SMITH NIX STIX FLICK
(FORTUNE Magazine) – Forget the Japanese. General Motors CEO Roger Smith now has something else to worry about: a new film that makes him look worse than a used-car salesman. Smith, 64, is a principal character in Roger and Me, an offbeat documentary that portrays the deterioration of Flint, Michigan, after GM shed 30,000 jobs there. Despite the film's subject -- it shows unemployed workers being forced to take jobs in Taco Bells and jails -- it somehow manages to be hilarious. Director Michael Moore, 35, the Me in Roger and Me, spends most of the film trying to track down Smith to persuade him to visit Flint. He takes his camera crew to GM headquarters and the Detroit Athletic Club in search of the elusive exec. When he finally catches Smith at a GM Christmas bash, the CEO brushes him off, a moment captured in the film's finale. Smith won't comment on the movie, even though it won an award as the most popular film at the Toronto Film Festival. GM officials say Moore didn't go through the right channels to interview Smith, and criticize the film for ignoring ''the positive things that have happened in Flint.'' Like GM's keeping 49,000 employees at work there still. |
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