Roger & Me
Encyclopedia
Roger & Me is a 1989
American
documentary film
directed by Michael Moore
. Moore portrays the regional negative economic impact of General Motors CEO
Roger Smith
's summary action of closing several auto plants in Flint, Michigan
, costing 30,000 people their jobs at the time (80,000 to date) and economically devastating the city.
archival home movies
; he describes himself as "kind of a strange child," the Irish American
Catholic middle-class son of a General Motors
employee assembling AC Spark Plugs. Moore chronicles how GM had previously defined his childhood in Flint, Michigan
, and how the company was the primary economic and social hub of the town. He points out that Flint is the place where the Flint Sit-Down Strike
occurred, resulting in the birth of the United Auto Workers
. He reveals that his heroes were the Flint natives who had escaped the life in GM's factories, including the members of Grand Funk Railroad
, Casey Kasem
, the spouses of Zubin Mehta
(Nancy Kovack
) and Don Knotts
, and "Flint's most famous native son," game show host Bob Eubanks
.
Initially, he achieves his dream of avoiding factory life, working for a magazine
in San Francisco, but this venture fails for him and he ultimately travels back to Flint. As he returns, General Motors announces the layoffs of thousands of Flint auto workers, the jobs of whom will go to cheaper labor in Mexico
. GM makes this announcement even though the company is experiencing record profits.
Disguised as a TV journalist from Toledo, Ohio
, Moore interviews some auto workers in Flint and discovers their strong antipathy to General Motors chairman Roger B. Smith. Moore begins seeking out Smith himself to confront him about the closing of the Flint plants. He tries to visit Smith at GM's headquarters in Detroit, yet he is blocked by building security as Moore hasn't made an appointment. A company spokesman comes to the lobby and exchanges contact information with Moore, initially promising him to discuss an interview with Smith, but due to lack of credentials (since Moore is independent and does not have a business card), he refuses to grant him one. Over the course of the film, Moore attempts to track down Smith at the Grosse Pointe Yacht Club
and the Detroit Athletic Club
, only to be told either that Smith is not there or to leave by employees and security guards.
From here, Moore begins to explore the emotional impact of the plant closings on some of his friends. He interviews an auto worker named Ben Hamper
who apparently suffered a nervous breakdown
on the assembly line and is currently staying at a mental health facility. From here, to the Beach Boys song "Wouldn't It Be Nice?", we see a montage of the urban rubble and decay enveloping Flint, interspersed with newspaper headlines about the increasing layoffs, residents moving away, and a news report informing us that the rat population in the city soon outnumbered the human population. He also turns his camera to the residents of the more affluent suburbs such as Grand Blanc, who display rather classist and naïve attitudes when it comes to the economic hardships of the city (at a roaring twenties
themed party they are hosting, Moore takes note when they hire laid off workers to be Human Statues).
Here, Moore changes course and turns his camera on the Flint Convention and Visitors Bureau, who are in the process of response by promoting a vigorously incompetent tourism
policy. The Bureau, in an effort to lure tourists into visiting Flint, permit the construction of a Hyatt Regency Hotel, a festival marketplace
called Water Street Pavilion, and AutoWorld
, hailed as the world's largest indoor theme park. All these efforts fail, as the Hyatt soon files for bankruptcy
and is put up for sale, Water Street Pavilion sees most of its stores go out of business, and AutoWorld closes due to a lack of visitors just six months after the grand opening. (AutoWorld would reopen the next summer only to close down again, and in the end was demolished, which is seen in Moore's film The Big One
.)
Well-known personalities and celebrities are also shown coming to Flint to bring hope to the unemployed, some of them interviewed by Moore. Ronald Reagan
visits the town and suggests that former auto workers find employment by moving across the country, though the restaurant where they are meeting has its cash register stolen during Reagan's visit. The mayor pays television evangelist Robert Schuller to preach to the town's unemployed. Pat Boone
and Anita Bryant
, who have supplied GM with celebrity endorsements, also come to town; Boone tells Moore that Roger Smith is a "can-do" kind of guy. Moore also interviews Bob Eubanks
during a fair near Flint, during which he cracks an anti-semitic and homophobic joke.
Moore also attends the General Motors 1988 Shareholders Convention, disgusied as a shareholder himself. However when he gets a turn at the microphone to air his grevances to the board, and even though he is the last one, Smith immediately shuts him out and has the convention adjourned, despite Moore's attempts to interject him. In a close up of Smith, he can be heard joking about what he did with a fellow boardmember before leaving.
Moore also meets some of the residents of Flint, who are reeling from the economic fallout of the layoffs. Moore meets a former feminist radio host named Janet who, to find work, joins Amway
as a saleswoman. Also met is a former auto worker, angered over the layoffs, who is named James Bond. The most famous resident that appears in the film is Rhonda Britton, who sells rabbits for "Pets or Meat". The scene many believe was the reason Roger & Me received an R-rating features Britton killing a rabbit by beating it with a lead pipe. The rabbit fights back before and during the early part of the beating. Prevalent throughout the film is Sheriff's Deputy Fred Ross, who worked at a Flint GM plant for 17 years before accepting his sheriff's deputy position, whose job now demands that he go around town carrying out eviction
s on families unable to pay their rent.
During all of this, as the film progresses, Flint's crime rate skyrockets, with shootouts and murders becoming all too common. Crime becomes so prevalent, that when the ABC News
program Nightline tries to do a live story on the plant closings, someone steals the network's van (along with the cables), abruptly stopping the broadcast. Living in Flint becomes so desperate, that Money
magazine names the town as the worst place to live in America. The residents react with outrage and stage a rally where issues of the magazine are burned.
At the film's climax, Moore finally confronts Smith at the chairman's annual Christmas message, addressing him from a distance (Moore claims in the DVD commentary that two security guards are restraining him to keep him from getting closer to Smith). Smith is shown expounding about generosity during the holiday season, concurrently as Sheriff Fred Ross evicts more families. After Smith's speech, Moore hounds Smith:
Dejected by his failure to bring Smith to Flint, Moore proclaims that "as we neared the end of the 20th century", as the rich got richer and the poor got poorer, "it was truly the dawn of a new era."
After the credits, the film displays the message "This film cannot be shown within the city of Flint", followed by "All the movie theatres have closed."
for wrongful termination, was meant to be a personal statement over his anger not just at GM, but also the economic policies and social attitudes of the United States
government during the Reagan
era, which allows a corporation to remove the largest source of income from an entire town. The film proved to be the most successful documentary in American history at the time in its theatrical run (since surpassed at the box office by Moore's later documentaries Bowling for Columbine
and Fahrenheit 9/11
) and enjoyed wide critical acclaim. In response, General Motors threatened to pull advertising on any TV show that interviewed Michael Moore.
Roger & Me was filmed under the working title A Humorous Look at How General Motors Destroyed Flint, Michigan.
Warner Bros.
gave Moore $3 million for distribution license, a very large amount for a first time filmmaker and unprecedented for a documentary. Part of the distribution deal required Warner Bros.
to pay rent for two years for the families evicted in the film and give away tens of thousands tickets to the unemployed workers.
Moore returned to the subject of Roger and Me with a documentary called Pets or Meat: The Return to Flint
(1992), which aired on the PBS show P.O.V.
In this film, Moore returns to Flint two years after the release of Roger & Me to see what changes have taken place. Moore revisits Flint and its economic decline again in later films, including The Big One
, Bowling for Columbine
, Fahrenheit 9/11
and Capitalism: A Love Story
.
felt the film exaggerated the social impact of GM's closing of the plant and depicted the actual events of Flint's troubles out of chronological order. Kael called the film "shallow and facetious, a piece of gonzo demagoguery that made me feel cheap for laughing". One such criticism is that the eviction at the end of the film occurred on a different day from Smith's speech, but the two events were intercut for emotional effect. Moore addresses this criticism in the DVD
commentary, stating that "there are no dates in the film; we'll be going back and forth throughout the decade of the '80s."
In March 2007, Canadian filmmakers Debbie Melnyk and Rick Caine appeared on MSNBC's Tucker
to talk about their documentary Manufacturing Dissent
. They reported to have found that Moore talked with General Motors Chairman Roger Smith
at a company shareholders' meeting, and that this interview was cut from Roger & Me. Moore acknowledged having spoken with Roger Smith after surprising him at a shareholders' meeting in 1987, before he commenced filming, but said the encounter concerned a separate topic unrelated to the film. The filmmaker also told the Associated Press that if he had managed to secure an interview with Smith during production, then suppressed the footage, General Motors would have publicized the information to discredit him. "I'm so used to listening to the stuff people say about me, it just becomes entertainment for me at this point," he remarked. "It's a fictional character that's been created with the name of Michael Moore."
Critic Roger Ebert wrote an article entitled, "Attacks on "Roger & Me" completely miss point of film" that defends Moore's manipulation of his film's timeline as an artistic and stylistic choice that has less to do with his credibility as a filmmaker and more to do with the flexibility of film as a medium to express a viewpoint using the same methods that satirists have used. Ebert argues that the point of the film is not to present a completely cut and dried presentation of facts, but instead to create a jumping point for interest and dialogue through use of humor and irony.
Critic Billy Stevenson described the film as Moore's "most astonishing", arguing that it represents an effort to conflate film-making and labor, and that "it's this fusion of film-making and work that allows Moore to fully convey the desecration of Flint without ever transforming it into a sublime or melancholy poverty-spectacle, thereby distancing himself from the retouristing of the town-as-simulacrum that occupies the last and most intriguing part of the film."
1989 in film
-Events:* Batman is released on June 23, and goes on to gross over $410 million worldwide.* Actress Kim Basinger and her brother Mick purchase Braselton, Georgia, for $20 million...
American
Cinema of the United States
The cinema of the United States, also known as Hollywood, has had a profound effect on cinema across the world since the early 20th century. Its history is sometimes separated into four main periods: the silent film era, classical Hollywood cinema, New Hollywood, and the contemporary period...
documentary film
Documentary film
Documentary films constitute a broad category of nonfictional motion pictures intended to document some aspect of reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction or maintaining a historical record...
directed by Michael Moore
Michael Moore
Michael Francis Moore is an American filmmaker, author, social critic and activist. He is the director and producer of Fahrenheit 9/11, which is the highest-grossing documentary of all time. His films Bowling for Columbine and Sicko also place in the top ten highest-grossing documentaries...
. Moore portrays the regional negative economic impact of General Motors CEO
Chief executive officer
A chief executive officer , managing director , Executive Director for non-profit organizations, or chief executive is the highest-ranking corporate officer or administrator in charge of total management of an organization...
Roger Smith
Roger Bonham Smith
Roger Bonham Smith was the Chairman and CEO of General Motors Corporation from 1981 to 1990, and is widely known as the main subject of Michael Moore's 1989 documentary film Roger & Me....
's summary action of closing several auto plants in Flint, Michigan
Flint, Michigan
Flint is a city in the U.S. state of Michigan and is located along the Flint River, northwest of Detroit. The U.S. Census Bureau reports the 2010 population to be placed at 102,434, making Flint the seventh largest city in Michigan. It is the county seat of Genesee County which lies in the...
, costing 30,000 people their jobs at the time (80,000 to date) and economically devastating the city.
Plot
Moore begins by introducing himself and his family through 8 mm8 mm film
8 mm film is a motion picture film format in which the filmstrip is eight millimeters wide. It exists in two main versions: the original standard 8mm film, also known as regular 8 mm or Double 8 mm, and Super 8...
archival home movies
Home movies
A home movie is part of the motion picture filmmaking process made by amateurs, often for viewing by family and friends. When the hobby began, home movies were produced on photographic film, but accessibility of video production with video cameras and low cost data storage devices has made the...
; he describes himself as "kind of a strange child," the Irish American
Irish American
Irish Americans are citizens of the United States who can trace their ancestry to Ireland. A total of 36,278,332 Americans—estimated at 11.9% of the total population—reported Irish ancestry in the 2008 American Community Survey conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau...
Catholic middle-class son of a General Motors
General Motors
General Motors Company , commonly known as GM, formerly incorporated as General Motors Corporation, is an American multinational automotive corporation headquartered in Detroit, Michigan and the world's second-largest automaker in 2010...
employee assembling AC Spark Plugs. Moore chronicles how GM had previously defined his childhood in Flint, Michigan
Flint, Michigan
Flint is a city in the U.S. state of Michigan and is located along the Flint River, northwest of Detroit. The U.S. Census Bureau reports the 2010 population to be placed at 102,434, making Flint the seventh largest city in Michigan. It is the county seat of Genesee County which lies in the...
, and how the company was the primary economic and social hub of the town. He points out that Flint is the place where the Flint Sit-Down Strike
Flint Sit-Down Strike
The 1936–1937 Flint Sit-Down Strike changed the United Automobile Workers from a collection of isolated locals on the fringes of the industry into a major labor union and led to the unionization of the domestic United States automobile industry....
occurred, resulting in the birth of the United Auto Workers
United Auto Workers
The International Union, United Automobile, Aerospace and Agricultural Implement Workers of America, better known as the United Auto Workers , is a labor union which represents workers in the United States and Puerto Rico, and formerly in Canada. Founded as part of the Congress of Industrial...
. He reveals that his heroes were the Flint natives who had escaped the life in GM's factories, including the members of Grand Funk Railroad
Grand Funk Railroad
Grand Funk Railroad is an American rock band that was highly popular during the 1970s. Grand Funk Railroad toured constantly to packed arenas worldwide. A popular take on the band during its heyday was that, although the critics hated them, audiences loved them...
, Casey Kasem
Casey Kasem
Kemal Amin "Casey" Kasem is an American radio personality and voice actor who is best known for being the host of the nationally syndicated Top 40 countdown show American Top 40, and for voicing Shaggy in the popular Saturday morning cartoon franchise Scooby-Doo.Kasem, along with Don Bustany and...
, the spouses of Zubin Mehta
Zubin Mehta
Zubin Mehta is an Indian conductor of western classical music. He is the Music Director for Life of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra.-Biography:...
(Nancy Kovack
Nancy Kovack
__forcetoc__Nancy Kovack is a former American actress.-Biography:She attended the University of Michigan at age 15 and graduated by 19. At the age of 20 she had won eight beauty titles....
) and Don Knotts
Don Knotts
Jesse Donald "Don" Knotts was an American comedic actor best known for his portrayal of Barney Fife on the 1960s television sitcom The Andy Griffith Show, a role which earned him five Emmy Awards...
, and "Flint's most famous native son," game show host Bob Eubanks
Bob Eubanks
Robert Leland "Bob" Eubanks is an American television/radio personality and game show host, best known for hosting the game show The Newlywed Game on and off since 1966, where he was known for using the catchphrase, "Makin' Whoopee"...
.
Initially, he achieves his dream of avoiding factory life, working for a magazine
Mother Jones (magazine)
Mother Jones is an American independent news organization, featuring investigative and breaking news reporting on politics, the environment, human rights, and culture. Mother Jones has been nominated for 23 National Magazine Awards and has won six times, including for General Excellence in 2001,...
in San Francisco, but this venture fails for him and he ultimately travels back to Flint. As he returns, General Motors announces the layoffs of thousands of Flint auto workers, the jobs of whom will go to cheaper labor in Mexico
Mexico
The United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of...
. GM makes this announcement even though the company is experiencing record profits.
Disguised as a TV journalist from Toledo, Ohio
Toledo, Ohio
Toledo is the fourth most populous city in the U.S. state of Ohio and is the county seat of Lucas County. Toledo is in northwest Ohio, on the western end of Lake Erie, and borders the State of Michigan...
, Moore interviews some auto workers in Flint and discovers their strong antipathy to General Motors chairman Roger B. Smith. Moore begins seeking out Smith himself to confront him about the closing of the Flint plants. He tries to visit Smith at GM's headquarters in Detroit, yet he is blocked by building security as Moore hasn't made an appointment. A company spokesman comes to the lobby and exchanges contact information with Moore, initially promising him to discuss an interview with Smith, but due to lack of credentials (since Moore is independent and does not have a business card), he refuses to grant him one. Over the course of the film, Moore attempts to track down Smith at the Grosse Pointe Yacht Club
Grosse Pointe Yacht Club
The Grosse Pointe Yacht Club is a private marina and sailing club founded in 1914 and located on the shore of Lake St. Clair in Grosse Pointe Shores, Michigan. It originated in 1914 through the efforts of a group of 25 sailing and iceboating enthusiasts....
and the Detroit Athletic Club
Detroit Athletic Club
The Detroit Athletic Club , is a private social club and athletic club located in the heart of Detroit's theater, sports, and entertainment district. The clubhouse was designed by Albert Kahn and inspired by Rome's Palazzo Farnese. It maintains reciprocal agreements for their members at other...
, only to be told either that Smith is not there or to leave by employees and security guards.
From here, Moore begins to explore the emotional impact of the plant closings on some of his friends. He interviews an auto worker named Ben Hamper
Ben Hamper
Bernard Egan "Ben" Hamper is a Michigan-based writer. He was born in Flint, Michigan from a Catholic family that had many former employees of General Motors amongst its members. Hamper also worked for General Motors in Michigan for several years and wrote for Michael Moore's Flint Voice...
who apparently suffered a nervous breakdown
Nervous breakdown
Mental breakdown is a non-medical term used to describe an acute, time-limited phase of a specific disorder that presents primarily with features of depression or anxiety.-Definition:...
on the assembly line and is currently staying at a mental health facility. From here, to the Beach Boys song "Wouldn't It Be Nice?", we see a montage of the urban rubble and decay enveloping Flint, interspersed with newspaper headlines about the increasing layoffs, residents moving away, and a news report informing us that the rat population in the city soon outnumbered the human population. He also turns his camera to the residents of the more affluent suburbs such as Grand Blanc, who display rather classist and naïve attitudes when it comes to the economic hardships of the city (at a roaring twenties
Roaring Twenties
The Roaring Twenties is a phrase used to describe the 1920s, principally in North America, but also in London, Berlin and Paris for a period of sustained economic prosperity. The phrase was meant to emphasize the period's social, artistic, and cultural dynamism...
themed party they are hosting, Moore takes note when they hire laid off workers to be Human Statues).
Here, Moore changes course and turns his camera on the Flint Convention and Visitors Bureau, who are in the process of response by promoting a vigorously incompetent tourism
Tourism
Tourism is travel for recreational, leisure or business purposes. The World Tourism Organization defines tourists as people "traveling to and staying in places outside their usual environment for not more than one consecutive year for leisure, business and other purposes".Tourism has become a...
policy. The Bureau, in an effort to lure tourists into visiting Flint, permit the construction of a Hyatt Regency Hotel, a festival marketplace
Festival marketplace
A festival marketplace is a realization by James W. Rouse and the Rouse Company in the United States of an idea conceived by Benjamin C. Thompson of Benjamin Thompson and Associates for European style markets taking hold in the United States in an effort to revitalize downtown areas in major US...
called Water Street Pavilion, and AutoWorld
AutoWorld
AutoWorld was an indoor theme park in Flint, Michigan, USA, built to make the town attractive to tourists. The theme park opened in July 1984 and closed during its first year...
, hailed as the world's largest indoor theme park. All these efforts fail, as the Hyatt soon files for bankruptcy
Bankruptcy
Bankruptcy is a legal status of an insolvent person or an organisation, that is, one that cannot repay the debts owed to creditors. In most jurisdictions bankruptcy is imposed by a court order, often initiated by the debtor....
and is put up for sale, Water Street Pavilion sees most of its stores go out of business, and AutoWorld closes due to a lack of visitors just six months after the grand opening. (AutoWorld would reopen the next summer only to close down again, and in the end was demolished, which is seen in Moore's film The Big One
The Big One (film)
The Big One is a movie filmed in 1996—and released in 1998 by Miramax Films—by Michael Moore during his promotion tour around the United States for his book Downsize This!...
.)
Well-known personalities and celebrities are also shown coming to Flint to bring hope to the unemployed, some of them interviewed by Moore. Ronald Reagan
Ronald Reagan
Ronald Wilson Reagan was the 40th President of the United States , the 33rd Governor of California and, prior to that, a radio, film and television actor....
visits the town and suggests that former auto workers find employment by moving across the country, though the restaurant where they are meeting has its cash register stolen during Reagan's visit. The mayor pays television evangelist Robert Schuller to preach to the town's unemployed. Pat Boone
Pat Boone
Charles Eugene "Pat" Boone is an American singer, actor and writer who has been a successful pop singer in the United States during the 1950s and early 1960s. He covered black artists' songs and sold more copies than his black counterparts...
and Anita Bryant
Anita Bryant
Anita Jane Bryant is an American singer, former Miss Oklahoma beauty pageant winner, and gay rights opponent. She scored four Top 40 hits in the United States in the late 1950s and early 1960s, including "Paper Roses", which reached #5...
, who have supplied GM with celebrity endorsements, also come to town; Boone tells Moore that Roger Smith is a "can-do" kind of guy. Moore also interviews Bob Eubanks
Bob Eubanks
Robert Leland "Bob" Eubanks is an American television/radio personality and game show host, best known for hosting the game show The Newlywed Game on and off since 1966, where he was known for using the catchphrase, "Makin' Whoopee"...
during a fair near Flint, during which he cracks an anti-semitic and homophobic joke.
Moore also attends the General Motors 1988 Shareholders Convention, disgusied as a shareholder himself. However when he gets a turn at the microphone to air his grevances to the board, and even though he is the last one, Smith immediately shuts him out and has the convention adjourned, despite Moore's attempts to interject him. In a close up of Smith, he can be heard joking about what he did with a fellow boardmember before leaving.
Moore also meets some of the residents of Flint, who are reeling from the economic fallout of the layoffs. Moore meets a former feminist radio host named Janet who, to find work, joins Amway
Amway
Amway is a direct selling company and manufacturer that uses network marketing to sell a variety of products, primarily in the health, beauty, and home care markets. Amway was founded in 1959 by Jay Van Andel and Richard DeVos...
as a saleswoman. Also met is a former auto worker, angered over the layoffs, who is named James Bond. The most famous resident that appears in the film is Rhonda Britton, who sells rabbits for "Pets or Meat". The scene many believe was the reason Roger & Me received an R-rating features Britton killing a rabbit by beating it with a lead pipe. The rabbit fights back before and during the early part of the beating. Prevalent throughout the film is Sheriff's Deputy Fred Ross, who worked at a Flint GM plant for 17 years before accepting his sheriff's deputy position, whose job now demands that he go around town carrying out eviction
Eviction
How you doing???? Eviction is the removal of a tenant from rental property by the landlord. Depending on the laws of the jurisdiction, eviction may also be known as unlawful detainer, summary possession, summary dispossess, forcible detainer, ejectment, and repossession, among other terms...
s on families unable to pay their rent.
During all of this, as the film progresses, Flint's crime rate skyrockets, with shootouts and murders becoming all too common. Crime becomes so prevalent, that when the ABC News
ABC News
ABC News is the news gathering and broadcasting division of American broadcast television network ABC, a subsidiary of The Walt Disney Company...
program Nightline tries to do a live story on the plant closings, someone steals the network's van (along with the cables), abruptly stopping the broadcast. Living in Flint becomes so desperate, that Money
Money (magazine)
Money is published by Time Inc. Its first issue was published in October 1972. Its articles cover the gamut of personal finance topics ranging from investing, saving, retirement and taxes to family finance issues like paying for college, credit, career and home improvement...
magazine names the town as the worst place to live in America. The residents react with outrage and stage a rally where issues of the magazine are burned.
At the film's climax, Moore finally confronts Smith at the chairman's annual Christmas message, addressing him from a distance (Moore claims in the DVD commentary that two security guards are restraining him to keep him from getting closer to Smith). Smith is shown expounding about generosity during the holiday season, concurrently as Sheriff Fred Ross evicts more families. After Smith's speech, Moore hounds Smith:
Dejected by his failure to bring Smith to Flint, Moore proclaims that "as we neared the end of the 20th century", as the rich got richer and the poor got poorer, "it was truly the dawn of a new era."
After the credits, the film displays the message "This film cannot be shown within the city of Flint", followed by "All the movie theatres have closed."
History
This film, financed partly by Moore's mortgaging of his home and partly by the settlement money from a lawsuit he filed against Mother JonesMother Jones (magazine)
Mother Jones is an American independent news organization, featuring investigative and breaking news reporting on politics, the environment, human rights, and culture. Mother Jones has been nominated for 23 National Magazine Awards and has won six times, including for General Excellence in 2001,...
for wrongful termination, was meant to be a personal statement over his anger not just at GM, but also the economic policies and social attitudes of the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
government during the Reagan
Reagan
Reagan is an Irish surname, most commonly associated with Ronald Reagan, the 40th President of the United States. Reagan may also refer to:-Surname:*Nancy Reagan , widow of Ronald Reagan and First Lady from 1981 to 1989...
era, which allows a corporation to remove the largest source of income from an entire town. The film proved to be the most successful documentary in American history at the time in its theatrical run (since surpassed at the box office by Moore's later documentaries Bowling for Columbine
Bowling for Columbine
Bowling for Columbine is a 2002 documentary film written, directed, produced, and narrated by Michael Moore. The film explores what Michael Moore suggests are the causes for the Columbine High School massacre and other acts of violence with guns...
and Fahrenheit 9/11
Fahrenheit 9/11
Fahrenheit 9/11 is a 2004 documentary film by American filmmaker and political commentator Michael Moore. The film takes a critical look at the presidency of George W. Bush, the War on Terror, and its coverage in the news media...
) and enjoyed wide critical acclaim. In response, General Motors threatened to pull advertising on any TV show that interviewed Michael Moore.
Roger & Me was filmed under the working title A Humorous Look at How General Motors Destroyed Flint, Michigan.
Warner Bros.
Warner Bros.
Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc., also known as Warner Bros. Pictures or simply Warner Bros. , is an American producer of film and television entertainment.One of the major film studios, it is a subsidiary of Time Warner, with its headquarters in Burbank,...
gave Moore $3 million for distribution license, a very large amount for a first time filmmaker and unprecedented for a documentary. Part of the distribution deal required Warner Bros.
Warner Bros.
Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc., also known as Warner Bros. Pictures or simply Warner Bros. , is an American producer of film and television entertainment.One of the major film studios, it is a subsidiary of Time Warner, with its headquarters in Burbank,...
to pay rent for two years for the families evicted in the film and give away tens of thousands tickets to the unemployed workers.
Moore returned to the subject of Roger and Me with a documentary called Pets or Meat: The Return to Flint
Pets or Meat: The Return to Flint
Pets or Meat: The Return to Flint is a 1992 American short PBS documentary film, directed by Michael Moore, featuring the director returning to his hometown of Flint, Michigan to catch-up with some of the characters featured in his previous film Roger & Me...
(1992), which aired on the PBS show P.O.V.
P.O.V.
POV is a Public Broadcasting Service Public television series which features independent nonfiction films. POV is a cinema term for "point of view"....
In this film, Moore returns to Flint two years after the release of Roger & Me to see what changes have taken place. Moore revisits Flint and its economic decline again in later films, including The Big One
The Big One (film)
The Big One is a movie filmed in 1996—and released in 1998 by Miramax Films—by Michael Moore during his promotion tour around the United States for his book Downsize This!...
, Bowling for Columbine
Bowling for Columbine
Bowling for Columbine is a 2002 documentary film written, directed, produced, and narrated by Michael Moore. The film explores what Michael Moore suggests are the causes for the Columbine High School massacre and other acts of violence with guns...
, Fahrenheit 9/11
Fahrenheit 9/11
Fahrenheit 9/11 is a 2004 documentary film by American filmmaker and political commentator Michael Moore. The film takes a critical look at the presidency of George W. Bush, the War on Terror, and its coverage in the news media...
and Capitalism: A Love Story
Capitalism: A Love Story
Capitalism: A Love Story is a 2009 American documentary film directed, written by and starring Michael Moore. The film centers on the late-2000s financial crisis and the recovery stimulus, while putting forward an indictment of the current economic order in the United States and capitalism in general...
.
Criticism
Film critic Pauline KaelPauline Kael
Pauline Kael was an American film critic who wrote for The New Yorker magazine from 1968 to 1991. Earlier in her career, her work appeared in City Lights, McCall's and The New Republic....
felt the film exaggerated the social impact of GM's closing of the plant and depicted the actual events of Flint's troubles out of chronological order. Kael called the film "shallow and facetious, a piece of gonzo demagoguery that made me feel cheap for laughing". One such criticism is that the eviction at the end of the film occurred on a different day from Smith's speech, but the two events were intercut for emotional effect. Moore addresses this criticism in the DVD
DVD
A DVD is an optical disc storage media format, invented and developed by Philips, Sony, Toshiba, and Panasonic in 1995. DVDs offer higher storage capacity than Compact Discs while having the same dimensions....
commentary, stating that "there are no dates in the film; we'll be going back and forth throughout the decade of the '80s."
In March 2007, Canadian filmmakers Debbie Melnyk and Rick Caine appeared on MSNBC's Tucker
Tucker (television program)
Tucker is an American television program on MSNBC that focused on politics, hosted by Tucker Carlson. The show aired from June 6, 2005–March 14, 2008....
to talk about their documentary Manufacturing Dissent
Manufacturing Dissent
Manufacturing Dissent is a 2007 documentary that asserts that filmmaker Michael Moore has used misleading tactics, primarily using on-camera statements by interviewees with personal grievances against Moore as proof...
. They reported to have found that Moore talked with General Motors Chairman Roger Smith
Roger Bonham Smith
Roger Bonham Smith was the Chairman and CEO of General Motors Corporation from 1981 to 1990, and is widely known as the main subject of Michael Moore's 1989 documentary film Roger & Me....
at a company shareholders' meeting, and that this interview was cut from Roger & Me. Moore acknowledged having spoken with Roger Smith after surprising him at a shareholders' meeting in 1987, before he commenced filming, but said the encounter concerned a separate topic unrelated to the film. The filmmaker also told the Associated Press that if he had managed to secure an interview with Smith during production, then suppressed the footage, General Motors would have publicized the information to discredit him. "I'm so used to listening to the stuff people say about me, it just becomes entertainment for me at this point," he remarked. "It's a fictional character that's been created with the name of Michael Moore."
Critic Roger Ebert wrote an article entitled, "Attacks on "Roger & Me" completely miss point of film" that defends Moore's manipulation of his film's timeline as an artistic and stylistic choice that has less to do with his credibility as a filmmaker and more to do with the flexibility of film as a medium to express a viewpoint using the same methods that satirists have used. Ebert argues that the point of the film is not to present a completely cut and dried presentation of facts, but instead to create a jumping point for interest and dialogue through use of humor and irony.
Critic Billy Stevenson described the film as Moore's "most astonishing", arguing that it represents an effort to conflate film-making and labor, and that "it's this fusion of film-making and work that allows Moore to fully convey the desecration of Flint without ever transforming it into a sublime or melancholy poverty-spectacle, thereby distancing himself from the retouristing of the town-as-simulacrum that occupies the last and most intriguing part of the film."
Related books and films
- Final OfferFinal OfferFinal Offer is a Canadian film documenting the 1984 contract negotiations between the United Auto Workers Union and GM. Ultimately, it provided a historical record of the birth of the Canadian Auto Workers Union as Bob White, then head of the Canadian sector of the UAW, led his membership out of...
- a documentary film that shows the backroom 1984 General Motors contract negotiations, that would result in the union split of the Canadian arm of the UAW. It also shows how the UAW was more willing to negotiate with General Motors than their Canadian counterparts. The film depicts some of the events that would lead to the closing of plants in Flint, and other plants around the United States. GM Chairman Roger Smith is featured in the film. - The Corporation - shows the history of the corporation and some of its potential downfalls. Michael Moore appears in the film.
- Rivethead: Tales From the Assembly Line - an autobiographical book by Ben HamperBen HamperBernard Egan "Ben" Hamper is a Michigan-based writer. He was born in Flint, Michigan from a Catholic family that had many former employees of General Motors amongst its members. Hamper also worked for General Motors in Michigan for several years and wrote for Michael Moore's Flint Voice...
on life and work in the GM plant, with a foreword by Michael Moore.