Over Sunday dinner, the Bay Area progressive choir gathered in 382 house parties from Piedmont to San Francisco's Bayview to nod along to the latest political season documentary -- this one ridiculing archnemesis Fox News.

This 80-minute film, however, may never do what movies are supposed to do: Play in theaters. It may not even get to TV.

The famous -- or infamous -- slogan employed by Fox News appears on the screen at a house party hosted by Holly Lloyd in Piedmont. "Outfoxed" was shown at about 3,000 house parties nationally. Chronicle photo by Chris Stewart

That's where the house parties come in. They're the focus of the marketing campaign for "Outfoxed." Made for a Hollywood-paltry $300,000, "Outfoxed" is the latest entry in the suddenly hot market for political films. With the box-office smash "Fahrenheit 9/11" and the just-released "The Hunting of the President," portraying a right-wing cabal trying to take down Bill Clinton, and a new Resistance Cinema series in the East Bay, much of the politically conscious Bay Area seems to be spending time in large, darkened rooms.

"Outfoxed" -- largely funded and distributed by the 2.2 million members of Berkeley-birthed liberal online hub MoveOn.org -- is adding an under-the- radar twist.

The filmmakers turned the century-old film distribution model upside down by premiering the documentary Sunday at more than 3,000 house parties nationwide. And while director Robert Greenwald is talking to a cable company and hopes for a theatrical release, he's relying on word of mouth and the Internet to sell what he hopes will be more than 100,000 DVDs of the film at about $10 each.

In December, relying on the same channels and with no mainstream advertising and less advance buzz, Greenwald's "Uncovered: The Whole Truth About the Iraq War" sold 120,000 DVDs.

After costs were paid, Greenwald used the leftover cash to give 10,000 copies of "Uncovered" DVDs to San Francisco punk rock label head Fat Mike to distribute on a Bush-bashing musical tour. Thanks to the resultant buzz, "Uncovered" will have its theatrical release in San Francisco, New York and a few other large cities in August. His next film -- "Unconstitutional," about civil liberties violations since Sept. 11 -- is set to be ready for home viewing in September.

"There's a real hunger out there for stuff of substance about the critical issues of the day," said Greenwald, an Emmy-nominated director best known for transforming Farrah Fawcett into a serious actress in the 1984 TV movie "The Burning Bed."

The "Outfoxed" distribution method, he said, "is the best way to get the material out there quickly."

And it means avoiding the politics that caused Disney Corp. to decline to distribute Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11." MoveOn.org, the liberal think tank Center for American Progress and a loan from Greenwald financed "Outfoxed. "

The Sept. 11 terrorist attacks transformed Greenwald, a 58-year-old native New Yorker. In the past two years, he's moved beyond the land of TV biopics on Natalie Cole that made him financially secure to do quickly assembled, pointed documentaries, beginning with "Unprecedented: The 2000 Presidential Election."

Last year, he became interested in what he heard journalists describing as the "Foxification" of the news. He began a near-24-hour-a-day monitoring of the cable news channel, looking for signs of partisanship beneath the network's "fair and balanced" slogan.

Helped by 10 MoveOn.org members who volunteered to watch Fox News constantly (their motto: "We watch Fox so you don't have to"), and a study on the network's bias by Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, Greenwald concluded "that Fox isn't a conservative network. It's a Republican network."

Greenwald stocks the film with interviews with former employees and memos from Fox executives with trickle-down coverage suggestions on everything from the Sept. 11 commission to the war in Iraq.

In a statement, Fox News criticized the film, saying "the former low- level Fox employees (in the film) are hardly worth addressing. Some left because of incompetence, and none expressed concern about editorial policy while employees."

That didn't matter to the 30 people who attended a house party in Piedmont, as they groaned at the antics of Fox commentator Bill O'Reilly.

Many were like Peter Harvey. He has unplugged from the network news grid, getting his news from Link TV and Free Speech TV.

"I'm here for moral support,'' said Harvey, a 49-year-old Piedmont resident. "And usually at these kinds of things, we pull out the checkbook.''

Eve Ogden brought her husband, who is leaning toward voting for President Bush again, in the hope "that he has a sliver of an open mind.''

After seeing "Outfoxed,'' the 53-year-old Brent Ogden of Piedmont said, "It's a brilliant movie. I don't think it changes my politics, but it's a great commentary on the news. If all the channels were like Fox, the world would be like (the television show) Max Headroom.''

But will this film resonate beyond the Bay Area choir? (The region rivaled New York for the national lead in sheer number of house parties.) That's not necessarily Greenwald's concern.

"I think there's a real value in energizing the choir," he said. "This film isn't about defeating Bush. It's about showing the danger of what happens when corporations control news coverage."

Moriah Kinberg, who helped put together a free "Resistance Cinema" series in Oakland, which premiered Sunday with a screening of Pacifica Radio commentator Amy Goodman's media critique, "Independent Media in a Time of War, " said such films can rally support in a way that, say, a demonstration can't.

"It can be hard to get people to come out to a protest march," said Kinberg, an organizer with the anti-war group Not In Our Name. "But going to the movie seems safer. It can be more passive. If you want to stay and talk about it afterwards, you can."

Before opening night screenings of "Fahrenheit 9/11" last month, Democratic Party supporters waded through the crowd passing out buttons and asking for donations -- in the political tepid-bed of Lafayette.

Other progressives, however, say popcorn activism isn't enough.

"What people have to realize that going to see 'Fahrenheit 9/11' doesn't mean that you've participated in social change," said Don Hazen, executive director of San Francisco-based progressive news site AlterNet, which co- hosted an early screening of "Outfoxed" Friday in San Francisco; Greenwald is a board member of AlterNet's parent organization, the Independent Media Institute.

"Sorry," Hazen said. "You've got to get outside of San Francisco. Go talk to a friend in Reno. Or Las Vegas. Someplace where they don't think the same as here."

© Copyright 2004 San Francisco Chronicle

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