Roger & Me

Roger & Me (1989)

The story of a rebel & his mike.

A documentary about the closure of General Motors' plant at Flint, Michigan, which resulted in the loss of 30,000 jobs. Details the attempts of filmmaker Michael Moore to get an interview with GM CEO Roger Smith.

Date of release
1989-09-01
TMDB
7.1 / 10 (329)
Runtime
1h 31m
Genres
Documentary, History, Comedy
Director
Michael Moore
Collection
Roger & Me Collection

Casting

Interesting facts

Roger & Me is a 1989 American documentary film written, produced, directed by, and starring Michael Moore, in his directorial debut. Moore portrays the regional economic impact of General Motors CEO Roger Smith's action of closing several auto plants in his hometown of Flint, Michigan, reducing GM's employees in that area from 80,000 in 1978 to about 50,000 in 1992.

Production

Moore decided to make the film after losing his job as the editor of Mother Jones and moving back to his former home town of Flint, Michigan, as it was suffering from deindustrialization due to General Motors' layoffs. After his attempt to restart his Flint Voice newspaper faltered, Moore decided to make a documentary on the city's economic crisis.

At the time Moore decided to make the documentary in 1984, he had no experience in filmmaking or funds to produce the film. To get the money, he filed a successful wrongful termination lawsuit against Mother Jones for $160,000. He also mortgaged his house, sold most of his belongings, and arranged a three-year series of weekly bingo games to raise the remainder of the film's $200,000 budget.

Roger & Me was filmed under the working title A Humorous Look at How General Motors Destroyed Flint, Michigan. Moore and his crew decided after viewing a 15-minute bumper from the film that the depiction of mass unemployment would be too depressing for mainstream audiences, and decided to give it a humorous slant. Production began on February 11, 1987, on the 50th anniversary of the Flint sit-down strike.

Moore was mentored during the production by documentarians Christopher Beaver, Anne Bohlen, Judy Irving, and Kevin Rafferty. Moore had previously assisted on Bohlen and Rafferty's film Blood in the Face.

The film had its worldwide premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival in September 1989. It was well received by the Canadian audience with it winning the coveted TIFF People's Choice Award. Coincidentally, only a few weeks later, GM would announce the closing of their Toronto truck assembly plant, moving vehicle production to a plant in Flint, Michigan.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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