Michael Moore draws the crowds at Democratic Convention

They started lining up to hear Michael Moore at 10:30am, five hours before the movie director delivered a fiery speech to a packed hotel ballroom with hundreds of people locked outside.

Moore will not be addressing the Democratic National Convention this week, but for thousands of liberal activists, the majority of them young people, the director of "Fahrenheit 9/11" is by far the biggest star in Boston.

"It's a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to get up close and personal," said Jeff Glowik, a recent high school graduate who plans to vote for the first time in the November 2 presidential election.

Along with his friend Michelle Duff, Glowik was at the front of a line that stretched several blocks. More than 2,000 people tried to attend the talk, but only a fraction of them squeezed into the room.

Wearing his trademark baseball cap and jeans, Moore did not disappoint his audience. As he did in his movie, he delivered a blistering attack on President George W. Bush and warned Democrats that he and his allies would fight tooth and nail to hold on to power.

"The unelected side who occupy the White House - they are not going to go peacefully," Moore said, referring to the disputed 2000 presidential election in which Democrat Al Gore won more popular votes than Bush.

"They are better fighters than we are," Moore said of Republicans. "They are up at six in the morning trying to figure out which minority they are going to screw today. Our side, we never see six in the morning, unless we've been up all night."

MOST SUCCESSFUL DOCUMENTARY

Moore, whose movie has grossed more than US$100 million at the US and Canadian box office, the most ever by a political documentary, plans to travel to Texas on Wednesday to screen it in Bush's home town of Crawford.

At a Democratic convention where speakers have been warned not to bash Bush too hard, Moore has struck a very different tone. He calls the president and his allies "hate-riots, not patriots." But Bush is far from his only target.

Some of Moore's most bitter words are reserved for the US media, which he says failed to ask tough questions about Bush's decision to invade Iraq in 2003 and for being "cheerleaders and shills" for the war.

"You haven't just been embedded -- you've been in bed with the wrong people," he said.

Moore said he forgives Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry's vote in 2002 to authorise the war, saying his only real sin was believing what Bush said at the time.

He warns Kerry he will not win the election by trying to see both sides of every issue. "You will not win this election by being weak-kneed and wimpy and lacking the courage or your convictions," he said.


- REUTERS