Wednesday, June 25, 2008

Michael Moore and the "Flint Film Festival"

Michael Moore in his ever-present ball cap, now accented with hipster glasses. He says Clint Eastwood is scouting locations in Michigan for an upcoming film. (Photo by Fabrizio Constantini for The New York Times)


Michael Moore, who started the Traverse City Film Festival four years ago, details his dream of bringing the movie business to Northern Michigan in an interview with the Northern Express:

“I have my own Michigan affirmative action plan,” chuckles Moore. “I have based my filming operations out of New York (he has now closed his NY office and is based in Northern Michigan) and have always given a hiring priority to Michigan residents. I am hoping this new industry here will bring them back and will keep the ‘brain drain’ on this state from continuing.”

The film fest is held at the State Theater, which Moore helped renovate. There's a persistent rumor that Moore originally wanted to fix up the Capitol and have the festival in Flint, but he was rebuffed by city officials. Anyone know anything about this rumor?

UPDATE:

Anonymous
said: Just that — an uninformed rumor. People are confusing an effort to fix the Capitol up enough to do a showing of Roger & Me and host the Phil Donahue show there. They didn't pull it off; the event was at The Whiting instead, and that was that.

Scottr said: I've never heard that one before. But I doubt the city officials would have had much to do with it, because to start they don't own it. The Farah family has owned it for 30 years, and although it certainly hasn't been fully restored, some work has been done on it, and I doubt Troy Farah would have turned him down given his efforts to attract investors. However, I don't know him personally, so I can't say for sure.


2 comments:

  1. Just that - an uninformed rumor. People are confusing an effort to fix the Capitol up enough to do a showing of Roger and Me and host the Phil Donahue show there. They didn't pull it off, the event was at The Whiting instead, and that was that.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I've never heard that one before. But I doubt the city officials would have had much to do with it, because to start they don't own it. The Farah family has owned it for 30 years, and although it certainly hasn't been fully restored, some work has been done on it, and I doubt Troy Farah would have turned him down given his efforts to attract investors. However, I don't know him personally, so i can't say for sure.

    ReplyDelete

Thanks for commenting. I moderate comments, so it may take a while for your comment to appear. You might enjoy my book about Flint called "Teardown: Memoir of a Vanishing City," a Michigan Notable Book for 2014 and a finalist for the 33rd Annual Northern California Book Award for Creative NonFiction. Filmmaker Michael Moore described Teardown as "a brilliant chronicle of the Mad Maxization of a once-great American city." More information about Teardown is available at www.teardownbook.com.