Michael Moore's Oscars Speech Sends Audience into a Frenzy

We like nonfiction, we like nonfiction, and we live in fictitious times. We live in a time where we have fictitious election results that elects a fictitious president. We. We live in a time where we have a man sending us to war. For fictitious reasons. At the 2003 Oscars, director Michael Moore called out the most powerful man in the world, Republican President George W Bush, after his announcement that the US was invading Iraq. Whether it's the fiction of duct tape or the fictitious. Of orange

alerts, we are against this war, Mr. Bush. Shame on you, Mr. Bush. Shame on you. And any time. You've got the Pope and the Dixie chicks again. I was up in March. It was a. Stunning moment as the room filled with boos. Moore would win his first ever Academy Award for his documentary bowling for Columbine, a stunning film on the school shooting massacre in Colorado. Weapons of mass destruction have been found in Iraq. - After our politicians deceived the public. - I take the threat very seriously

. I take the fact that he develops weapons of mass destruction and. Ran with this line over and over again to the American people. I don't know of a worse lie one could tell other than the a lie to take a country to war. Moore spoke out at the Oscars and beyond. When are you going to apologize for the million Iraqis that are dead because you lied? You heard about weapons of mass destruction? You write about connections to nine over 11? You said you sent me to Iraq in 2003. - My friends are dead.

- As did veteran Mike Prysner. We know that Saddam Hussein is determined to keep his weapons of mass destruction. Saddam Hussein will continue to increase his capacity to wage biological and chemical warfare. Personally, I'd like to see a perp walk coming out of the West Wing of the white House. - Do you think they're. - Guilty of war crimes? - Absolutely. - Name them lying to go to war. Start with that one right now. As we speak here live on CNN, there's an alternate reality taking place on an

other network. And they're over there today saying how great it is. Iraq's free. You mean Fox? Yes. I don't really want to, you know, disparage them. Well, Donald. Trump's let me read a tweet from Donald Rumsfeld. Okay. Ten years ago began the long, difficult work of liberating 25 million Iraqis, all who played a role in history deserve our respect and appreciation. Well, he's a war criminal as far as I'm concerned. I don't understand why he, Bush, Cheney, Wolfowitz are still walking the streets

. You know, they can get they their whole the way they're trying to revise history now is by saying, well, it was a mistake or we were given bad information. You know, if, let's say somebody sent a tweet to us right now or sent me an email that said, Goldman Sachs downtown right now in their basement, they have kidnaped children and they're holding them there. And I then tell the police this, what will happen to me when they go down to Goldman Sachs and find out that there's actually no kids kid

naped in the basement of Goldman Sachs? And you, of course, you would think I would want to go after Goldman Sachs as Bush wanted to go after Saddam. But but I think I'd be arrested. I think I'd be arrested if I produced false information and to just say it's a mistake, you know, it's if if, if somebody ran over your four year old, they get out of the car and they go, I'm sorry, I'm mistake. We cannot overstate how ballsy of a position this was to take at the time. This was a time, after all, wh

en patriotism was at its peak, including the cover up of former NFL player turned soldier Pat Tillman's death in the Middle East. According to the Watson Institute, there had been between 280,771 and 315,190 Iraqi civilians killed by direct violence since the US invasion. The number of civilians killed by direct and indirect war violence is unknown, but likely much higher. Life threatening damage to Iraqi health care and other infrastructure has not been repaired. Civilians are still dying in si

gnificant numbers are ashamed. The president of the United States is from Texas. For more and many an old quote rings true, your boos mean nothing. I've seen what makes you cheer more would continue fighting against the ills of our country, from war to health care and gun violence. The NRA has fought and kept Congress from approving any money to study why we have this epidemic. It is an epidemic. No other countries like this. They're not better than us. The Canadians have the same 23 chromosomes

in every cell that we have. Why don't they shoot each other at the rate that we shoot each other? They have a lot of guns, by the way. It's a big a country of hunters. So there are guns. They don't kill each other. It should be. It should have been studied a long time ago, you know, and sometimes it's the simplest things because first, first of all, these mass shootings in schools, they don't happen in the inner cities, do they? They don't happen in the inner city schools. They happen in rural

and suburban communities, by and large. When when the night that they got the gunman was atop the hotel in Las Vegas firing essentially machine gun fire on a crowd of 20,000 people. Cnn broke in. I was watching, okay, I was watching Anthony Bourdain. You know, I sometimes I, you know, I wish I cooked, but I don't. So I can, you know, watch it on TV. Having said that, CNN breaks in breaking news. We believe there's a gunman, one of the top floors of the hotel. And I thought first thought was, how

do you know it's a man? Why'd you say gunman? Of course I'm being facetious. Of course it's a gunman. We already know. Without finding out who's doing this. No woman is up there with a machine gun spraying bullets on a crowd of 20,000 people. I'd like to study that. I'd like to find out why that is. Because clearly, we are safe from 51% of the population. The irony, of course, is the boos and music drowned out the rest of his speech, which he read years later. Now the microphone is lowering int

o the stage. They've struck up a band. The stage manager is giving me the heave ho, and I'm bending down to the microphone. And anytime you've got the Pope and the Dixie chicks against you, your time is up. This was the end of me and they hauled me off the stage. So now here, for the first time ever, is the rest of my Oscar acceptance speech. So before I close, I want to say a few words about nonfiction and how to use it as a cure for the many lies we are being told, and as a nonviolent weapon o

f revolution and change. I have read over the. Years that my first movie, Roger and me, kicked open the doors for documentary films. The first documentary to be widely distributed to the shopping mall, cinemas and multiplexes of America. The Academy, though, has not let me in as a member for 13 long years. Not until just last month, I had heard all the reasons why Roger and me. It's not a documentary. Documentaries are not supposed to be entertainment. You're using your frivolous humor, and it l

essens the seriousness and the impact of what you're trying to say. ET cetera, et cetera. Those of us from the now dead factory towns of the Rust Belt who, like me, have just a high school education. I barely made it out my senior year. I flunked English and I flunked math, but I got a D in French. We from the working class immediately know the class based tone of those who speak to us, those who went to the finer schools, or even any school at all. I encourage everyone watching at home tonight

in the Gary, Indiana's of America, in the Camden, new Jersey, in the San Isidro's, the East Saint Louis, and yes, the Flint's and the Detroit's and the Pontiac's and the Dearborn's to pick up a camera and fight the power. Make your voice heard and stop this senseless war. Thank you and good night. I am continually amazed at those over the years who go up in rooms such as these, in front of some of the most powerful people in their industry, and use their platform for the greater good. And in add

ition, when you see the Michael Moore's of the world, Adam Yorke's of the world go up there at certain award shows when they are given the opportunity in their speech and they shed light on an atrocity we all know is taking place and are blind to and immune to it and numb. That says something about that person that says they have the courage to do something that they will get crucified for, but history will show they were on the right side. So shout out to Michael Moore and shout out to Jonathan

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