BY MARK HOWELL

Citizen Staff Writer

KEY WEST — Opening today in 500 cities in the United States, including Key West, Michael Moore's latest film, "Fahrenheit 9/11," already is raising temperatures.

Hailed in Europe as his masterpiece, Moore's movie is late in arriving on its native shores. Sight unseen, it has been decried by American right-wingers for its attack on President Bush. Even a leading liberal writer, plus the author of the book "Fahrenheit 451," are voicing their objections.

Key Westers can make up their own minds at multiple showings of "Fahrenheit 9/11" at the new Tropic Cinema, 416 Eaton St.

The public premiere is at 8 p.m. today, followed by a screening at 10:15 p.m.

Key West Film Society members may preview the movie at 5:30 p.m., following a reception at the cinema. Society founder Michael Shields is responsible for Key West's inclusion among the cities premiering the film.

The Tropic has scheduled "more shows than we have for any other title," said Jason Rowan, publicist at the Tropic, where the film will be screened five times on Saturday, four times on Sunday, and three times a day through next Friday. "There's more interest in this than any film we've shown so far. We're excited to present it."

Disappointed not to see the film in his hometown is lifelong liberal Mayor Jimmy Weekley, in Boston to attend a mayors conference. "But I'll collar some mayors up there and go see it," he said Wednesday. "I'm anxious to do so. This film could have a big effect on the presidential election."

"Fahrenheit 9/11," whose basic premise is that President Bush has something to hide, joins such films as Orson Welles's classic "Citizen Kane" (1941) and Charlie Chaplin's "A King in New York" (1957) in having difficulties finding a U.S. distributor.

The delay for "Kane" was due to media mogul William Randolph Hearst, who saw himself pilloried in the film and purchased every print he could find to burn them. Chaplin's "King," a comedy about the House Un-American Activities Committee, was banned in the United States by the State Department for almost 20 years.

Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11" has been showing for months in Europe, where it won the coveted Palme D'Or prize at the Cannes Film Festival. But in the United States, the film's backers, Bob and Harvey Weinstein of Miramax, were refused distribution by parent company Disney and had to bring in a Canadian company, Lion's Gate, to get the film out.

Moore is no stranger to censorship. Immediately after the 9/11 attacks, 50,000 copies of his book, "Stupid White Men," were pulped by his publisher HarperCollins, a Rupert Murdoch company.

The national reaction to Moore's acceptance speech at the Oscars last year, when he won best documentary with "Bowling for Columbine" — and pronounced the invasion of Iraq as "Bush's fictional war" — was mixed. But the international audience at Cannes in May this year gave Moore an unprecedented 20-minute standing ovation for "Fahrenheit 9/11."

Film critic Robert Ebert saw the film in Cannes and has described a number of its moments with relish, for example the documentation about George W. Bush's release of his military records: "He blotted out the name of another pilot whose flight status was suspended on the same day for failure to take a physical exam. This was his good friend James R. Bath, who later became the Texas money manager for the bin Laden family."

It is just this kind of eliding coincidence that is earning the movie its critics on the left. Christopher Hitchens, a Canadian-born writer for Vanity Fair, surprised liberals this week with an attack on what he calls "Unfahrenheit 9/11." "A sinister exercise in moral frivolity," he wrote in Slate, "a windy and bloated cinematic 'key to all mythologies' ... I don't think Al Jezeera would, on a bad day, have transmitted anything so utterly propagandistic."

Earlier this month, author Ray Bradbury employed four-letter words to describe Moore. The author of "Fahrenheit 451," published almost 50 years ago and made into a movie in 1966, told the Swedish daily Dagens Nyheter that Moore "stole my title and changed the numbers without ever asking me permission. He is a horrible human being, a horrible human!"

Today's opening on 500 screens is a historical world record for a documentary. But the writer/director is upset his movie has an "R" rating. "I want all teenagers to see this film," he e-mailed his fans this month. "There is nothing in the film in terms of violence that we didn't see on TV every night at the dinner hour during the Vietnam War."

This week Moore warned fans that "the right wing usually wins these battles. Their basic belief system is built on censorship, repression and keeping people ignorant. They also don't like pets and are mean to small children. And too many of them are named Fred."

Mark Howell, senior writer for Solares Hill newspaper, writes reviews and stories on contemporary culture for The Citizen.