Kerry could always screw things up, of course, but let's not think about that now.

This two-hour documentary is blistering, alarming, disturbing, darkly funny, and -- this really surprised me -- deeply touching. I didn't go this morning expecting to feel choked up, but the ducts were leaking after the lights came up. I was talking about my reactions in the lobby with Miramax publicist Matthew Hiltzik, and my voice started to crack and ....well, I couldn't finish my sentence.

It's 11:05 a.m. as I sit here in the Grand Palais press room, typing this thing out, and the feeling hasn't subsided.

FAHRENHEIT 9/11 is not just a great get-George-Bush flick, but a sad testimonial to the suffering being felt by the mostly lower-middle-class families who are bearing the brunt of the war effort. I generally don't like to let emotion into discussions of war and foreign policy matters. Young men have been dying in wars since time began, and their mothers have always wept about it. Sad as it is, you can't let this stuff cloud your thinking, or so I've always felt.

But this movie made me feel it. For the first time since the start of Iraqi War, I let it in.

Moore got to me. Average Joe G.I.'s dying in Iraq got to me. Images of Iraqi women and children being terrorized and slaughtered over there got to me. The thought that young dudes -- guys only a bit older than and not much different from my own two sons -- are biting the dust over there to fulfill the political agendas of a lying, spinning U.S. government is suddenly repulsive...or at least more repulsive than it's ever seemed before.

Does FAHRENHEIT 9/11 have a point of view? Yeah, of course. It would be one dull-ass movie if it bent over backwards to accommodate all sides, or debate the Bush spin tit for tat. Does that make it suspect? In the minds of some people determined to pin the label of liar, spinner or expedient exaggerator on Moore, it will.

But to my eyes and ears, FAHRENHEIT 9/11 has been very scrupulous in its effort to hoist the Bushies on their own petards.

My entrenched anti-Bush leftie sympathies make it impossible to say I'm impartial or unsympathetic to what I knew this film would say about Bush's executive agenda and allegiances. What I didn't expect, but was deeply gratified to discover, is how careful, exacting and even subtle Moore is with his allegations.

C'mon, Jeff, some of you are probably thinking -- be straight and cut the leftie crap. Isn't this film (as was BOWLING FOR COLUMBINE, in the opinion of some readers who've written me about it over the past 18 months) built at least partly on Moore's selective approach to fact-gathering along with his special brand of folksy, man-of-the- people manipulation in order to push his own opinions?

I just saw it, but I'll say this: if FAHRENHEIT 9/11 is in some way lying or unfairly exaggerating the things it claims are factual, I really couldn't spot where.

The film says that Bush is lazy, ineffectual, duplicitous, over his head, etc. Once again, that classroom footage speaks volumes.

It says that Bush and his elite posse are pushing their own interests -- financial, political, expansionist -- with little if any regard for truth-telling, let alone the interests of average Americans.

It says the war in Iraq was launched for deceptive, fictitious reasons.

It says that the Bush family's friendship with the Saudi and bin Laden families (providers of many millions in political donations, money for the Carlyle Group, investments in the Harken Company, etc.) led to a decision by Bush to allow members of these families to be flown out of the U.S. only a couple of days after the World Trade Center disaster, without appropriate questioning by U.S. authorities.

It says that Bush's interest in getting Osama bin Laden after 9/11 was nothing compared to his desire to get Saddam Hussein out of power in Iraq.

But you've heard all this, and you're either going to be persuaded or not when you see the film seven weeks from now. The question is, how absorbing is FAHRENHEIT 9/11 as a plain old movie thing? Is it funny, well cut, effectively delivered, etc.?

I said this earlier, but the watchwords are basically "satiric but subtle. " Moore doesn't over-harangue or get all blustery and overbearing. He lets his case speak for itself.

It's got a killer ending. It shows Bush trying to deliver the famous line that goes, "Fool me once, shame on you....fool me twice, shame on me." Bush blows it. He gets as far as "fool me once" and starts stammering. He concludes by saying, "Fool me twice...won't get fooled again." Moore says on the narration track, "For once we agree on something." Cut to closing credits.

Moore is going to keep adding to the film until the last minute, I've been told, and he's a good enough filmmaker to know if he's got an ending that works or not, but if he's even flirting with changing the one he's got now, he shouldn't. It hits just the right note.

Moore's decision not to show any impact or destruction footage of the World Trade Center as he portrays that terrible day is commendably restrained. Following the example of that 9/11 short by Alejandro Gonzalez Innaritu, he shows only a black screen for a couple of minutes, using only sounds - whining jet engines, explosions, cries of onlookers -- to revive old memories. Then he cuts to people on the street, focusing solely on the inner devastation.

The music tracks Moore uses to accompany the various portions are funny and on-point. He uses hillbilly music when he recounts Bush's life up to and including his election as U.S. President, the Animals' "We Gotta Get Out of This Place" as the Saudi/bin Laden's are flown out of the country, "Keep On Rockin' in the Free World" as a closing anthem.

The slowest and least gripping part of the film is when Moore looks at the effects of the Patriot Act and post-9/11 security measures upon average citizens. He speaks to a older guy who was questioned by the FBI for mouthing off at Bush during workout sessions, to members of a Fresno left-wing peace group who were infiltrated by an undercover cop, to a woman who was asked to surrender dangerous breast milk before getting on a commercial flight.

The saddest portions are about a middle-aged mom from Flint, Michigan named (I think, not having a way to check) Lila Lipscomb, whose G.I. son was killed in Iraq a few months ago. She goes to Washington, D.C. at one point to somehow vent her painful feelings and gets into an argument with a Bush administration supporter. Then she breaks down and cries, down on her knees on the grass, about a block away from the White House

Lila calls herself a conservative Democrat who "never liked [anti-Iraqi war] protestors" because she felt they were dishonoring the efforts of her son. But then she tells Moore she gradually saw that the dissidents were "protesting the concept of the war."

Ever the blue-collar populist, Moore never loses sight of the regular folks -- Iraqis and Americans alike -- who've been suffering the most from this conflict. It got to me, and I'm guessing it's going to get to a lot of others. I don't know how well FAHRENHEIT 9/11 is going to do commercially, but I'm guessing it's going to perform at least as well as BOWLING FOR COLUMBINE did....and maybe a lot better.

Don't miss it when it opens, and drag your friends along when you go. They won't be pissed when it's over -- trust me. Even if they're righties.

Beautiful Dreamer

The story of how Jerry Harvey, surely one of the most worshipful movie fans to ever breathe Hollywood air, made L.A.'s fabled Z Channel into a movie lover's haven on cable TV in the '80s, is a lovely one to tell. So it's a very agreeable thing to see this aspect of Harvey's life recounted in Xan Cassevetes' Z CHANNEL: A MAGNIFICENT OBSESSION, which had its press screening here late Saturday morning.

The Harvey legend also has a huge blemish, which is that he shot his wife and then killed himself in 1987.

Coupled with this ugliness is a metaphor of what was happening to a lot of operations like the Z Channel, essentially an enterprise born and sustained by a '70s sensibility, as they began to be eaten by the corporate- greed ethos that began to perniciously manifest in the mid to late '80s. It's not too great a leap to infer that these tragedies in Harvey's life were probably somehow related.

Harvey's demons ended his life as surely as they animated it. Like many film buffs, he dove headlong into movies as a fantasy-immersion exercise that provided a haven from personal problems. These were largely fostered by a merciless staunch-Catholic father and the suicide of his two sisters, and apparently exacerbated toward the end of his life by alcohol.

But without his wounded background he might not have accomplished what he did. A curious linkage, when you think about it. Cassevetes clearly has, and if you ask me has gotten Harvey's story right.

The difficulty of reconciling those glorious Z Channel highs with the man's grotesque and tragic finish is obviously one reason why no summation of his life has been attempted in the 17 years since he died. But none of this appears to have intimidated Cassevetes. She manages to weave together the positive and negative strands of his life in a way that feels balanced and unflinching, and gently perceptive.

And the honesty Cassevetes puts into her film gradually brings forth emotion, especially in the final portion when critic F.X. Feeney, a friend of Harvey's and chief critic for the Z Channel magazine during its '80s heyday, begins to break down as he recounts what his pal was going through.

(I spoke to Feeney in the American Pavillion a day before seeing the Cassevetes film. We worked together at PEOPLE for a short period in the late '90s, whoring for the money as we held our noses. He has one of the best film-loving minds in the business, despite his fervent admiration for HEAVEN'S GATE, which I've seen uncut and absolutely despise. He told me he has a co-producer credit on the Cassevetes film -- good for him.)

We're all totally accustomed these days to seeing films on cable channels without the intrusion of commercials, uncut and in their original aspect ratios, but catching movies this way on the tube in the '70 and '80s was a rare experience in Los Angeles...except on the Z Channel.

The cable station began in '74 but really flourished in the '80s under Harvey's guidance. It was only available in L.A.'s westside. Just about everyone with any connection to the film industry, not to mention those with any hunger for seeing the best movies in their purest renderings, subscribed to it.

They did so for one excellent reason, which is that Harvey programmed the Z Channel like a smart repertory cinema operator, coupling art-house favorites (American indies, European) along with broadly commercial fare.

He would sometimes show a cluster of films made by one of his favorite directors (like Sam Peckinpah) as a kind of mini-festival, or go out of his way to find and broadcast uncut versions of pics like Sergio Leone's ONCE UPON A TIME IN AMERICA or Michael Cimino's HEAVEN'S GATE (which weren't being offered on VHS tapes back then, and of course pre-dated the DVD-generated appetite for same).

Harvey also pushed overlooked films at the end of the year awards-season in order to give them a shot at Oscar nominations. This is exactly what he did for Oliver Stone's SALVADOR, and it resulted in nominations for Stone and lead actor James Woods. Woods says in the film that Harvey's promoting SALVADOR in the astute way he did "was the turning point in my career....without a doubt."

Director Robert Altman recalls that "Jerry would say, 'I want to sneak your film on my channel.' And I'd say, 'Oh that's good."' Because otherwise they didn't play anywhere."

Cassevetes (whose actual first name is Alexandra, according to the IMDB) interviewed roughly 36 industry veterans for her film, including Quentin Tarantino,Paul Verhoeven, Jackie Bisset, Jim Jarmusch, and Penelope Spheeris, along with friends and intimates of Harvey, plus some well-mastered clips from some 52 films.

The Independent Film Channel funded the doc, which ought to go into theatres before turning up on IFC cable stations, which will happen fairly soon.

Cassevetes' producers on the doc were Marshall Persinger (a friendly but somewhat guarded woman whom I met at Toronto two or three years ago) and Rick Ross. The film screened Sunday night for the ticketed public, and will be the centerpiece of a big IFC Tenth Anniversary party being thrown Tuesday night at the Hotel du Cap.

"The film is really...about obsession with film -- primarily Jerry's, but really it's an obsession shared by all the people being interviewed, whether they were filmmakers or people who were in Jerry's life," Cassavetes told the HOLLYWOOD REPORTER's Gregg Kilday.

The doc's focus, she added, "became the parallel between Jerry's life, his need for film, to immerse himself in film and the effect of his life and death on the people who knew him."

An old friend says in the film that Harvey was sometimes incendiary and abusive after drinking, which he got into toward the end of his life. The fact that he owned a gun and was friendly with Sam Peckinpah, a substance-abusing, self-destructive nutter in his own right, obviously says something about the advisability of avoiding volatile combos.

Green Guy

SHREK 2, which showed at the Grand Palais on Saturday morning, is a pleasant enough thing to sit through. Why, then, did I almost just type the word "endure" instead of "sit through"? Because I find movies like harmlessly entertaining animated films of this sort to be oppressively conventional in every way except for their digital composings, which are always delightful.

SHREK 2 is basically a feature-length skit that, depth and attitude-wise, would have fit right into any Carol Burnett Show episode in the '70s. But anyone who bitches about this is a sorehead, right? Why is it that relentlessly sitcom-ish features get a pass from the great majority of critics, mainly because they're beautifully animated and aimed at the family trade?

SHREK 2 is not hateful or draggy. I stayed with it, and I chuckled here and there. But something is surely indicated by the fact that I was checking my watch all through it. Forty-five minutes until it ends. Okay, forty...hmmm, maybe I should stop this? A watched pot never boils. Thirty-eight minutes...Jesus.

But it's witty, funny, spirited...about as good as the last one, which I enjoyed more than this version. The main problem, I guess, is that it's about Shrek and wife Fiona trying to validate their marriage by seeking the approval of her parents (Fiona actually pressures a reluctant Shrek into this), and I just didn't give a shit. I couldn't have cared less.

It's hard to fully enjoy a film that seems to shake to emphasize over and over that it was made in order to make lots of money for DreamWorks. Is there any film at this festival or anywhere in the outside world that wasn't made to sell tickets? I can't think of one. But there's something extra-pointed and relentless about the calculation that seems to have gone into the making of SHREK 2.

I got the feeling that whenever there was a choice being putting in a scene or a joke or a line that the filmmakers simply had to use because they loved it, and flavoring the same in order to realize a certain desired emotional-commercial effect as envisioned and required by Jeffrey Katzenberg, that the latter path was chosen every time.

The voicings by Mike Myers, Cameron Diaz, Eddie Murphy, Antonio Banderas (playing a new Puss in Boots character), Julie Andrews, John Cleese, Rupert Everett (who was on my British Airways flight from London) and Jennifer Saunders are fine. And I'm sure everyone was well paid. Maybe the bigger actors are in for a piece of the earnings. If so, good for them.

Not For Me

Whenever I hear someone say they don't like a film because it's "depressing," I'm always a little suspicious of their moviegoing motives. Downer, schmowner -- is the movie any good?

But having just seen Niels Muller's THE ASSASSINATION OF RICHARD NIXON, I can sympathize with the downer averse. The film is smoothly shot and cut and undeniably well acted, especially by star Sean Penn, but the focus on loserdom, dreariness and general hopelessness is so pervasive there's only relief when it's over.

All right, relief and a twinge of pity for Penn's character, a timid, not very bright, deeply frustrated and increasingly unhinged furniture salesman named Sam Bicke.

Set in 1974 and apparently based on a true story, Mueller and Levin Kennedy's script is a step-by-step rundown of Bicke's emotional and psychological decline as everything in his life fails or falls apart, leading him to a desperate final act.

His wife (Naomi Wattts) has left him, having grown sick of his undependability and fantasy-tripping, and is about to file for divorce. He hates his job and especially his patronizing boss (Jack Thompson). He's applied for a small-business loan from the government to fund a mobile tire service that we know he wont be approved for. He's profoundly disturbed by salesmen who lie in order to sell goods. He feels an odd kinship with African-American guys (Don Cheadle being one) because he relates to being kept down by an unfair system.

Ten minutes with Bicke and you're going, "Forget it, won't make it, loser." Nothing has changed by the finale except that his unraveling, foreseen from the get-go, has run the full course. All through the film Bicke does little but act like a pathetic, delusional sad-sack.

I suppose there's a certain purity in this, and perhaps a metaphor for the plight of losers everywhere. But if there's any serious political resonance in Bicke's story I wasn't able to spot it.

Not once do Mueller and Kennedy give this poor schlub a hint of dignity. Every trait the guy has pushes the loser-loser thing. Surely a director is saying something emphatic in this vein when he shows a character shooting his dog.

His string totally played out by the finish, Bicke follows the example of TAXI DRIVER's Travis Bickle (whose saga would arrive on movie screens two years later), by deciding to assassinate a well-known political leader -- President Richard Nixon - as a way of saying something to the world about "a little grain of sand" making a difference in the greater scheme of things, or words to that effect.

The NIXON press notes say this "is based on a true story," but they offer no particulars about Bicke's actual history, if that was his actual name, or to what extent the script may have taken liberties. Do a "Google" search on Sam Bicke and nothing comes up except two references to the film playing at Cannes. You would think a would-be Presidential assassin would rate something on a search engine.

If Bicke was the real guy's actual name, is it possible Paul Schrader heard about him and added an "l" to the name to come up with "Bickle"? Or have Mueller and Kennedy paid a kind of homage to Schrader's Bickle by inventing a Bickle surrogate with the "l" taken out?

For what it's worth, Penn wholly commits himself to Bicke with his usual perfectionism and all-out intensity. In her second pairing with Penn after 21 GRAMS, Watts gets to act irritated and peevish -- not a great opportunity for range. Thompson is superb, though, as a sadist who's correct in his manner but extremely skillful at manipulating the weak.

Cheadle, portraying a garage mechanic friend of Bicke's, is also noteworthy, and so is Mykelti Williamson as a Black Panther whom Bicke pays a curious visit to. Bicke gives Williamson some hard-earned cash for the Panthers, but then suggests they re-name themselves the Zebra's, because a black-and- white organization would attract more in the way of bi-racial support.