What do you do with a movie that no one in his or her right mind would pay money to see?

If you’re Michael Moore, you give it away. But you pre­tend you’re giv­ing it away for altruistic/maverick-new-media reas­ons, not because it’s a dog.

A rather cred­u­lous AP report by one Jake Coyle kicks off thusly: “Inspired by Neil Young and Radiohead, Michael Moore will release his new film online and for free.” Later in the piece Moore is quoted to the effect that it’s all for the fans and “a nice way of cel­eb­rat­ing my 20^th year of doing this.”

Nothing in Coyle’s report indic­ates that the film entitled Slacker Uprising had any his­tory before this notice. That’s some fine report­ing there from the AP. Any idi­ot with Google would need about a minute and a half to fig­ure out that Moore’s giveaway is basic­ally Plan B for a film that’s been kick­ing around, distributor-less, for well over a year.

About 20 mins or so of what was then called Slacker Uprising Tour appar­ently ran as an hors d’oeuvre to Sicko at 2007’s Cannes Film Festival. I missed that, ’cause My Lovely Wife was due to hit town at the same time as the screen­ing. Priorities. I did, how­ever, catch the com­pleted work, with the more self-congratulatory (and hence, hon­est) title Captain Mike Across America, at the Toronto fest­iv­al almost a year ago today. Here’s what I wrote about it then:

A por­tion of this Michael Moore pic­ture, then called Slacker Uprising Tour, was screened at Cannes as a work-in-progess on the same bill as Sicko. It is not apt to sup­plant Sicko, or any­thing else, in Moore’s filmo. As an inter­title early in the pic­ture admits, the movie is about Moore’s “failed attempt” to save John Kerry from him­self after Kerry’s too-little, too-late response to his Swift-boating. For those who remain highly agit­ated by the res­ults of the 2004 elec­tion, this pic­ture, its upbeat “we gotta keep fight­ing” coda not­with­stand­ing, might play as a par­tic­u­larly unpleas­ant bout of scab-picking (hey, there’s an altern­ate title for ya). In the final weeks before the elec­tion, Moore toured mul­tiple cit­ies in mul­tiple swing states, try­ing to get out the vote. And this film is, well, a lot of foot­age from that tour, mostly of Moore address­ing mostly ador­ing audi­ences. (Advertisement for Myself is anoth­er poten­tial altern­ate title.) The nar­rat­ive, such as it is, gains interest as loud­mouthed Bush-Cheney sup­port­ers infilt­rate Moore’s shows (although the laughs gen­er­ated by some of these folks’ dopey sound­bites might have been hearti­er had the movie not kicked off with one Moore sup­port­er call­ing Bush “the first non-elected pres­id­ent since the 19^th century”—have our young people so soon for­got­ten Gerald Ford?) and vari­ous Republican interests are seen try­ing to shut Moore down. Until then, you can uncom­fort­ably reflect on how a hel­luva lot of Moore’s celebrity “spe­cial guests” are about ten years behind the zeit­geist if not more—Joan Baez shows up in the last third, telling us we need Moore because “there’s no Dylan,” which news might come as some sur­prise to the former Mr. Zimmerman, who I believe still does breathe. Also fea­tur­ing Eddie Vedder cov­er­ing a Cat Stevens song. Not, alas, “Matthew and Son.”

Most of my crit­ic­al brethren were more or less on the same page as I, although some were reluct­ant to admit it—it’s that lib­rul media bias at work agin, con­sarn it!—but even those able to muster some appre­ci­ation for the film were dubi­ous about its com­mer­cial pro­spects, as it is, at heart, a 90-minute-plus promo for…Michael Moore. (Celebrating one’s fail­ure to get John McCain Kerry [good God, how was that for a typo?] elec­ted is a piquant example of a cer­tain fal­lacy in putat­ively pro­gress­ive dis­course, most recently mani­fes­ted in the now-ebbing com­par­is­ons of Sarah Palin to Dan Quayle.) And now we see how the free mar­ket has worked its spe­cial magic—The Weinstein Company, whose logo was attached to the print of the film I saw in Toronto, clearly did the math and figured they could­n’t afford anoth­er bomb, even one totally self-financed by its maker. Leaving its maker with the film in his lap.

I must admit, Moore’s spin is pretty ingenious—and he’s clearly count­ing on the idea that no one of his claque will notice that the film’s already been scru­tin­ized and rejec­ted by a cer­tain élite sec­tor! As always, one has to give him cred­it for show­man­ship if noth­ing else.

UPDATE: Welcome, pat­rons of Dirty Harry’s Place. Like the song says, “why can­’t we be friends?” Stick around—I’ll be weigh­ing in with thoughts on the Blu-ray discs of How The West Was Won and The Gauntlet—two movies all red-blooded cinephiles of any damn polit­ic­al affil­i­ation should be able to agree on—in short order.