On December 20, 1989, the provocative filmmaker Michael Moore's satirical documentary "Roger & Me" opens in theaters across the United States. (It had made a brief tour of film festivals earlier that year, before it had a distributor.) The film chronicled Moore's unsuccessful attempts to meet Roger B. Smith, the chairman and chief executive of General Motors, who had presided over the closing of 11 factories in Flint, Michigan, during the 1970s and 80s. As a result, nearly 40,000 people lost their jobs, and Moore wanted to interview Smith about the city's subsequent decline; Smith, perhaps understandably, chose to avoid that conversation, and his dodges and evasions provided plenty of grist for the filmmaker's mill. "Roger & Me" earned a great deal of critical praise, and put its director into the public eye. His subsequent movies--the Oscar-winning "Bowling for Columbine" (2002), "Fahrenheit 9/11" (2004) and "Sicko" (2007) became some of the top-grossing documentary features in history.

In "Roger & Me," Moore made the argument that the factory closings in Flint were not inevitable. Instead, they were the entirely predictable (and avoidable) result of the ineptitude, callousness and greed of the people running GM. Roger Smith deserved a lion's share of the blame for these managerial disasters, according to Moore, because he had been at the company's helm for so long: Before he was appointed CEO in 1981, he'd been on the Board of Directors for almost eight years.



This Day in History December 20th: "Roger & Me" opens in U.S. theaters

comments powered by Disqus

12/18/2010 10:32 AM: This Day in History December 18th: "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang" opens in New York by TimothyT
On this day in 1968, the musical film "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang" opens in New York City. The movie featured Dick Van Dyke, who had made a splash four years before in the Disney musical &qu...

12/17/2010 08:14 AM: This Day in History December 17th: Stuntman Stan Barrett breaks the sound barrier by TimothyT
On December 17, 1979, Hollywood stuntman Stan Barrett blasts across a dry lakebed at California's Edwards Air Force Base in a rocket- and missile-powered car, becoming the first man to travel faster...

12/16/2010 08:39 AM: This Day in History December 15th: OPEC states raise oil prices by TimothyT
On December 16, 1979, the night before the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries' annual price-setting meeting in Caracas, two member states (Libya and Indonesia) announce plans to raise the ...

12/14/2010 08:07 AM: This Day in History December 14th: Indy "Brickyard" is completed by TimothyT
On this day in 1909, workers place the last of the 3.2 million 10-pound bricks that pave the Indianapolis Motor Speedway in Speedway, Indiana (a town surrounded by the city of Indianapolis). Since the...

12/13/2010 08:05 AM: This Day in History December 13th: Seattle's Hat 'n' Boots finds a new home by TimothyT
On this day in 2003, Seattle preservationists load the city's iconic Hat 'n' Boots Tex Gas Station onto a tractor-trailer and drive it away from the spot where it had stood for almost 50 years. Th...