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Last week's Movie Quiz winners

Filed under: Imported

(Rhonda Britton, aka The Rabbit Lady, Michael Moore and Deputy Fred Ross)

Well, last week's quiz turned out to be much harder than I would have thought-- it even tricked one of our constant, unstumpable regulars (hey, Hank, better luck next time). Who would have guessed that Roger & Me, Michael Moore's first film from 1989, would have been so hard to recognize? I was afraid that the first clip alone, featuring the dulcet tones of Flint, Michigan escapee Bob Eubanks, would be a dead giveaway. The middle clip with eviction deputy Fred Ross philosophizing on poverty was (to me) also memorable, and the final cut-- General Motors president Roger Smith reading from "A Christmas Carol"-- is from perhaps the film's most moving moment, where Smith's hollow reading of Dickens at the GM holiday party is juxtaposed with footage of a family being kicked out of their home on Christmas eve.

As the years pass, time is increasingly kind to Moore's debut documentary. His supposedly intrusive ego is nowhere to be seen, and his "Joe Nobody" onscreen persona is especially enjoyable considering the instantly recognizable corporate giant-killer he became. The form of the film, with its reliance on campy film clips and ironic juxtapositions, still seems fresh, thanks in part to one of the cinematographers, Kevin Rafferty, who was co-creator of the great anti-nuke doc The Atomic Cafe; Moore has long acknowledged how much his friend contributed to the construction of his own first movie. (Ironically, Rafferty is a cousin of King George Jr.'s, and sat with the rest of the Bush family at Dubya's inauguration.) And unfortunately, the social and economic problems it spotlighted at the end of the Reagan era almost seem tolerable compared to what faces this country today. Great work, Mike.

So let's hear it for the handful of quiz experts who got it right once again: Wayne A. Palmer, E. Yarber, Kika Warner and Christopher Bahn. Congratulations, and may your 401Ks remain solvent (unlike yours truly's).

P.S. Finally, Michael Moore is fighting back against the assholes who have been attacking him on so-called journalistic lapses regarding Bowling for Columbine. Also, his new book, Dude, Where's My Country, is already bouncing around the top 12 amazon sales chart, and it won't be out for another 10 days or so. And this time, he has a publisher that will actually advertise the goddamned thing. (Stupid White Men, the book that refused to die, never had a single ad placed anywhere.)

Posted by Steve Monaco at September 29, 2003 2:54 AM

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