Filmmaker Moore Gives 'Sicko' Update on EthicsDaily.com

Moore said he's spent most of 2006 shooting the movie and has gotten about 75 percent of it in the can. The Weinstein Co. will release "Sicko" theatrically sometime in 2007, which is later than the initial release date of September 2006, Variety reported.

"As we've done with our other films, we don't discuss them while we are making them," wrote Moore. "If people ask, we tell them 'Sicko' is 'a comedy about the 45 million people with no health care in the richest country on Earth.'"

"I don't think the country needs a movie that tells you that HMOs and the pharmaceutical companies suck," Moore wrote. "Everybody knows that. I'd like to show you some things you don't know. So stay tuned for where this movie has led me. I think you might enjoy it."

Moore asked Americans in February to send him "a short, factual account of what has happened to you—and what IS happening to you right now if you have been unable to get the health care you need."

Moore said he spent a month reading the 19,000 responses to his invitation, but he did not indicate how—if at all—such stories will be incorporated into "Sicko."

"To read about the misery people are put through on a daily basis by our profit-based system was both moving and revolting," wrote Moore. "That's all I will say right now."

After Moore issued his February invitation, NewsMax carried an article suggesting Moore was "apparently so desperate to dig up dirt on drug companies and health-care providers … he's asking visitors to his Web site to help him out."

The NewsMax article also quoted from Peter Schweizer's book, Do As I Say (Not As I Do): Profiles in Liberal Hypocrisy. Schweizer's chapter on Moore "reveals," according to NewsMax, that Moore's private foundation invested in "pharmaceutical and medical companies as Pfizer, Merck, Genzyme, Elan PLC, Eli Lilly, Becton Dickinson and Boston Scientific."

Variety reported that, upon news of Moore's intent to make "Sicko," health-care companies instructed their employees not to cooperate with the filmmaker whose "Fahrenheit 9/11" set a box-office documentary record in 2004, earning $119 million domestically.

"It gets harder and harder sneaking into corporate headquarters," wrote Moore in February, "but I've found that just dying my hair black and wearing a skort really helps."

Cliff Vaughn is culture editor for EthicsDaily.com.

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