It's difficult to remember what it was like without the Traverse City Film Festival. In five short years the festival has become a summertime entertainment staple for thousands of local residents and tourists alike.
And the refurbished State Theatre -- brightly lit marquee and all -- has new life as the year-round entertainment venue in the downtown area.
Their common denominator?
Academy Award- winning filmmaker, author and local resident Michael Moore.
Downtown TC is alive because of a vision shared by Moore, a group of associates and hundreds of volunteers.
The force of Moore's personality largely reopened the long-shuttered State and attracted top-notch movies, stars and movie makers to Northern Michigan.
It is no wonder, then, that people are taking notice of Moore's latest "visions" for the area.
In these opinion pages last Sunday, Moore outlined eight ideas "for our next community project." (Read "The next miracle for TC" here)
He noted that once the red tape was overcome a couple of years ago, the State Theatre, long the subject of failed local community and government efforts to reopen, was up and running in six weeks.
"When I saw hundreds of people come together to rebuild the entire theater in fewer than six weeks, I knew that I lived in a special place where citizens, when they put their minds to it, can accomplish the impossible," Moore said in his special Record-Eagle column.
Moore proposed -- "in the State-Theatre-We-Can-Do-Anything spirit" -- that the community work together to:
-- Wire TC for the 21st Century;
-- Create middle class jobs throughout the area;
-- Make Traverse City a place where young adults want to live;
-- Turn Northwestern Michigan College, a community college, into a four-year institution&
-- Bring down the cost of living;
-- Support a Michigan graduated income tax;
-- Create what the town still needs ("Small grocery store, affordable diner, green space, a public restroom a place to hangout, go dancing, listen to comedy");
-- Swim together ("We have more in common than not. We are all in the same boat. We can have our differences, but please, for the good of our town, let's all roll up our sleeves and get to work.").
Of course, the ardent Moore haters and supporters of the status quo were quick to sound off. He was the subject of derision, as usual, on talk radio.
But by and large, his ideas received applause, as they should. Michael Moore does not speak idly.
Think Film Festival.
Think State Theatre.
Think about the possibilities.
Related Item: The next miracle for TC, by Michael Moore
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