Roger & Me ( film)
Roger & Me is a 1989 American
documentary film directed by independent filmmaker/author Michael Moore. With
black humor, Moore illustrates the negative economic impact of the late General
Motors CEO Roger Smith's summary action of closing several auto plants in Flint,
Michigan, costing 30,000 people their jobs and economically devastating the city.
Plot
synopsis
Moore begins by introducing himself and his family through 8 mm archival
home movies; he describes himself as "kind of a strange child," the
Irish American Catholic middle-class son of a General Motors worker assembling
AC Spark Plugs. Moore chronicles how GM has defined his childhood in Flint, Michigan,
and how the company was the primary economic and social hub of the town. He also
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 ones
who had escaped the life in GM's gigantic factories in Flint, 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, working for a magazine in San Francisco, but this venture fails for him and he ultimately travels back to Flint. (This is in fact his short-lived tenure at Mother Jones magazine, which actually ended with a settled lawsuit. Moore doesn't mention the lawsuit or Mother Jones by name) 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, promising him to discuss an interview with Roger Smith. 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 either be told that Smith is not there or is told 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 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 and a news report informing us that the rat population in the city soon outnumbered the human population, causing residents to move away.
[...]
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. These efforts fail, as the Hyatt soon files for bankruptcy, 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 a notorious anti-Semitic and homophobic joke.
Moore also meets some of the residents of Flint, who are reeling from the economic fallout of the layoffs. We meet a former feminist radio host named Janet who, to find work, joins Amway as a saleswoman. We also meet a former auto worker angry over the layoffs who is actually 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, whose job now demands that he go around town carrying out evictions 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. Smith is shown espousing about generosity during the holiday season, concurrently as Sheriff Fred Ross evicts more families. After Smith's speech, Moore bird dogs Smith:
“ Moore: Mr. Smith, we came from Flint, where
we filmed a family being evicted from their home the day before Christmas Eve.
A family that worked in your factory. Would you be willing to come with us to
see the situation in Flint?
Smith: I've been to Flint, and I'm sorry for them,
but I don't know anything about it.
Moore: Families being evicted on Christmas Eve are not able to live their lives...
Smith: General Motors didn't evict them. Talk to the landlord...
Moore: They used to work for GM. Now they don't work there anymore.
Smith: I'm sorry, but...
Moore: Could you come to Flint?
Smith: No, I cannot. I'm sorry.
”
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."
The 2007 film Manufacturing Dissent is strongly critical of Moore's tactics in the making of Roger & Me. Specifically, it shows footage of Moore holding a question-and-answer exchange with Roger Smith during a May 1987 GM shareholders meeting, which the filmmakers Debbie Melnyk and Rick Caine claim he deliberately left on the cutting room floor. Moore has stated that the confrontation itself was not recorded by him, and that it occurred several months before he turned his own hand to film making. It has further been claimed that Moore conducted an interview with Smith in the Waldorf Astoria hotel in New York in January 1988, which he did film, but which was also left out of the final cut. This claim appears to be contradicted by Smith himself, who said in a 1990 interview with the LA Times that "I've never stayed at the Waldorf." Moore told the Associated Press in June 2007 that if he had managed to secure an interview with Roger Smith during production, then suppressed that video, General Motors would surely have revealed this to the media, thereby discrediting his work. "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."
The 1936-'37 Flint Sit-Down Strike changed the United Automobile Workers from a collection of isolated locals on the fringes of the industry into a major union and led to the unionization of the United States automobile industry.
AutoWorld was an indoor theme park in Flint, Michigan, built to make the town attractive to tourists. The theme park, which opened in July 1984, was originally set up as a Six Flags amusement park venture, but went bankrupt and closed during its first year. After an attempted revival in the summer of 1985 and other attempts at making the place work, the building was demolished in 1997 and the land sold to the University of Michigan-Flint.
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