Now that the Traverse City Film Festival has passed the 11-year mark, it's the right time for an astute onlooker to properly analyze what the festival has become and and properly surmise what the future may hold. I, unfortunately, am not that person. I don't do "proper" anything. But after standing in line for about 60 hours over the past 10 years, I feel entitled to offer some recommendations.
1. Distribute Bathing Caps. At amusement parks, a person must be at least 54 inches tall to ride an R-rated roller coaster. A ticket taker stands next to a measuring post to prohibit short people. Similarly, at the Film Festival there should be a limit to how much space a person can occupy above their skull. (It's no accident that film festivals began to appear only after the Afro lost its popularity.) I happen to be a very short person, and many is the time I've been seated behind some big-headed person who eclipses my view. I've had to imagine what's happening on the screen from the dialogue or swelling sound tracks. As such, restrictions should apply. The first step: prohibit hats and sunglasses propped on top of heads. Secondly, a humorless volunteer, a Hair Nazi if you will, should pace along the waiting line and single out any person whose hair might extend beyond a vertical limit, say, two and a quarter inches. The volunteer would be equipped with a ruler to measure scalps, and if the ticket holder offends, he or she would be provided a mandatory bathing cap for the duration of the Festival.
2. Purchase Wuerfel Park. Let's face it: the Festival has grown too big for its britches. Most movies sell out before the general public even gets a chance. Poor, poor general public. Michael Moore has a ton of money and could make an excellent offer for the venue and the Traverse City Beach Bums, the professional baseball team that plays there. The players must be exhausted from working for minimum wages with lousy health insurance, and as such, they might want to campaign for Democratic candidates. The new venue could be christened Sicko Stadium, and near the entrance a larger-than-life bronze statue of Michael could be erected, poised there in his State baseball cap, flinging free prescription pills to the masses like our very own Johnny Appleseed. With Sicko Stadium's large seating capacity, it should be easy for the general public to get in, although tickets will go like lightning for films such as Bulgarian documentaries about despair.
3. Resurrect Drive-ins. No reason to stop at free movies in the Open Space. The Festival could arrange for giant inflatable screens at various parking lots across town like Wal-Mart, Sam's Club, Meijer, and the Grand Traverse Mall. At sunset, motorists with pre-purchased headsets would park their cars for a night of, say, The Best of Steven Seagal or Shorts of the Greatest Movie Explosions Ever. This expansion would bring a much-needed counterbalance to the Subaru-driving, bottled-water drinking, fanny-packers downtown.
4. Bring On Personal Assistants. Festival goers have witnessed over the years a steady increase in volunteers. And these aren't your hardened criminal types. These are genuine Traverse City folk whose mission apparently is to play out their codependency fantasies. True, we love them for it. There are so many helpers that the majority get stationed at ten yard intervals whose sole purpose is to exude warmth and hospitality. (This year a volunteer noticed that my sneaker was untied, promptly knelt down and fixed it.) In a few short years, the number of volunteers will exceed the number of ticket holders. At that time, why not assign a volunteer to every movie goer so that valet services, in-line massages, and individualized tours of cherry packing plants or local wineries become part of the package?
5. Do the Conga Line. Competition for good theater seats has grown to a fevered pitch, and ticket holders now realize that the only way to get the best view is to show up very, very early. In this spirit, I arrived at the State Theater this year an hour before my show, and still wound up a half mile back. Later, I was in need of chiropractic intervention from the constant neck-craning from my rotten seat. Instead, let's provide some loud and snappy conga music for the serpentine line outside, and allow a dance to run a course down the sidewalks and alleys of Traverse City. Once the doors open, the conga line, dancing to the beat, would snake and shimmy into the theater, and fill the rows, front to back, with appropriate Spanish exclamations erupting. It would be unthinkable for dancers to break the chain as the collective Latin merriment would overwhelm any notions of cutting away. Besides that, the bathing cappers in this rhythmic milieu would feel much less embarrassed about their attire.
6. Sleeping Bear Cinema. This summer, the Traverse City event added a new twist to film festival extremes: Movies on a Boat. Audiences of 60 were packed onto the deck chairs of the catamaran, Nauti Cat which was equipped with a projector and screen. While spinnakers billowed above and carp slept below, a movie was shown with barf bags available. The overall response was so enthusiastic that it now makes sense to expand the nautical theme to even greater heights. Let's project a film onto the world's most natural and spectacular movie screen… the white face of the Sleeping Bear Dunes on Lake Michigan. Just imagine the spectacle. A massive projector aboard a Coast Guard cutter from the Port of Frankfort transmits the incredible visuals against all 400 vertical feet of the great sand dune. For sound, enormous speakers will face the Manitou Islands with a sound track audible all the way to Green Bay. And the audience, a historically massive flotilla of yachts, runabouts, and fishing vessels -- hundreds! nay, thousands! -- from harbors near and far, gather off Sleeping Bear Point to, well, watch a movie. In keeping with the watery terrain, the inaugural film of Sleeping Bear Cinema could be that great American classic featuring Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello, "Beach Blanket Bingo."
1. Distribute Bathing Caps. At amusement parks, a person must be at least 54 inches tall to ride an R-rated roller coaster. A ticket taker stands next to a measuring post to prohibit short people. Similarly, at the Film Festival there should be a limit to how much space a person can occupy above their skull. (It's no accident that film festivals began to appear only after the Afro lost its popularity.) I happen to be a very short person, and many is the time I've been seated behind some big-headed person who eclipses my view. I've had to imagine what's happening on the screen from the dialogue or swelling sound tracks. As such, restrictions should apply. The first step: prohibit hats and sunglasses propped on top of heads. Secondly, a humorless volunteer, a Hair Nazi if you will, should pace along the waiting line and single out any person whose hair might extend beyond a vertical limit, say, two and a quarter inches. The volunteer would be equipped with a ruler to measure scalps, and if the ticket holder offends, he or she would be provided a mandatory bathing cap for the duration of the Festival.
2. Purchase Wuerfel Park. Let's face it: the Festival has grown too big for its britches. Most movies sell out before the general public even gets a chance. Poor, poor general public. Michael Moore has a ton of money and could make an excellent offer for the venue and the Traverse City Beach Bums, the professional baseball team that plays there. The players must be exhausted from working for minimum wages with lousy health insurance, and as such, they might want to campaign for Democratic candidates. The new venue could be christened Sicko Stadium, and near the entrance a larger-than-life bronze statue of Michael could be erected, poised there in his State baseball cap, flinging free prescription pills to the masses like our very own Johnny Appleseed. With Sicko Stadium's large seating capacity, it should be easy for the general public to get in, although tickets will go like lightning for films such as Bulgarian documentaries about despair.
3. Resurrect Drive-ins. No reason to stop at free movies in the Open Space. The Festival could arrange for giant inflatable screens at various parking lots across town like Wal-Mart, Sam's Club, Meijer, and the Grand Traverse Mall. At sunset, motorists with pre-purchased headsets would park their cars for a night of, say, The Best of Steven Seagal or Shorts of the Greatest Movie Explosions Ever. This expansion would bring a much-needed counterbalance to the Subaru-driving, bottled-water drinking, fanny-packers downtown.
4. Bring On Personal Assistants. Festival goers have witnessed over the years a steady increase in volunteers. And these aren't your hardened criminal types. These are genuine Traverse City folk whose mission apparently is to play out their codependency fantasies. True, we love them for it. There are so many helpers that the majority get stationed at ten yard intervals whose sole purpose is to exude warmth and hospitality. (This year a volunteer noticed that my sneaker was untied, promptly knelt down and fixed it.) In a few short years, the number of volunteers will exceed the number of ticket holders. At that time, why not assign a volunteer to every movie goer so that valet services, in-line massages, and individualized tours of cherry packing plants or local wineries become part of the package?
5. Do the Conga Line. Competition for good theater seats has grown to a fevered pitch, and ticket holders now realize that the only way to get the best view is to show up very, very early. In this spirit, I arrived at the State Theater this year an hour before my show, and still wound up a half mile back. Later, I was in need of chiropractic intervention from the constant neck-craning from my rotten seat. Instead, let's provide some loud and snappy conga music for the serpentine line outside, and allow a dance to run a course down the sidewalks and alleys of Traverse City. Once the doors open, the conga line, dancing to the beat, would snake and shimmy into the theater, and fill the rows, front to back, with appropriate Spanish exclamations erupting. It would be unthinkable for dancers to break the chain as the collective Latin merriment would overwhelm any notions of cutting away. Besides that, the bathing cappers in this rhythmic milieu would feel much less embarrassed about their attire.
6. Sleeping Bear Cinema. This summer, the Traverse City event added a new twist to film festival extremes: Movies on a Boat. Audiences of 60 were packed onto the deck chairs of the catamaran, Nauti Cat which was equipped with a projector and screen. While spinnakers billowed above and carp slept below, a movie was shown with barf bags available. The overall response was so enthusiastic that it now makes sense to expand the nautical theme to even greater heights. Let's project a film onto the world's most natural and spectacular movie screen… the white face of the Sleeping Bear Dunes on Lake Michigan. Just imagine the spectacle. A massive projector aboard a Coast Guard cutter from the Port of Frankfort transmits the incredible visuals against all 400 vertical feet of the great sand dune. For sound, enormous speakers will face the Manitou Islands with a sound track audible all the way to Green Bay. And the audience, a historically massive flotilla of yachts, runabouts, and fishing vessels -- hundreds! nay, thousands! -- from harbors near and far, gather off Sleeping Bear Point to, well, watch a movie. In keeping with the watery terrain, the inaugural film of Sleeping Bear Cinema could be that great American classic featuring Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello, "Beach Blanket Bingo."
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