Michael Moore’s low-budget “Roger & Me,” which documented the impact of General Motors plant closures on Flint, Mich., generated the kind of buzz independent filmmakers ache for.
But even those who missed the acclaimed film during its theatrical run in 1989, or later on HBO and PBS, are familiar with its much debated premise, that corporations (and GM in particular) are greedy, pompous and care little for the common worker or the communities in which they work.
A spokesman for Nova Link, a company that by the spokesman’s own account produces goods in Mexico for U.S. companies that like to keep their presence quiet, saw the documentary and, in “TV Nation” (7 p.m. Tuesday, NBC-Ch. 5), Moore’s first effort for network television, he asks, “Is this going to be another `Roger & Me”‘?
That’s what everyone who caught Moore’s cynical and sarcastic documentary wants to know as well, and the answer-after seeing the first of several episodes of this “comedic investigative magazine show”-is yes.
And no.
Network television, as Moore, who created, produced, directed and anchors the show, has probably found out, is a different world, and it’s naive to think that the filmmaker could get away with kicking corporate giants on a medium that lives and breathes on advertising respirators.
Thus, “TV Nation” not surprisingly lacks the disarmingly angry approach of “Roger & Me” and offers instead a TV-friendly version that is, at the very least, offbeat. It certainly offers more laughs than, say, “Dateline NBC,” which follows an hour later.
In “TV Nation,” the acerbic Moore, still scruffy-looking and wearing his trademark baseball cap, uses a blue-collar persona and distinctive man-on-the-street style to report on a variety of subjects, including how U.S. companies seek riches among Mexico’s poor.
At a Whirlpool factory in Reynosa, Mexico, Moore asks “How many of these people own washing machines?” Few, the spokesman admits, since many don’t have indoor plumbing.
Moore dispatches an eclectic team of correspondents to report other stories. There’s a segment on real estate sales near the Love Canal, a story on the Appleton, Minn., prison that was functioning without inmates, and a hilarious twist to a much-reported story of New York cabbies avoiding black men, using actor Yaphet Kotto as a decoy.
It’s hard to tell whether “TV Nation” will live beyond its allotted seven episodes. Those who demand balanced reporting instead of unbridled leftist attacks may tire of Moore’s style of reporting on a weekly basis.
Moore knew, for example, that his chance of getting into a Mexico-based General Electric-NBC’s parent company-facility without an appointment was slim. But how could he pass up such terrific video?
Still, there’s something appealing about Moore and his antics. Maybe it’s because of all the time spent watching too many newsmagazines put such serious faces on silly subjects.
Moore seems to put a silly face on every subject-and that’s refreshing.
– The point of view of “Passin’ It On” (10 p.m. Tuesday, WTTW-Ch. 11), the latest edition of the “P.O.V.” documentary series, is that former Black Panther member Dhoruba Bin Wahad, imprisoned for 19 years for the 1971 murder of two New York police officers, was railroaded.
But its strongest suggestion is that the Black Panthers were not the menacing beasts portrayed in literature and in the media.
Critics of the Panthers will dismiss this engrossing, gutsy documentary (directed with fast-paced aggressiveness by a promising first timer, John Valadez) as propaganda and pure fantasy. But Valadez has done his homework.
Candid personal accounts from the jurors of Bin Wahad’s three trials, from a police officer and from attorneys all say the FBI and police were in collusion to destroy the New York City Panthers chapter from within.
Most effective is hearing the poetically personal recollections of the thoughtful Bin Wahad himself.
