Filmmaker Michael Moore didn't really tell an Iranian magazine that he's planning a trip to Iran, he told BuzzFeed on Monday.
"Someone is playing a prank," Moore said via email.
"Are you serious? Really?" Moore said when asked whether he gave the quotes in question to that outlet. "I did tell them that I once shot a unicorn in Reno (or was it Elko?) just to watch it die. And then I ate it. After I took it to Uranus. Flew coach with Kim Kardashian. Who has carried three of my babies. But we dropped two of them off on Jupiter because the schools are better."
An Iranian news report quoted Moore saying that "I am now waiting for an opportunity to travel to Iran. Even if they do not invite me this time I will go anyway."
Moore allegedly told Mehrnameh magazine that he had previously planned to visit Iran, but "the right-wing media in the US began to take a position and published some very critical and hateful articles, they even published faked news about me. So I thought I should postpone visiting Iran to another time."
The country "maintains a very defined process to get a visa to visit, with clear limitations and extra hoops for Americans to jump through," the Washington Post notes in its write-up of the original report, adding that Americans must have an invitation to enter the country.