3.3. What was the big controversy over Roger & Me? Michael Moore
Description
This article is from the Michael Moore FAQ, by Edward Champion edchamp@slip.net with numerous contributions by others.
3.3. What was the big controversy over Roger & Me? Michael Moore
Michael did an interview with Harlan Jacobson of "Film
Comment_, in which Jacobson charged Moore with the sequential
rearrangement of certain chronological events within the movie.
For example, Reagan's visit and the pizza shop was in 1980, before
he was president and Robert Schuller came to Flint in 1987, after
the Great Gatsby party. This criticism was later reaffirmed by
film critic Pauline Kael in a review in the "New Yorker" when she
declared Roger & Me "a piece of gonzo demagoguery."
In defense, Moore stated in the interview, "The movie is
essentially what has happened to this town during the 1980's. I
wasn't filming in 1982...so everything that happened happened. As
far as I'm concerned, a period of seven or eight years...is pretty
immediate and pretty devastating....I think it's a document about
a town that died in the 1980's, and this is what happened....What
would you rather have me do? Should I have maybe begun the movie
with a Roger Smith or GM announcement of 1979 or 1980 for the first
round of layoffs that devastated the town, which then led to
starting these projects, after which maybe things pick up a little
bit in the mid '80's, and then "boom" in '86, there's another
announcement, and then tell that whole story?....Then it's a three
hour movie. It's a "movie_, you know; you can't do everything. I
was true to what happened. Everything that happened in the movie
happened. It happened in the same order that it happened
throughout the '80's. If you want to nit-pick on some of those
specific things, fine."
Moore's take on this is also further evinced in the Roger & Me
publicity diary.
Continue to:
My Books
