Bowling for Columbine

Top 10 Fun Facts

1. Michael Moore didn't just direct this documentary; he wrote it, produced it, and narrated it (you may notice he's also the star).
2. Michael Moore's mantel got considerably more cluttered after this film made the rounds, picking up an Academy Award, an Independent Spirit Award, and a special 55th Anniversary Prize at the 2002 Cannes Film Festival.
3. Who's counting? The movie enjoyed a full 13 minutes of standing ovation after its screening at Cannes.
4. When the clapping finally stopped, the Cannes jurors created a special award for the film - honoring it with the 55^th Anniversary Prize.
5. Bowling for Columbine held the record for highest-grossing documentary of all time - until Michael Moore trumped himself with the release of Fahrenheit 9/11, which surpassed Columbine's entire gross in just one weekend.
6. Fickle crowd: when accepting his Oscar, Michael Moore proclaimed his opposition to the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq - for which he received both cheers and boos.
7. South Park co-creator Matt Stone appears in the film, but has since fallen out with Michael Moore - which led to a rather unseemly death of Moore's "character" in Stone's 2004 comedy Team America: World Police.
8. When all else fails, just show up: having failed to get an interview with Charlton Heston after two years of trying, one of Michael Moore's staff members suggested they find the actor's house using a star map. And so they did.
9. Less is more, but more is Moore: the initial rough cut of Bowling for Columbine was about six hours long.
10. Full disclosure: the Willie Horton "ad" from the George Bush-Dan Quayle campaign shown in the film never appeared that way on TV - it's actually two different ads spliced together.

Cast

Crew