April 10, 1998 | Imagine a cross between a stand-up comedy routine and an on-the-road documentary, and you’re ready for The Big One, Michael Moore’s ruthlessly amusing and ruefully insightful follow-up to his popular Roger & Me. This time, instead of stalking GM chairman Roger Smith in and around Flint, Mich., the portly working-class satirist takes his act on tour, to examine the underside of America’s “economic recovery.”
Moore establishes the movie’s tone of cheeky drollery and sugar-coated outrage during the opening minutes. Addressing a college audience, he recalls an experiment he conducted during the 1996 presidential primary season. To see “if politicians would accept money from anyone,” he established bank accounts for fictitious organizations and sent $100 checks to major candidates. Much to his delight, the candidates lived down to his worst expectations. Pat Buchanan’s campaign was the first to snap at the bait, by cashing a check from “Abortionists for Buchanan.”
The rest of The Big One follows Moore on a publisher-sponsored tour to promote his hectoring screed against corporate rogues and manipulators, Downsize This! Moore agrees to make the cross-country jaunt in the first place merely as a pretext for his real agenda: filming a sort of guerrilla documentary about the devastating effects of downsizing and factory-closings.
In each city he visits, Moore and his skeletal camera crew slip away from the local “media escort” to raise questions and conduct interviews. Moore wants to find “just one CEO” who will explain to him, on camera, why thousands of workers are being laid off despite billion-dollar profits. Not surprisingly, he is none-too-politely turned away by tight-lipped PR reps and stern-faced security guards each time he pays an unannounced visit to some corporate bigwig.
On the other hand, Moore finds many newly fired workers — and, in a few cases, some hopeful union organizers — who are more than willing to complain about being left high and dry by the ’90s version of trickle-down economics.
During a visit to a Payday candy factory in Centralia, Ill., Moore interviews workers who are understandably upset by the prospect of being laid off for being — well, as they put it, “too productive.” The good news is, Payday is making millions. Unfortunately, that’s also the bad news. In order to sustain their high profits, Payday executives plan to open a new plant outside the United States, where wages are lower.
Moore hammers home the absurdity of the situation by getting a Payday spokesperson to more or less admit that, had the workers been less productive, the factory would remain open a little longer. But, then again, if they had been more productive, the place would have shut down months earlier. No kidding.
At another point, Moore notes that TWA has begun to use lowly paid California prison inmates — including convicted killers — to give information on the airline’s 1-800 telephone line. That should be kept in mind, Moore warns, the next time you’re tempted to talk rudely to a TWA rep while making a flight reservation.
The shifting of U.S. jobs to Mexico and Asia is a recurring theme throughout The Big One. Again and again, Moore cites examples of companies that discharge the very people who helped them reap the record profits that can be maintained only by workforce cutbacks. Company representatives claim drastic measures are necessary in order to remain “competitive.” Even so, Moore remains skeptical: “If it’s just about making a profit,” he wonders aloud, “why doesn’t General Motors sell crack?”
Moore takes a scattershot approach to aiming his folksy tirades, targeting everything from the Borders bookstore chain (whose workers are starting to unionize) to Pillsbury (which receives, according to Moore, $11 million in “corporate welfare” to promote products in Third World countries). The Big One works best when Moore is interacting with other people — Studs Terkel, Garrison Keillor and Nike CEO Phil Knight are among the notables who make cameo appearances — and seems padded when it dwells on Moore’s frequently repetitive monologues. But even when it’s clear that Moore is playing for laughs, it’s every bit as clear that he also is playing for keeps.
