it's very difficult to keep the line between the past and the present you believe that someone out of the past

can enter and take possession of a living being we may be true with the past but the past is not through with us

welcome to the next picture show a movie the week podcast devoted to a classic film and how it shaped our thoughts in a recent release.

I'm Scott Tobias here with...

Genevieve Kosky.

Keith Phipps.

Tasha Robinson is currently at Fantastic Fest, having a fantastic time watching fantastic cinema, but her fantastic self will return a few episodes from now.

Here on the Next Picture Show, we believe that no film exists in a vacuum and that all

culture is more interesting in context. So every week we get together to talk over a classic

film and consider how it relates to a current movie. This week, we're storming the

headquarters of a major corporation on behalf of decent, hardworking men and women. Genevieve,

how's the muckraking going so far? Ah, mixed bags, Scott. We're still getting Stonewalled by the CEO, but we have succeeded in making several PR guys and security guards uncomfortable. I'm starting to worry that we'll never interview the CEO. In fact, I'm concerned that this whole charade is just a bad faith campaign to make the leader of one of the world's biggest corporations look like an inaccessible elite. Impossible. This is shoe leather journalism,

or at least a comfortable running shoe journalism. Who's our intrepid progressive warrior this week? That would be Michael Moore, a journalist turned documentarian turned liberal gadfly from the

blue-collar city of Flint, Michigan. And with Moore's new provocation, Fahrenheit 119, in theaters,

we thought we'd look back at his influential 1989 debut, Roger and Me.

Roger and Me is a personal documentary about the declining fortunes of Moore's hometown,

which was once the thriving hub of General Motors,

but is suffering the economic impact of plant closings and layoffs,

despite record profits for GM. Putting himself in front of the camera, Moore makes several

fruitless attempts to confront GM CEO Roger Smith, but he also takes time to interview laid-off

workers, GM functionaries, and local celebrities, as well as a sheriff's deputy delivering

eviction notices and a woman selling rabbits as pets or meat.

...