Roger & Me (1989)

Ben Hamper: Self

Quotes 

• Michael Moore : [voice-over]  More factories had closed and I began to see the effect this was having on my friends. Ben was the auto worker who I'd put on the cover of that magazine in San Francisco. He'd been laid off five times in five years from GM and, expecting be laid off again, he cracked one night while working on the assembly line. He was now shooting hoop at the local mental health center.

  Ben Hamper : I just couldn't take it. I told the guy next to me "Tell the foreman, you know, I'm sick to my stomach, I don't give a shit what you tell him." I grabbed my coat and I flew out the door, passed the guards, jumped into my car, got onto Bristol Road and was flying toward my apartment. And I turned on the radio, hoping that might cheer me up. I got tears coming out of my eyes and I strike right into the middle of Wouldn't It Be Nice by The Beach Boys. And I'm thinking ''What a horrible, horrible song to have to hear in the midst of this panic attack.'' A song that usually I would get a groove going with. So, I'm trying to sing the lyrics and I've got an apple in my throat. "Maybe if we wish and hope and think and pray, it might come true..." And I'm trying to rationalize with those lyrics, trying to think "Wouldn't it be nice?" And it just wasn't working.