Every movie has its own recipe for success and, for filmmaker Michael Moore, the success of American Sniper in the box office could be attributed to the unique crowd that went to see it in theatres.
Moore claims that when he went to watch the movie in New York's liberal Greenwich Village area, it seemed to have attracted what he called a "Passion of the Christ" crowd.
"I went there on the second night of the opening," he said in a Q&A session with Vice.com. "But when I got there... I said, 'Oh my God. Look around, we're in the Village and no one from the Village is here.'"
"It just felt like a real 'Passion of the Christ' crowd," Moore added. "[These are] [p]eople who would normally wait for it to go on video or see it on TV but wanted that collective feeling of sitting there with others."
He also said that audience was made up of people who are "largely from military backgrounds."
Moore told Vice.com that the audience's emotions resonated with the film and that there were "tears" in the audience.
"People were having a reaction to it," Moore said, describing the mood in the theatre.
Moore has recently faced criticism for his tweets about snipers, who he implied were cowards in his posts.
"Tomorrow's Sunday School (1) What Would Jesus Do? Oh, I know what he'd do -- hide on top of a roof and shoot people in the back!" one of Moore's tweets said.
Moore has defended his posts, criticising the release of American Sniper around Martin Luther King Day.
"I just found it uncomfortable that something called 'American Sniper,' a film about a sniper, would be released on the weekend where we're honouring a great American who was killed by a sniper," he said.
He also claimed that Twitter's limitations largely led to the misinterpretation of his posts.
"140 characters can't really convey things that have enormous depth to them," he told Vice.com.
