Traverse City Film Festival
TRAVERSE CITY — Oscar-winning screenwriter Kurt Luedtke will be the first celebrity to leave his mark on the new Traverse City Film Festival Walk of Fame.
Film festival founder Michael Moore made the announcement at Tuesday’s opening ceremony for the 2008 film festival where Luedtke, screenwriter for “Absence of Malice” and “Out of Africa,” was presented with the third Michigan Filmmaker Award. His handprints and signature will be imprinted in cement and placed on the sidewalk in front of the State Theatre, to be joined by others this week and at future festivals, Moore said.
The Grand Rapids-born Luedtke is a former editor at the Detroit Free Press. He divides his time in Michigan between Birmingham and Leelanau County, where he said he wrote the first drafts of “Out of Africa.” The film was winner of the 1985 Academy Award for best screenplay based on material from another medium.
Under cloudy skies that threatened to rain out the opening night screening of “Ghost Busters” at the Open Space, Moore, festival co-founders and area legislators welcomed crowds to the festival and introduced Italian actress and satirist Sabina Guzzanti as one of two new festival board members. Guzzanti directed the 2006 festival film “Viva Zapatero!” and is returning this year with the mockumentary, “Sympathy for the Lobster.” She joins fellow actress and new board member Christine Lahti, winner of the 2007 Michigan Filmmaker Award.
Jim Hickey and Suzanne Dorick watched the proceedings from the comfort of their beach chairs placed squarely in the left lane of closed-off Front Street in front of the theater.
“We came 800 miles from Virginia,” said Hickey, a postal service employee in the Fairfax area who works as a location manager for local movies in his spare time. “We did last year, too.”
Bill and Bonnie Mathias rode their bikes downtown from their home on Elmwood, where they also operate a bed and breakfast they said is filled with returning festival fans. The couple said they have tickets for movies every day this week, including Tuesday’s sold-out opening film, “Vicky Christina Barcelona.”
This year’s festival was 20 percent more sold out than last year’s on opening day, said Moore, who sported a beard and long, shaggy hair. But he said there still are tickets for plenty of films.
“The hair and beard aren’t going until we sell every ticket for ‘Anvil!’” he joked, referring to a documentary about Canadian heavy metal group Anvil that will screen Friday and Saturday.
Following the ceremony, between 50 and 100 invited guests moved to the downtown restaurant Red Ginger for a reception. They snacked on classic pot stickers, assorted sushi rolls, long-stemmed strawberries and five local wines. The party was one of two scheduled for Tuesday, including the public opening night party that was moved from the Wade-Trim Parking lot to the Grand Traverse Commons for fear of rain.
Mary Lou and Roger Elliot got to the City Opera House an hour and 15 minutes early to be the first in line for the opening film there — and the bite-sized morsels a volunteer passed out from a nearby bakery. It was the Torch Lake couple’s first festival and they were making up for lost time.
“We tried to get tickets last year, but we were a little late for everything,” Roger Elliot said.
At the State Theatre, Ellen Collier, of Cleveland, was the 10th in line for a stand-by ticket. She and husband Terry were in town for a week to visit their son, a student in Interlochen’s Motion Picture Arts program, and were able to snag only two of the three opening night film tickets they wanted.
Inside the theater, the concessions line was two deep and a volunteer musician entertained crowds with show tunes on the theater organ as they waited for Moore’s entrance. It came 25 minutes late, breaking his vow earlier in the day that this year’s films all would start on time.
The fourth annual festival continues through Sunday with more than 70 films, five film industry discussion panels and appearances by 23 directors — more than any other year.
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