Roger & Me

Roger & Me (1989) — watch online on iFILM. Michael Moore's debut feature follows a single premise: GM closed its assembly plants in Flint, Michigan, throwing thirty thousand people out of work, and Moore wants to ask CEO Roger Smith what he has to say about it. Smith proves very hard to find.

What fills the space between pursuit attempts is a portrait of a city trying to absorb an economic blow with far too little to absorb it with. Flint's authorities respond with tourism schemes and celebrity appearances — Pat Boone shows up, as does Bob Eubanks — while families are evicted on camera. Moore mixes genuine outrage with a deadpan that keeps the film from becoming a lecture, and the result is one of the angrier comedies in American documentary history.

Made for under $250,000 and rejected by every major studio before finding distribution, it went on to become the highest-grossing documentary of its time and essentially invented the confrontational first-person doc as a commercial genre. The problems it documents in Flint never fully resolved. Stream Roger & Me (1989) in full on iFILM.