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Moore shoots, scores with scathing look at area, GMBy Ed Bradley
As the 1980s began, Michael Moore was the crusading editor of the Flint Voice, a low-budget alternative newspaper with a three-person staff, a circulation of fewer than 10,000 � and a knack for ruffling the feathers of the city’s political and cultural establishment. Nine years later, he was a national celebrity, having just been paid $3 million by a major Hollywood studio to present a film about his hometown that would be seen and talked about by millions worldwide � and would be both praised and scorned by its subjects. The notoriety brought to Flint by “Roger & Me” � Moore’s scathingly satirical “mockumentary” about the city and its relationship with General Motors � merely continued the conflicted relationship between the leftist journalist-turned-moviemaker and the community he would make (in)famous. At the Flint Voice (which was renamed the Michigan Voice as it achieved a statewide following), Moore set out to expose police wrongdoing, campaign abuses and other injustices on behalf of the community’s disenfranchised. Before that, barely
out of high school in the early ’70s, he had been a maverick member of the Davison Board of Education. Moore’s exploits with the Voice led to his hiring, in 1986 at age 31, as editor of the national alternative magazine Mother Jones. But his first brush with national renown was short and contentious, and within months he was fired and back in Flint, beginning a new project with the working title of “Hometown.” Filmed by Moore and a small group of friends between 1987 and the summer of ’89 for about $200,000, the movie that became “Roger & Me” used the gimmick of Moore’s effort to meet then-GM president Roger Smith to weave an account of the devastating effects of the closings of three of the automaker’s local plants. The film covers such happenings as the hasty demise of AutoWorld, attempts by local officials to drum up new business, and efforts by autoworkers and others to find new livelihoods. Among the movie’s more memorable figures were a process server whose business thrived in the wake of the economic turndown, and an otherwise unemployed woman who killed rabbits to sell their skins for profit. Moore’s modest intentions for “Roger & Me” suddenly became ambitious when critics hailed the film in screenings at influential festivals in Telluride, Colo., and Toronto. In October 1989, Warner Bros. announced the $3-million distribution agreement; the sum was unusually high for a first-time film maker. The agreement contained some stipulations requested by Moore, most notably that Warner Bros. give $25,000 to be divided among four families shown in the film being evicted from their homes. Another requirement by Moore was that the studio agree to hold the film’s commercial theatrical world premiere in Flint. Thus, on Dec. 19, 1989, “Roger & Me” premiered on all 14 screens at Showcase Cinemas in Burton, where patrons were treated to free popcorn. A large media contingent included journalists from London, New York, Los Angeles and Chicago. A few weeks later, TV talk king Phil Donahue would come to town and film two shows during a town hall-type discussion with Moore and hundreds of local residents at Whiting Auditorium. “I thought we’d be driving the film around in a van, showing it at some union halls,” Moore said the night of the premiere. “But I’ll take this.” Other local notables at the premiere were not so jubilant. “I thought it was laughing at people, and I was embarrassed by that to a degree,” said Lawrence P. Ford, president of the Flint Area Chamber of Commerce. “Roger & Me” won several major critics awards, but a backlash against the film began as Moore’s nonadherence to a traditional chronological narrative was questioned in newspaper reports and in an opinion piece by influential critic Pauline Kael. The controversy may have scuttled hopes for an Academy Award nomination for the film as best documentary, but “Roger & Me” did gross more than $10 million in theaters worldwide, at the time a record for an American nonconcert documentary. |
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