Michael Moore on Fahrenheit 9/11

Fahrenheit 9/11 is a very different film to Bowling For Columbine in that we see a lot less of you this time.

In this case the material didn't need the help and it was strong enough already. I feel that a little bit of me probably goes a long way and less is often better. That's just generally how I feel about myself anyway. So there's less of me on camera, which I think is more pleasing to the eye, frankly. But the film is still firmly in my voice - not just in my physical voice but in my vision, the way I see things, and my sense of humour. This is the way I wanted to make this film. You're right - it is different to the other ones.

We see a lot of things in Fahrenheit 9/11 that aren't shown in the American media. Why are they suppressed?

You have to ask NBC, CBS, ABC, CNN, Fox News, MSNBC why they do not show these images. That is not a question to ask me. You need to ask them why they are not doing their job and why Americans, when they see Fahrenheit 9/11, will see many things they have not seen before.

How did you find Lila, the Flint woman whose son was killed in Iraq?

For the first three, four months of the war, I noticed that there were four or five people from the Flint area who'd died in the war. I was kinda surprised by that figure, considering that, population-wise, the Flint area has 400,000 people in it. At that time there were maybe 100-200 that were killed during that time, so the percentage was very high. If every community had contributed that many deaths to the war, the body count would be in the thousands. So I got to thinking, Well, why Flint? Why is Flint paying this price again in this way? So we contacted the families, and we found that each the first three families we contacted were having serious misgivings about the war and about George W Bush. We thought that was kind of interesting, percentage-wise - we make three calls and we get three for three NOT in full support of Bush and this war. Again, I started to think, If that's true of these three, it must be true across America. Why haven't we seen this? Why aren't we talking to the families who have lost loved ones in this war? That's how we found Lila, simply by picking up the phone.

And how is she now?

As you can see, she is becoming more and more political and she's now involved in a group called Military Families Speak Out Against The War. And I think you haven't see the last of her. She's channelling her sadness and her anger into something positive.