"Snooze" Another Day - A Detroit Auto Journalist Reports On Auto Bailout Film +VIDEO
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TACH's TAKE:
The Rise & Fall of
General Motors and the Subjugation of the Industrialized World
The Gasoline Companies Should Fund the Big Three Bailout
By Maureen McDonald
Detroit Based Auto Journalist
DETROIT - September 8, 2016: If you'd hoped "LIVE ANOTHER DAY," would be the best all-around documentary on the bailout of the U.S. auto industry, you'd find yourself bored by all the talking heads.
Nearly all white, ousted CEOs try to justify their history, wedged between some catchy songs by Aretha Franklin, John Hiatt, Mick Jagger and the Temptations.
While this exhausting, almost two-hour feature film from Argos Pictures delves into some deep problems that built up years before the collapse of General Motors Corporation and Chrysler Corp., it lacks a cohesive story to move this dry economic tome forward.
The global recession of 2008 wasn't a story, more like a long nightmare, especially for Detroiters who lived through it. The mortgage industry collapsed and with it the ability of homeowners to borrow against their home equity to buy cars. Disposable income vanished for the middle class. The threat of massive job losses sent car sales tumbling from 18 million to 8 million.
GM and Chrysler - two of the largest corporations in the world - went belly up and eventually the government revived them with an estimated $10 to $15 billion loan from taxpayers. Numerous books and massive numbers of articles have been written on the topic, including Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Paul Ingrassia's "Crash Course." This was the basis of the documentary by Bill Burke, a former Turner Broadcasting executive and Didier Pietri, a film producer and ABC television executive.
The film title comes from a philosophy by the car companies that they should keep trying to "live another day," instead of tackling the problems of healthcare costs and pension liabilities. The film asserts, as Michelene Maynard predicted in "End of Detroit," published in 2003, that the car companies were running out of cash to fund its debt load and perilously close to extinction.
The producers put much of blame on the Big Three's irrational battle with the labor union monopoly - the big bad UAW, suggesting that the companies couldn't focus on customers if they had to pay high wages and medical costs. Not that the staggering buyouts to the string of unproductive executives and years of quality problems contributed to the malaise. Even now GM is forced to issue thousands of recalls for ignition switch failures that contributed to at least 13 deaths in 2014.
The producers contend in a very long lead up sprinkled with clever videos of cars driving expressways, that the U.S. government helped a Fiat, an Italian carmaker take control of Chrysler, in effect letting U.S. taxpayers support a foreign carmaker. They also suggest that Ford wasn't a better automaker for refusing a bailout, rather it went to the bank early and got money before the mortgage collapse so it was a tad smarter. The film doesn't address the $5.9 billion loan Ford received from the Department of Energy in 2009 to convert 13 factories into car production which more or less was a bailout by another name.
An A-list of people were quoted including Jay Alix, founder, AlixPartners, John Casesa, group vice president of global strategy, Ford Motor Company, Steve Miller, president of Delphi Corporation, Jennifer Granholm, Former Governor of Michigan, Joe Hinrichs, president of the Americas, Ford Motor Company, Bob King, former president, UAW, Tom LaSorda, Former President and CEO, Chrysler Group, Jay Leno, comedian; car aficionado, Bob Lutz, former chairman, General Motors North America. Sergio Marchionne, CEO, Fiat Chrysler Automobiles, Steve Rattner, lead advisor, Presidential Task Force on the Auto Industry and numerous Harvard professors.
What happened to clips of Marc Stepp, the UAW executive who negotiated the first auto bailout with the US Government in 1980 and played a mentoring role in the 2008 bailout? Was no one of color important enough to be in this movie?
I believe the producers were so in love with their white, high-echelon people they left the interviews in their entirety instead of tight editing to drive the film to a brief conclusion, that the dire state of jobs around America and the real threat of Detroit's extinction gave the government no option but to give a lifeline to the Big Three.
Yet a very Republican slant prompts the producers to blame President Obama for protecting a political ally by removing the focus on the UAW as a source of woes and instead pushing the boundaries of long established rules of bankruptcy to protect workers. Workers vote Democratic. They also raise families, pay mortgages and contribute to society. The bailout, much maligned at its inception worked.
Not that Bob Lutz thinks so. The loquacious, self-aggrandizing executive who worked at all three automakers, looks like the Ded Bob Show at the traveling Renaissance Festivals. He did everything right and what was wrong-headed was any focus on diversity goals and women in leadership. The film doesn't even bother to mention how revolting the collapse and bailout was to the car dealers who lost over one third of their ranks to recession and government-aided reorganization.
"Our goal with LIVE ANOTHER DAY was to provide a comprehensive portrayal of the largest industrial rescue in American history. With the merits of the bailout still being debated in the 2016 campaign and questions arising about the sustainability of the auto industry's comeback, this story is as relevant today as ever," said Pietri who was overly comprehensive.
Making the story relevant is a deep question. When it comes to documentaries, Alex Gibney held the audience on the edge of their chairs in the 2005 film, "Enron: Smartest Guys in the Room." The movie had a point of view, it had interviews with common people whose pensions were lost forever along with great examples of how the public was hoodwinked.
Michael Moore goes for satire and personal involvement to make his films amusing, ironic and on point. You can't think of "Roger and Me," a 1989 documentary that first raised the question of what was happening to the auto industry, without marveling at the quality of their film research and keen reporting. You see a parade of people dressed like AC sparkplugs dancing down a street in Flint in the 1950s and watch a laid off factory worker selling barbecued squirrels in her backyard.
Sadly I couldn't stay for the end of "Live Another Day." I live the bailout. Last month I visited Cody High School where 2,500 General Motors workers from high level managers to janitors devoted a week to rehabbing the school and surrounding parks and streets to welcome Detroit students back to a learning environment. Without that bailout, much would be lost in the realm of community engagement, in addition to cars.
During Dream Cruise weekend in mid-August I went to the new M1 Concourse, a race track and giant exhibition grounds that arose out of the defunct GM Truck and Bus factory that revolutionized mass transit in America.
Chrysler had a kick-ass celebration of all things motor driven called Road Kill Nights - Powered by Dodge. Over 30,000 fans came to watch drag racing and join the motor culture. Another great activity that wouldn't occur if Chrysler didn't have a fresh infusion of cash and the guidance of a global auto operation in Detroit.
Sit out the movie. Go drag racing at M1 Concourse or take an SUV over the Continental Divide in Colorado. Volunteer to mentor kids at an inner city school close to a shuttered auto factory. You'll have far more fun than watching this movie.
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