STILL SHOOTING HIS MOUTH OFF 'BOWLING FOR COLUMBINE' DIRECTOR MICHAEL MOORE HAS PLENTY TO SAY FOR THOSE WHO WOULD ATTACK HIS MOTIVES.

Byline: Bob Strauss Staff Writer

THE FIRST OF NUMEROUS surprising revelations in Michael Moore's new documentary ``Bowling for Columbine'' is that the famously left-wing director of ``Roger & Me'' and author of the best-selling ``Stupid White Men and Other Sorry Excuses for the State of the Nation'' is a lifetime member of the National Rifle Association.

But like many things in his new movie - which opened to vigorous business in a few New York and L.A. theaters recently and was the first documentary in 46 years to compete at the Cannes Film Festival, where it won a special 55th anniversary prize - this revelation must be examined carefully. After all, Moore's previous book was titled ``Downsize This! Random Threats From an Unarmed American.''

The discrepancy lies in your definition of what ``is'' is. And it was also the catalyst for Moore's complex new film that explores the reasons for gun violence in America - and goes on to address a whole lot else.

``I don't like guns, actually,'' says the hefty, 48-year-old Flint, Mich., native, decked out in his standard uniform of jeans, windbreaker and gimme cap (a blue UCLA job for this interview). ``As a kid, I did. I had a junior membership and won the (NRA) marksman award and all that stuff.

``I got the life membership after Columbine because I wanted to run against Charlton Heston for presidency of the NRA. My initial reaction was that they've got 4 million members; I'll convince 5 million Americans - there's gotta be 5 million who agree with me on this issue out of 280 million - to join up for the basic membership and vote for me. Then I'll become president and I'll dismantle the organization.

``Then that just seemed like too much work,'' Moore adds, ``and the inner slacker in me said, 'Make a movie, Mike.' ''

Thus began a three-year odyssey across the country, across the border into Canada, and in pursuit of Heston (more on that later) to try to get to the bottom of youthful shootings in particular and the homicide rate in general. What he discovered were more contradictions, ironies, unexpected facts and complications than the polemicist in Moore was used to encountering.

Among these was the revelation that informed the film's title, in which we learn that the boys who shot up Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo., went bowling that morning before the massacre. We (and Moore) also learn that our neighbors to the north are as well-armed as we are, which shoots down the theory that gun control is the reason for Canada's lower murder rate.

Those are just two of many examples. Additionally, events such as last year's terrorist attacks on America and this year's growing drumbeat for war against Saddam Hussein affected the movie in utterly unpredictable ways.

``The way the film turned out was far different from what I had originally planned,'' Moore admits. ``It was very simple in 'Roger & Me'; I was trying to get (General Motors chairman) Roger Smith to come see what he's done to Flint, Mich., and that was pretty consistent through the making of the film. This starts out about school shootings and guns and ends up talking about 9-11 and Iraq, long before I knew it would come out the week of this war debate.

``Also in this film, I'm not afraid to not have all the answers, and I believe it's OK to ask questions that don't have answers,'' Moore adds when asked how this effort differs from his muckraking earlier films and television series, ``The Awful Truth'' and ``TV Nation.''

``I don't know how I feel about some of this stuff, either, but to me that's more authentic because that's who we really are as people. You're constantly weighing this side of the issue against that side of the issue.''

Still, many of Moore's familiar assumptions inform the movie. It is no surprise that ``Columbine'' comes closest to a conclusion in suggesting that a culture of fear, promoted around the clock by the nation's news media, is a core reason for America's high gun homicide rate.

A quick look at this month's leading story reinforces Moore's thesis.

``Everybody right now is freaked out by this sniper,'' he says of the D.C.-area serial killer who is thought to have shot his 13th victim Tuesday, bringing the death count to 10. ``But every day in America, nearly 40 people are shot and killed by guns. Forty. We don't lead the news with that every day, do we? Hard to park a satellite truck in one place to cover the 40. This guy is being very nice to cable news.''

No wonder some critics of ``Bowling for Columbine'' believe that Moore is still up to his old deck-stacking tricks. This seems no more evident than in a sequence in which Moore, after two years of frustrated attempts to interview Heston through NRA channels, simply requests a meeting over the security intercom at the actor's Hollywood Hills home. Heston invites him back the next day.

During the resulting interview, the NRA president makes some questionable, ethnically related assertions about American gun violence, and walks away from the camera when Moore confronts him about appearing at NRA functions in Colorado and Flint shortly after gun tragedies involving children occurred in those places.

The NRA refused to comment about the film and referred this reporter to a private spokesman for Heston, Bill Powers. Powers said that neither he nor Heston had seen the movie.

``It's hard to comment on something I haven't seen,'' Powers said. ``And frankly, Mr. Moore doesn't hold much interest for me.''

For his part, Moore admits that the Heston footage seen in ``Columbine'' was part of a much longer interview, and denies any attempt to sandbag the actor-activist.

``I was very gracious to him,'' Moore insists. ``I was respectful to him, I treated him decently, I was not mean to him, I was not out to poke fun at him. I did not prompt him to say the things he said about race, he just put them out there. I felt that I treated him the way that I would want to be treated.''

Gun control proponent and United Artists president Bingham Ray, whose company is distributing ``Columbine,'' defends Moore's methods.

``I disagree with a number of critics who say that Mike makes people look like fools,'' Ray says. ``I think fools make themselves look like fools, and Michael is just there with a camera to point that out to you. And he's a filmmaker, he's not a journalist. These are his views, his agenda, and what I love about the film is that you can agree with him all or you can agree with him partially or you can disagree with him totally, and it still makes for a riveting and extremely interesting and truly one-of-a-kind film-going experience that will spark debate and provoke and challenge an audience.''

Moore's populist, guerrilla-like tactics sure worked for his most recent book. ``Stupid White Men,'' which excoriates prewar-on-terror Bush administration policies, has spent more than 30 weeks on The New York Times best-seller list and sold nearly 1 million copies. But it almost didn't see the light of bookshelves.

``The first printing was 50,000 copies on Sept. 10'' of 2001, Moore recalls. ``It was to be shipped the next day; obviously, it didn't go out. I spoke to (publisher Harper Collins) on the 12th and they said they wanted to hold off for a while, and that was OK, I didn't want to go on a book tour anyway. But then they held off for a few weeks, then a few months, and I was like, 'What's going on with my book?'

``Then they said, 'We can't put this out in the form it's in. It's way too harsh on George W. Bush. So we would like you to think about rewriting 50 percent of the book, changing the title, changing some chapter titles, taking some chapters out ... and we want you to give us back your $100,000 advance to pay for the reprinting of those 50,000 copies.' I said, 'Well, I'm not giving you a dime back and I'm not changing a word.' So there was a standoff.''

Which Moore won handily. Through his Web site, www.michaelmoore.com, he got the word out. A national librarian's organization got wind of the situation and threatened to boycott Harper Collins if the publisher pulped the book. They relented and released it, but with almost no promotional backup. So natural gadfly Moore, with his sister's help, organized his own cross-country book tour.

Although he claims that he does not speak with the Harper Collins people anymore, he's nevertheless provided them with the year's biggest nonfiction best seller. Moore also says that visits to his Web site have increased from 70,000 in January, the month when the book came out, to 17 million in September.

He takes no personal credit for such phenomena.

``It's not because I've got a great Web site and it's not because the book's well-written, whether it is or is not written well,'' Moore says. ``People are desperately hungry for someone to stand up against this, for somebody to please say something.''

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Author and documentarian Michael Moore, a burr under the saddle of right-wingers since his film ``Roger & Me,'' explores America's obsessions with guns in ``Bowling for Columbine.''