Because the film didn't fit neatly into any established categories at Cannes, the Jury created a special 55th Anniversary Award just for the film.
In May 2002 this film became the first documentary to compete in the Cannes Film Festival's main competition in 46 years.
When the movie won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature at The 75th Annual Academy Awards (2003), Michael Moore sparked a controversy by denouncing the George W. Bush administration on stage.
The segment where they interviewed James Nichols included additional footage that was left on the cutting room floor. In the footage, Nichols brings up that he happened to be in Littleton on the exact day of the shootings, and he even said that the shooters did not do a very good job at killing people. The clip was left in for test audiences, however said audiences claimed that the clip seemed too unbelievable. Despite Michael Moore and his team loving the clip, they took it out of the film.
The first rough cut of the film ran about six hours.