Q&A: Michael Moore, [An Interview with Filmmaker Michael Moore] Entertainment Weekly,October 25, 2002 Daniel Fierman: A film executive once told me that you had a reputation for being anti-Semitic – it had to do with Roger & Me and your supposed refusal to allow the film to be shown in Israel. Do you know what I'm talking about? Moore: [Long pause] Right. Okay. I'm glad you asked that. Here's what happened. In Roger & Me, [Newlywed Game host] Bob Eubanks tells a joke. He says, Why don't Jewish women get AIDS? And I don't want this reprinted, so I won't say it, but it's an anti-Semitic, antigay, antiwoman joke. So I'm out in L.A. and Rob Friedman, who was then the head of [Warner Bros. Advertising and publicity], says, "You're not going to believe what's going on. The Anti-Defamation League and Bob Eubanks are blasting Michael Moore for putting anti-Semitism in the film." [Long pause] A week later, Jewish weeklies across the country all run the story that the ADL sent out saying that Michael Moore put anti-Semitism in the film. Now, I have a Jewish friend who says that his grandpa has two columns; good for Jews and bad for Jews. [Laughs] And once that appeared, it stuck in a lot of people's minds: Roger & Me – bad for Jews. Plus at the end of the film one of the tourism ladies in Flint says, I'm going to move to Israel and maybe I'll become the mistress of tourism. And then as a joke it cuts to the first intifada and I put up [the subtitle] "One month after Maxine arrived" – which I thought was funny, to go from war zone to war zone. So those two things got this weird vibe going, and then the film was invited to the Jerusalem Film Festival. [Sighs] I had two requests – that the film not be shown [if] people would be prohibited from seeing it because of curfews and that the film have Arabic subtitles. [The festival agreed to neither] so I said, "I am so sorry, I want to come, but I can't. how can I if people were not allowed in because of who they were?" EW: But why does this still have currency 13 years later? Moore: It's as simple as my not toeing the standard line on Israel. I would stand up for anybody who is going to be persecuted. And that position has no credibility if I won't do it for Palestinians [as well as Jews].