Michael Moore Calls Snipers "Cowards"
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Let me ask you a question -- Chris. Would you be surprised if I told you the navy has credited you with over 160 kills?</s>COSTELLO: An unbelievable movie but a question arose this morning. This is the question. Do you think snipers in the United States military are cowards? It's not coming from me; it's coming from Michael Moore. He does. And apparently he's not alone. The documentary filmmaker went on Twitter last night and bashed the new Oscar nominated Bradley Cooper feature "American Sniper", a biopic about Chris Kyle, a former Navy SEAL and sharp shooter. One of Moore's tweets read quote, "My uncle was killed by a sniper in World War II. We were taught snipers were cowards, who'll shoot you in the back. Snipers aren't heroes. They're invaders and worse." CNN's Brian Stelter joins me now with more. I know it's Michael Moore but I was taken aback by this.</s>BRIAN STELTER, CNN SENIOR MEDIA CORRESPONDENT: Me too. And a lot of other people as well. It seemed to come out of nowhere. We don't know if he's actually seen the movie or not. I think the first step is you have to see the movie and then maybe you can comment on it. But, you know, He's not the only one saying things like this. There's actually a billboard in Los Angeles for this movie. There's now graffiti over it with the word "murder" saying that Chris Kyle was not a hero, he was a murderer.</s>COSTELLO: And then Seth Rogen came out too. Mr. North Korea?</s>STELTER: He did. He was also -- yes, yes. He says he felt like this movie played like the movie that was in third act of "Inglorious Bastards", you know. And what we've seen generally is I think this movie mirroring a public debate that's happening about -- about war. 13, 14 years into the war on terror, many years after most of our troops came home from Iraq. No longer is the Iraq war something that's being shown on movie theaters as a present day event. It's now history. History is talked about differently than events that are still progressing. You know what I mean?</s>COSTELLO: Like the Vietnam War -- right?</s>STELTER: Yes, absolutely. The tone of movies changed after the Vietnam War as well. It evolved over the years. No time until now has an Iraq war movie been successful at the box office. "Lions and Lambs" and "Rendition" and these other films that came out years ago all of them did not -- even -- what was the one that won the Oscar -- "The Hurt Locker".</s>COSTELLO: Chris Kyle's story is so compelling Brian. I mean he's such a compelling character. And the way he died in real life was very moving and sad.</s>STELTER: Absolutely. And when I saw the movie, first of all, I thought it was the best movie I had seen all year. When it ended, everyone including me just sat there watching the whole credits. Nobody wanted to get up. It was that kind of movie. It was an incredibly powerful movie.</s>COSTELLO: Actually two other people told me the same thing. When the movie ended, you were emotionally spent.</s>STELTER: Maybe that's why it's breaking these records. I mean dateline.com says what record did this movie not break? We haven't almost ever seen a movie like this do so well in January but Warner Brothers -- which like CNN is owned by Time Warner -- it did something very smart. It opened the movie in New York and L.A. at the end of 2014 then it was able to build momentum and got all those Oscar nominations last week and then on Friday it opened across the country at just the right time. There was already interest in this movie. And now as a result of these huge ticket sales, it's going to have even more Oscar momentum. So it's sort of a virtuous cycle. But it does, you know, if we open these debates about the Iraq war -- I came away thinking depending on your perspective of the Iraq war, this is either prime, it's either pro-war or anti-war. You can see it either way depending on what attitude you come in to the theater.</s>COSTELLO: Fascinating. I would really like to know what our viewers think about this. They've already expressed very strong opinions on my Facebook page. It's at facebook.com/CarolCNN. Thank you for the comments. They are strong. Exactly what I wanted. Thank you for joining me.</s>STELTER: Thank you.</s>COSTELLO: I appreciate it. Thank you for joining me today as well. I'm Carol Costello. NEWSROOM with John Berman after a break.