And the people who'd flown in for this intimate first screening, a day after the film had been shipped to the Cannes Film Festival, included grateful September 11 "first responders,'' suffering lung problems or other ailments from their days at ground zero. In the film, Moore takes them to Cuba and tries to get them treated at the US base at Guantanamo Bay -- where, he contends, terror suspects were getting better medical care than the heroes of 9/11.

The Cuba trip actually accounts for just a small part of Sicko, which aims its wrath at private insurance and pharmaceutical companies and HMOs, while praising socialised medicine in countries like France and Britain. Moore fills it with stories like that of a woman whose ambulance ride after a car crash wasn't covered -- because it wasn't "pre-approved.''

But Cuba has loomed large in the flurry of pre-release publicity. That's because the director, an unabashed critic of President Bush, is being investigated by the Treasury Department for possibly violating the US trade embargo by travelling to the island nation. Moore has fired back with an open letter accusing the administration of "abusing the federal government for raw, crass political purposes.''

At his screening Tuesday evening at a Manhattan hotel, however, Moore was focused on the reaction of his invited guests.