More money coming for Moore

"I'm a millionaire, I'm a multi-millionaire. I'm filthy rich. You know why I'm a multi-millionaire? Cause multi-millions like what I do."

The author of the above, one Michael Moore of Davison, Mich., will add to his bankroll on Wednesday, Oct. 20, when he picks up a $40,000 check, not counting travel expenses, from the student body at Utah Valley State College.

Moore has agreed to speak in the 8,000-seat David O. McKay Center on the UVSC campus, and although he hasn't, as far as I know, delivered in advance the text of his speech, a good guess is that he will talk about what a bad man President Bush is.

Another reasonable guess: his warm-up act will not be the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth.

Moore is the documentary filmmaker who, in 2003, won an Academy Award for "Bowling for Columbine," a film about America's obsession with guns and violence, and used his acceptance speech to thank mom and dad and rip Bush. As a sequel to that, this past June he released "Fahrenheit 9/11," his documentary that criticizes the war with Iraq and Bush's handling of the 9/11 terrorist attacks and has already made nearly $120 million to become the highest-grossing documentary of all time.

"Fahrenheit 9/11" has gone around the world. It won le grande prize at France's Cannes Film Festival, the Palme d'Or, becoming the first documentary ever to do so, and received a 20-minute standing ovation from the couldn't-agree-more French. It was also well-received at its premiere this past week in Tehran, Iran.

The movie even drew a crowd in Crawford, Texas, just four miles from the front gate of Bush's ranch, where it was shown in late July in a parking lot, and 3,000 people, counting those who thought with a crowd that big it must be a George Strait concert, attended. Across town, several hundred of Bush's neighbors staged a pro-Bush rally by not attending, including one farmer with a truck full of manure.

Anyway, now it's Orem's turn. Not to see the film — which appeared and disappeared from Utah County movie houses faster than Gary Crowton's offense — but to see the man who made it.

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Back to the $40,000.

$40,000!

For two hours' work!

And you thought Greg Ostertag had a sweet deal.

In two hours, Michael Moore will make more money than a UVSC student working 20 hours a week in the cafeteria will make in seven years.