussion surrounding the film. He spoke for a lot of us who saw (and were disappointed by) the film when he called BS on the filmmakers supposed mid-production shift in slant. “How in the world can anyone who is making documentaries, particularly documentaries on somewhat political or tabloidy subjects, not be aware of all the arguments against Michael Moore?” Schnack wrote. (Schnack was summarily accused by a colleague of “bad form” for questioning a fellow filmmaker.)

I was reminded of Schnack’s argument against Dissent when reading about Moore’s screed against Melnyk and Caine. On the one hand, Michael Moore is not known for his restraint, and it’s implausible that he would be so oblivious to an attack on his character and livelihood that he’d wait three months after the source of the attack was profiled in the NY Times to respond. This outburst was clearly timed to coincide with the release of Sicko–Moore actually gains credibility with a segment of his core audience by defining himself as the ultimate truth-teller surrounded by vicious liars.

On the other hand, maybe Moore took so long to respond to Dissent because it’s just so not a legitimate threat. A muddled mix of personal travelogue and pseudo-investigative expose, Dissent turns on the meek, overly-earnest Melnyk’s inability to get Moore to consent to a lengthy on-camera interview. Why would someone of his stature assign credibility to the complaints of a disgruntled fan?

On the OTHER hand, by responding so vehemently to questions about Manufacturing Dissent, does Moore maybe protest too much?

I don’t know. I’ve never been a fan of Moore’s methods, but I’m fascinated by his ability to mainstreamize (no, that’s probably not a real word) niche debates. I’m going to see Sicko on Thursday, and I’ll report back post haste. In the meantime, watch the Sicko trailer above, and talk about your love/hate for Michael Moore on the Spout Documentary board.

Michael Moore’s most recent documentary, Sicko, will premiere this Saturday at the Cannes Film Festival, and is scheduled for US release by Lionsgate on June 29. And suddenly, as if perfectly timed by the Weinstein Co. rather than the U.S. Treasury, Moore is being investigated for possibly violating America’s trade embargo with Cuba by going to the “forbidden” country to make a portion of his film. Cuba is even saying that Moore is a victim of censorship (read about it here). It doesn’t get much juicier than that.

In The Hollywood Reporter’s piece on the matter, “Healthy debate surrounds Moore’s docu ‘Sicko,’” has this to say about the publicity stunt:

Lionsgate and the Weinstein Co. are making the Treasury Department’s investigation a key focus of their “Sicko” campaign. The Weinstein Co. has hired David Boies, the chief attorney in Al Gore’s recount battle against George Bush in the 2000 U.S. presidential election, to help on the “Sicko” case. Chris Lehane, a political consultant on the film, said in an interview that TWC and Lionsgate would “go to the mattresses for this film and fight the Bush efforts in every way possible.”

On the anti-Moore side, News Corp. properties Fox News and the New York Post have run editorials and commentaries slamming the filmmaker.

While the Treasury Dept. triggered the current contretemps, “It’s Harvey (Weinstein) up to his old tricks, doing his Barnum & Bailey act,” said one prominent studio marketing executive. “It’s a textbook ‘create a controversy’ to rev up all the people who hate the government and bring attention to the movie, which is what film marketing is all about. A-plus to them.”

The funny thing is that, according to a press release about the film’s release date, Harvey Weinstein sees Sicko as “less controversial” than Fahrenheit 9-11.

“I’ve seen this movie with Republicans and Democrats, and this is one time Michael has sort of unified everyone,” [Weinstein] said. “The health care industry might not have a very good July Fourth.”

Here’s to so-called unification. We’ll have to see how that works out.