PAGE SIX By RICHARD JOHNSON with PAULA FROELICH and CHRIS WILSON
Snubbed Moore rips film fest
RADICAL moviemaker Michael Moore claims that his new documentary, "Bowling for Columbine," is being snubbed by the New York Film Festival over politics.
The film - which examines violence in America from the Columbine HS massacre through the Sept. 11 terror attacks - has been critically acclaimed at festivals from Cannes to Telluride. But it is missing from the NYFF's list. Moore says he believes members of the festival's selection committee were "uncomfortable" with questions he raises about the World Trade Center attacks.
"It cuts too close to the bone," the "Roger and Me" director tells PAGE SIX's Ian Spiegelman. "It goes right to the core of 9/11. It deals with how President Bush is using terror to manipulate our fears and get his agenda through.
"It challenges the traditional kind of New York liberals in their attitudes towards guns and violence and terrorism. The exclusion of our film probably says more about what's happened to the NYFF than it does about anything else."
But selection committee chairman Richard Pena says the idea that he and his panel are keeping "Bowling for Columbine" out of the festival over political timidity is "completely ridiculous. I think Michael knows it's ridiculous."
Pena, who is also the program director for the Film Society of Lincoln Center, added, "The gun lobby is not a major supporter of Lincoln Center, so I don't know whose politics we're supposed to be worried about."
Moore counters, "It's not about guns."
Moore and Pena go back a long way. Pena was on the selection committee back in 1989, when the NYFF helped make "Roger and Me" a surprise hit. Moore says his friends at the NYFF have told him that Pena voted to show the new film, but the rest of the committee voted him down.
"Poor Richard," Moore says. "He was a good guy. The committee is now made up of people who are not people from Lincoln Center. They are mostly film critics and film historians."
In an e-mail to his fans, Moore described these people as "the new elite who now sit in judgment of what is art."
Two of the supposed elitists, New York Times movie columnist David Kehr and L.A. Times critic Manohla Dargis, did not return calls while a third, New York Times Reviewer John Anderson, referred us to Pena.
"I'm trying to be understanding," says Moore. "I'm guessing they can't show this film in September of '02 for what it's saying about September of '01. I'm sure Dallas wouldn't have wanted a documentary about the Kennedy assassination in November 1964. But that doesn't make it right."