Did you hear that Dale Earnhart Jr. took his pit crew out for a group screening of the movie? It was reported on ESPN.
> Wall Street Journal - July 12, 2004
>
> 'Fahrenheit 9/11' Has Recruited
> Unlikely Audience: U.S. Soldiers
>
> By SHAILAGH MURRAY
> Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
>
> FAYETTEVILLE, N.C. -- John Atkins isn't the sort of person one would
> expect to find crowding into the Cameo Theatre here to see Michael
> Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11."
>
> The 26-year-old U.S. Army machine gunner from Fort Bragg voted for
> President Bush. A graduate of the University of Colorado-Boulder, he
> enlisted last year "to serve my country" and expects to go to Iraq
> later in 2004.
>
> "That was pretty thought-provoking," Spec. Atkins says after a
> showing of Mr. Moore's documentary. "I guess I'm a little
> disillusioned. I've got a lot more questions than answers now."
>
> Every day since "Fahrenheit 9/11" opened here more than two weeks
> ago, military men and women have swarmed to the 125-seat Cameo.
> "Everyone thinks the military is so staunchly Republican," says Staff
> Sgt. Brandon Leetch, a military-intelligence specialist who spent
> time in Afghanistan. "What this shows," he says, looking around the
> theater before the movie, "is that we're not all the same."
>
> Although a nearby suburban multiplex has started screening
> "Fahrenheit 9/11," too, on two screens -- meaning Fayetteville
> residents have their pick of 10 shows a day -- most of the tens of
> thousands of troops living in the area probably won't see the film.
> But soldiers and their families make up well over half of each
> audience at the Cameo, cinema owner Nasim Keunzel estimates.
>
> That surprises Peter Feaver, a political scientist and military
> specialist at Duke University in North Carolina. There is a sense in
> the military that "the media is stabbing us in the back as they did
> during Vietnam" and Mr. Moore's film would seem "Exhibit A," he says.
>
> Most viewers are coming from Fort Bragg, just up the road. But often
> a few Marines from Camp Lejeune, about two hours away, join them. The
> night Spec. Atkins attended, three soldiers arrived from South
> Carolina well after the 7:30 show had, as usual, sold out. The ticket
> seller set up chairs in an aisle.
>
> "Fahrenheit 9/11" is a harshly satirical and controversial portrait
> of the Bush presidency, although it has sympathetic scenes of combat
> soldiers and their families. Critics say it distorts facts to make
> its point.
>
> It opened in 868 theaters during the week of June 25, and is showing
> in more than 2,011 theaters across the country. The movie opened in
> the United Kingdom, Belgium, France and Switzerland last week.
>
> The U.S. Army and Air Force Exchange Service, which distributes films
> at 164 theaters on bases around the world, is trying to book
> "Fahrenheit 9/11," spokesman Judd Anstey says.
>
> "Our policy is that if a film is popular in the U.S. and we can get
> our hands on a print, we'll show it," he says.
>
> Currently, all prints are in commercial theaters. He says it took
> about a month to get another recent surprise hit, Mel Gibson's "The
> Passion of the Christ."
>
> Unusual Stop
>
> The Cameo isn't a usual stop for Fort Bragg soldiers. Ms. Keunzel and
> her husband turned a dilapidated downtown Fayetteville building into
> a two-screen theater because they loved foreign and independent films
> and were tired of driving to Raleigh to see them.
>
> Ms. Keunzel didn't even advertise the opening of "Fahrenheit 9/11" in
> the Fort Bragg newspaper. The film's area distributor told her,
> "Military people won't want to see it."
>
> But the first two scheduled shows sold out so quickly she added a
> midnight show. The next day, she added more screenings, for a total
> of five a day. They all sold out, even though the new times were
> never published.
>
> Staff Sgt. Billy Alsobrook, 28, a missile repairman in a support
> battalion, drove to the Cameo one afternoon in his fatigues to get
> tickets for the evening show so he could take his wife.
>
> "I hear they've got a lot of interviews with soldiers," says Sgt.
> Alsobrook, whose one-year tour in Iraq ended in February. He expects
> to return in September.
>
> The Florida native said: "I want to see another point of view on
> Bush. It never hurts."
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