Added Greg Nicholas of the Flint Economic Growth Alliance, "I think that the name brings up a lot of disdain."

Why wouldn't the city of 125,000 be more appreciative of Moore for putting it on the map?

Perhaps it's because Moore has treated local residents and former friends and associates much as he has treated other subjects of his schlockumentaries — unfairly, and in a bad light.

Moore's first big film, "Roger and Me," dealt with the layoff by General Motors of some 30,000 Flint-area workers after GM closed a plant there. The film is "loosely structured around Moore's odyssey to track down" GM Chairman Roger B. Smith, says an Amazon.com review.

But according to a few of the "stars" of that film, Rhonda Britton and Fred Ross, Moore played loose and fast with the facts.

"Ross, a sheriff's deputy, was shown throughout the movie evicting residents. Moore's movie gave the impression the layoffs led to the evictions," WAVE reported.

But, Ross told the TV affiliate's reporter, Eric Flack, the evictions had "nothing to do with General Motors."

As for Britton, she was depicted as selling rabbits for meat in the film as a means to make ends meet because of the layoffs. She told Flack that, too, was a misrepresentation.

Britton told the TV reporter her husband wasn’t working at GM because he died more than 10 years before Moore's film was made. "He's a fraud and a cheapskate," Britton told WAVE, adding that when Moore later sold the movie rights to the film to Warner Bros. for $3 million, she was offered only $100 to sign a release to the film.

Said Ross, "He wanted me to sign a release, and that's where the trouble started." Ross would not accept $100 and wound up suing Moore for much more, though he would not disclose the amount.

Another inconvenient fact is that, in the film, Moore implies that GM left Flint completely. But that's not true; "in fact, the company has invested $2 billion in Flint since 1998," WAVE reported.

Moore, on the other hand, hasn't invested any of the money he's made there.

Maybe, says Britton, that's because he's not really a Flint resident. "He was born and raised in Davison! He wasn't even raised here in Flint," she told Flack.

Davison, for the record, is a "white collar suburb," WAVE reports — not the kind of downtrodden, blue-collar background Moore claims to hail from.

His name even conjures up negativity at his former high school.

He used to fund a $2,000-a-year scholarship there but that ended a couple of years ago. And attempts last year to add him to the Davison High School Hall of Fame failed as well, said WAVE.

"Mike is always out for Mike, Mike is always out for money," former classmate Kevin Leffler told Flack.

He added: "I have no problem with someone saying I'm going to make a lot of money. By god, go do it, I think that's the American way. But don't tell me you're out for the little man, when in reality when you have the chance to help the little man, you screw the little man."

Nicholas decried the kind of image Moore created of Flint, saying, "I'm not sure the community has much use for Michael Moore."

Flack said he attempted to get Moore to answer a number of e-mail requests for interviews, but the filmmaker would not reply.

So, Flack says, he and his cameraman tried to locate Moore at his $2 million northern Michigan mansion — a la Moore’s "hijack" interview style — but he wasn't there and nobody would say where he was.

A staffer at the mansion "did take our card, and promised to pass it on to Moore or one of his assistants," Flack wrote. But in the end, "the man who makes a living out of forcing the high and mighty to answer his questions wouldn't answer ours. We never heard back from Michael Moore, or his staff."

Editor's note: