'Roger & Me'

I first heard about Roger & Me in a college class. Again, up until three years ago, I didn't really give two whits about film nor did I have a lot of opinions about film, what was good or bad or what was important.

Also, up until several years ago, I had zero interest in documentaries. Therefore, I'd never seen Roger & Me and I doubt I'd even heard about it at that point.

Naturally, I saddled up and went to my local Hastings and rented a VHS copy and watched it. It blew my mind. It's the first documentary I'd ever seen and it just blew my mind about what was going on.

Since, I've seen countless documentaries and I understand that these filmmakers tend to exaggerate and alter our projected reality in order to prove a point or create a sense of drama.

And I understand that no one is better at this than Michael Moore. Now, he kind of drives me nuts and I kind of thing he does more damage in molding certain practices or policies in the United States, although his intentions are (probably) good.

Roger & Me chronicles the heyday of automaking in Flint, Mich. up until the 1980s when General Motors closed the plant in Flint resulting in a loss of 30,000 jobs and the aftermath of that move.

It's jaw-droppingly mesmerizing watching Moore meet and talk to the local yahoos in Flint and then trying to talk to Roger Smith, the CEO of General Motors about why he was closing the plants.

The problem, as I see it now, is that this was very personal for Moore. He'd grown up in Flint and his family worked in the automobile making plants. It was his family, friends and the town he loved and grew up in that was taking the brunt of a move in order to make cars and trucks more cheaply.

At times, Moore looks petty and just mean. I have no love lost for GM or Roger Smith or other big-shot CEOs. But it's the people that had nothing to do with GM closing a plant. Like Miss Michigan, who was just waiving and smiling at a dumb parade and Moore confronts her with this very heavy line of questioning regarding the closing of a plant.

What's Miss Michigan supposed to do? What can she do? Why talk down to her or make her out like she doesn't care?

Why didn't Moore corner senators and representatives at the national and state level? Why'd he play softball with Michigan's governor?

Why make the locals look like idiots? It's exactly what he does. After you watch the film, you realize that Flint needed the auto plant because those uneducated, directionless people had no other choice than to work mindlessly in a production line. They couldn't do anything else. They couldn't even make tacos. On a certain level, you don't even feel sorry for the people.

Back to the taco thing, in the film, Moore looks sarcastically at a story in the local paper about how Taco Bell was hiring former auto workers and training them to work in fast food. As it turns out, the auto workers couldn't handle it and were fired. In his own way, Moore looks down at the fast-food world as menial work. All the while, he's championing auto workers, who perform work that they were teaching robots to do. To my knowledge, no robot can make a bean burrito.

Had the floor fallen out of the faux-Mexican fast food world, and all Taco Buenos and Taco Bells closed in Flint or any other city, is Moore making a documentary about them?

Hell no. Moore's a snobbish ex-journalist, who got jaded and angry because GM had the audacity to close a plant in order to be more cost efficient in Mexico and didn't provide an explanation or apology. He's angry at the American government because they "allow" companies to move and devastate towns.

Everyone absolutely loves a free market as long as it benefits them. And, more importantly, doesn't hurt them. Jobs come and go in this country and people like their stocks to go up, up, up. GM has every right to put their plants in any country or state that will have them. They have every right to squeeze as much profit as they can within the laws and bylaws of the United States or the country they deal in.

Again, companies and business move, close, go bankrupt or fall into ruin all the time. Yet, Moore isn't championing them all because his family lives in Flint. Moore is no different than the politicians he roasts in his films.