TRAVERSE CITY -- Bob Bahle, owner of the Bay Theatre in Suttons Bay, remembers seeing "Roger & Me" at the Telluride Film Festival 20 years ago.
It was the first screening of the first documentary made by Michael Moore, founder of the Traverse City Film Festival.
"It had just come from the lab," Bahle said, and no one had seen it yet.
"I ran into Michael Moore on the street -- I knew of him but hadn't met him -- and he said, 'You're going to come to my movie, aren't you?'" Bahle said. "I kind of had to go then."
Bahle remembers the pins and hats that were being handed out at the movie, the life-size cardboard cutout of Roger Smith, CEO of General Motors, and ... the lint rollers?
"They were handing out lint rollers," Bahle said. "It was just one of those non sequiturs he does."
But after the movie, and following the standing ovation it received, Bahle said they knew they'd seen something special.
"It was a fresh way of making a documentary," Bahle said.
"Roger and Me" shows Moore pursuing Smith to confront him about the impact on Flint following massive job cuts at GM. The film gets a 20th anniversary screening tonight at 9 p.m. at the State Theatre. The screening is sold out, but standby tickets may be available.
Jim Czarnecki, producer of "Soundtrack for a Revolution," which screened this week at the film festival, said the effects of "Roger & Me" go beyond filmmaking.
"'Roger & Me' made documentary filmmaking viable in terms of convincing movie financiers about the power of documentaries," he said.
According to Box Office Mojo, a box office tracking service, "Roger & Me" cost $160,000 to make and had a worldwide gross of $7.7 million.
"Roger & Me" also hit Czarnecki in a personal way. His father had been laid off from Sherwin-Williams two years shy of his retirement date.
"I was angry and now had a new way to channel that anger," he said.
Through persistence, he landed a job with Moore and has worked on several projects with him, including 2002's Academy Award-winning "Bowling for Columbine."
But Czarnecki still comes back to "Roger & Me" as the "groundbreaking" film. "It enabled all these other filmmakers to make their films," he said.
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