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Quick Facts
- NAME: Michael Moore
- OCCUPATION: Anti-War Activist, Comedian, Director, Television Personality
- BIRTH DATE: April 23, 1954 (Age: 59)
- PLACE OF BIRTH: Flint, Michigan
- Full Name: Michael Francis Moore
- ZODIAC SIGN: Taurus
Best Known For
Michael Moore is a documentary filmmaker and satirist. His debut film was Roger & Me which became the highest-grossing American documentary of the time.
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Play NowMichael Moore. (2013). The Biography Channel website. Retrieved 02:36, Jun 19, 2013, from http://www.biography.com/people/michael-moore-9542483.
Michael Moore. [Internet]. 2013. The Biography Channel website. Available from: http://www.biography.com/people/michael-moore-9542483 [Accessed 19 Jun 2013].
"Michael Moore." 2013. The Biography Channel website. Jun 19 2013, 02:36 http://www.biography.com/people/michael-moore-9542483.
"Michael Moore," The Biography Channel website, 2013, http://www.biography.com/people/michael-moore-9542483 [accessed Jun 19, 2013].
"Michael Moore," The Biography Channel website, http://www.biography.com/people/michael-moore-9542483 (accessed Jun 19, 2013).
Michael Moore [Internet]. The Biography Channel website; 2013 [cited 2013 Jun 19] Available from: http://www.biography.com/people/michael-moore-9542483.
Michael Moore, http://www.biography.com/people/michael-moore-9542483 (last visited Jun 19, 2013).
Michael Moore. The Biography Channel website. 2013. Available at: http://www.biography.com/people/michael-moore-9542483. Accessed Jun 19, 2013.
Synopsis
Roger & Me
Writer, director, actor, political activist. Born in Flint, Michigan. Moore burst onto the American cultural scene in the 1980s, a chubby, extroverted rabble-rouser who hitched his political message to the medium of satirical comedy in a crusade to rouse the national conscience against corporate injustice. A genuine subversive, he made his impact with his debut film, Roger & Me (1989), a satirical documentary feature that chronicled his attempts to interview the CEO of General Motors, Roger Smith. Moore wrote, directed and starred in the film, which became the highest-grossing American documentary of all time.
Critical opinion was high but divided. The Washington Post described Roger & Me as a "hilariously cranky bit of propaganda" and critics such as Roger Ebert gave it rave reviews, but others, including the doyenne of the New Yorker, Pauline Kael, attacked Moore for re-arranging the narrative events of the movie. He responded in an interview in Film Comment that "the movie is essentially what has happened to this town [Flint] during the 1980s. I wasn't filming in 1982 ... so everything that happened happened. As far as I'm concerned, a period of seven or eight years ... is pretty immediate and pretty devastating.... I think it's a document about a town that died in the 1980s." The critical controversy notwithstanding, the film was voted Best Documentary by the National Board of Review, the New York Film Critics, the Los Angeles Film Critics, and the National Society of Film Critics, as well as Best Film at the Toronto, Vancouver, and Chicago Film Festivals. It was included on several critics' "best of the decade" lists, but conspicuously failed even to be nominated for an Academy Award. Roger & Me was creatively financed by Moore and his friends through bingo games and other fund raising efforts, but also through an out of court settlement Moore made with Mother Jones magazine over his dismissal from the publication after a short tenure as editor in 1986-87.
Background
Moore came to Mother Jones after a successful career as an alternative journalist in his hometown of Flint, Michigan (though he is actually from the suburb of Davison). Moore's comedy and politics emerged from his roots in a working-class community that enjoyed a boom from manufacturing automobiles at a dozen General Motors factories until the company abandoned the town, as chronicled in Roger & Me. Moore had been a staunch opponent of GM and local Flint politics since founding the Flint Voice at the age of 22. He partially funded the newspaper through the weekly showing of alternative movies, and promoted it through work on the local public radio station where he hosted a show called "Radio Free Flint." He also wrote essays for National Public Radio.profile name: Michael Moore profile occupation:
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