GM, ‘Roger and Me’ Take Lumps on ‘Donahue’

Phil Donahue’s boisterous audience took turns blasting the General Motors Corp. and filmmaker Michael Moore on Monday as they talked about the documentary, “Roger and Me.”

About 2,000 people jammed Whiting Auditorium for a segment of Donahue’s nationally syndicated show that was devoted to Moore’s film.

The crowd included auto workers who accused GM of sending American jobs overseas and Flint boosters who said Moore’s movie made conditions in Flint look worse than they are.

“You showed the slummiest areas,” one woman told Moore.

“Roger and Me” purports to depict what happened to Flint when GM shut down factories in the community, idling 30,000 workers over several years.

In the film, Moore pursues GM Chairman Roger Smith to ask him to come to Flint to see what GM’s layoffs have done to the city.

The documentary, made for $260,000 and released nationwide by Warner Brothers this month, has won several awards and is being touted as a possible Academy Award winner in the best documentary category. But Moore has come under fire by some film critics for misrepresenting some time sequences, such as the span during which layoffs occurred.

Moore, a Flint native, said the message of the movie was that “after 10 years of Reagan and Bush, it’s not morning in America for us. We’re all working harder for less.”

Donahue was scheduled to do a single one-hour show Monday but decided to tape a second show immediately after the first because many in the crowd had yet to be heard after showing up before dawn Monday for the 4 p.m. show.

Donahue said GM declined to send anybody to appear with Moore. The company also asked its dealers not to advertise during the Donahue show about the film, Donahue said.