When I was a small boy, a budding science-fiction writer named Ray Bradbury was out walking one night when he was stopped by a police car, whose occupants proceeded to try to get him to explain why he was out walking in the middle of the night, rather than riding around in a car like normal people. Bradbury was so incensed by the incident that, when he got home, he dashed off a short story called “The Pedestrian”, about a midnight pedestrian who is stopped by a police car … the ending, of course, was not so happy as his own. A couple of years later, somebody — probably H. L. Gold at Galaxy — convinced him to expand on the idea, and the result was “The Fireman”, a novella which appeared, if memory serves (it doesn’t always, these days), in the February, 1951, issue of Galaxy, opposite the second installment of Isaac Asimov’s pleasant but now largely forgotten novel Tyrann (later The Stars, Like Dust). “The Fireman” itself was later published in book form (and, one supposes, with some additional expansion) as Fahrenheit 451, presumably the temperature at which book paper catches fire and burns (info courtesy of the L.A. Fire Department). The book has been made into a movie at least twice, and now Michael Moore, President George W. Bush’s most inveterate and unregenerate gadfly, has borrowed the title (and modified it) for a movie of his own — a documentary about what would appear to be our graduate descent into the sort of state in which police can stop midnight pedestrians — and they won’t dare write about it afterwards.

The “plot” is simple enough. We start — before the credits — with George Bush’s election win in Florida, a win guaranteed by, among other things, the striking of thousands of voters from the voter rolls simply because their names happened to be the same as those of convicted felons (a gimmick the Bushies have not hesitated to use more recently, as witness last week’s hubbub about the Iraqi militia officer whose named happened to be similar — not identical — to that of an Al-Qaeda operative in Malaysia …). After the credits we hear, but do not see, the catastrophe of 9/11, and then trot down to Florida to witness Bush enjoying (or perhaps not!) a photo-op in a grade school at the same time that the World Trade Towers are burning out. Moore then takes us on a joyride through the maze of relationships between the Texas Bushes and the Arabia Bin Ladens. Did you know that Bush’s bosom Air Guard buddy, James R. Bath, was Texas financial adviser for the Bin Ladens? (When Bush had his records released, Bath’s name was expunged from the one on which both appear — it seems that they jointly refused to have a physical exam. One wonders why … Luckily, Moore had obtained the same document earlier, back in 2000, in fact, and on it the name was not stricken out.) The war in Afghanistan, and the reasons for that war, are shown (despite which, there is no truth to the rumor that President Karzai is planning to rename the country “UnoCal East”).

That’s the first half of the movie. The second half covers the war against Iraq, and the pain and suffering it has caused both Iraqis and Americans. With regret, I have to say that, to some extent, this second half tends to drag. I think it could have used a fair amount of tightening up, reducing it to, say, at most forty minutes; then it would probably have more impact. I might also add that anybody who wonders why “those people hate us so much” should only look at how the American military’s troops pass their Christmas Eve, and perhaps they will understand (somewhere in the film there’s a clip of Bush saying, “I’d feel the same way if we were occupied”).

Anyone who goes into the film expecting long diatribes on non-existent Weapons of Mass Destruction and fallacious Al-Quaeda-Iraq links will be disappointed. These matters are touched, just long enough to indicate that they are important, but are not then dwelled upon.

Moore does succeed in keeping what seems to be a sense of humor (possibly contrived) throughout the film. He shows scenes that are guaranteed to make all but the most hardened Bush apologists laugh (Ashcroft singing a song he wrote himself — where did I leave my gong, by the way? ⁽¹⁾ — or Porter Goss defending the Patriot Act and telling Moore that he has an 800-number which people can call to complain, while below you can read the subtitles: “This is false. But here is Goss’s office number …”) or retch (Wolfowitz spit-combing his hair).

By and large, an engaging film, and apparently quite popular, at least for a time — we went to a Friday afternoon showing, usually a safe time, and the theater was almost packed, with perhaps 5% of the seats empty at the time the lights went down for the trailers. It’s not clear to me, however, that its popularity will survive next Wednesday’s release of Spider-Man 2 …

Note: watch the folks in the background as much as possible. Moore does not mention this, but it seemed apparent to me that in at least a couple of the staged military events not all of those patriotic and loyal young soldiers are applauding the only president they’ve got. And when Moore collars his first congressman to try to convince him to send his children off to war in Iraq, the congressman’s aide, out of the line of sight between Moore and the congressman but still on-camera, is grinning broadly, though the grin disappears as the congressman turns away from Moore to escape.

When I got up to leave the film, I was suddenly reminded of James Thurber’s old story about the biologist and the lemming. “I’ve always wondered why you lemmings leap off a cliff en masse into the sea and drown yourselves.” “That’s strange — I’ve always wondered why you humans don’t.” If a conservative — I mean, a genuine honest conservative of the Barry Goldwater or John McCain stamp, not one of the what’s-in-it-for-me pirates now dominant in Washington — were to ask me, “I have always wondered why people like you and Moore despise Bush and his cronies so much”, my only response would be: “That’s funny, I’ve always wondered why people like you don’t.”

⁽¹⁾ Moore’s comment that in the 2000 Missouri senatorial race people voted for the dead guy in preference to Ashcroft has been criticized, over on the right, as being disingenuous — “People knew that the governor would appoint the dead guy’s wife to fill his seat.” OK, people voted for the dead guy’s relatively unknown wife in preference to Ashcroft.