Roger & Me - History

History

This film, financed partly by Moore's mortgaging of his home and partly by the settlement money from a lawsuit he filed against Mother Jones for wrongful termination, was meant to be a personal statement over his anger not just at GM, but also the economic policies and social attitudes of the United States government during the Reagan era, which allows a corporation to remove the largest source of income from an entire town. The film proved to be the most successful documentary in American history at the time in its theatrical run (since surpassed at the box office by Moore's later documentaries Bowling for Columbine and Fahrenheit 9/11) and enjoyed wide critical acclaim. In response, General Motors threatened to pull advertising on any TV show that interviewed Michael Moore.

Roger & Me was filmed under the working title A Humorous Look at How General Motors Destroyed Flint, Michigan.

Warner Bros. gave Moore $3 million for distribution license, a very large amount for a first time filmmaker and unprecedented for a documentary. Part of the distribution deal required Warner Bros. to pay rent for two years for the families evicted in the film and give away tens of thousands of tickets to the unemployed workers.

Moore returned to the subject of Roger and Me with a documentary called Pets or Meat: The Return to Flint (1992), which aired on the PBS show P.O.V. In this film, Moore returns to Flint two years after the release of Roger & Me to see what changes have taken place. Moore revisits Flint and its economic decline again in later films, including The Big One, Bowling for Columbine, Fahrenheit 9/11, and Capitalism: A Love Story.