By Ray Pride Pride@moviecitynews.com

Michael Moore Names Joseph Beyer Exec Director Before Fourteenth Annual Traverse City Film Festival

Posted Tuesday, April 17th, 2018 - Comments Off on Michael Moore Names Joseph Beyer Exec Director Before Fourteenth Annual Traverse City Film Festival
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FOUNDER MICHAEL MOORE TO KICK OFF 14TH ANNUAL TRAVERSE CITY FILM FESTIVAL AND NEW EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR NAMED
TRAVERSE CITY, MICH. (April 17, 2018) Traverse City Film Festival (TCFF) founder and president Michael Moore announced dates for the 14th annual edition, running July 31 to August 5, along the beautiful shores of Lake Michigan’s Grand Traverse Bay Traverse City, Michigan. Moore also announced that former Sundance Institute staff member and Michigan native Joseph Beyer has joined the nonprofit organization as its new Executive Director.
TCFF is one of the most popular events in Michigan, and the 2018 program is expected to bring more than 100,000 admissions from around the world.Moore personally hosts and programs the festival every year, introducing screenings, moderating panels, and bringing the top talents in the world of film to this small lakeside community. His spirit of cinematic teamwork inspires the organization’s 2,000 volunteers who run the acclaimed State and Bijou Theaters year-round and have become the backbone of the festival’s success and growth.On the announcement of his new pick and local partner as Executive Director Moore said, “Joe brings a unique combination of experience, creativity, and passion to this position. We are lucky to have one of the people many of us have admired at the Sundance festival for many years. I’m looking forward to working with Joe as we continue to make Traverse City a premiere destination for people from all over who value outstanding independent films and everything they bring to our lives.”

Beyer has relocated from Los Angeles, where he served the Sundance Institute for more than 14 years, most recently as Director of Digital Initiatives, leading strategy, creative development, and operation of digital content, social media, and special Institute projects including the launch of the #ArtistServices distribution think tank, the Short Film Challenge with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and the first-ever collaboration with Kickstarter, which raised millions of dollars for filmmakers and their projects.

In 2016 he joined The Redford Center as Director of Marketing and Distribution and previously worked at Warner Bros. and the MPRM agency in an early career almost exclusively devoted to film festivals and connecting audiences to new work. He was born and raised in West Michigan and spent summers in Leland during his youth. He can name all five Great Lakes.He will report directly to Moore and the festival’s esteemed Board of Directors. He has already begun working with staff veterans Susan Fisher and Meg Weichman, who have been managing the organization since previous executive director Deb Lake’s departure late last year.Tickets for the 14th annual edition will go on sale July 21 at tcff.org and are expected to sell out — but TCFF Friends of the Festival will be able to beat the public with advance sales starting July 15. To become a Friend, sign up online, call 231-392-1134, or email friends@tcff.org.

On Sunday evening, April 22, Moore will introduce Beyer to the Traverse City community at a special event to raise funds for the State Theatre. In addition to a conversation on stage, Beyer will present a special sneak preview screening of one of the top documentaries from this year’s Sundance Film Festival. As it is also Moore’s birthday, everyone in attendance will get cake. Tickets for the event can be found hereor at the State Theatre box office.
ABOUTTCFF was founded in 2005 by director Michael Moore. He and fellow native Michiganders producer Rod Birleson, actor Jeff Daniels, entertainment executive Penny Milliken, and actress Christine Lahti serve on the organization’s Board of Directors. Other board members include Oscar nominee Tia Lessin, Oscar winner Terry George, Emmy winner Larry Charles, Rage Against the Machine’s Tom Morello, and acclaimed filmmaker Mark Cousins.TCFF is a charitable, educational, nonprofit organization committed to celebrating the art and power of cinema. We believe “One Great Movie Can Change You.” The festival brings films and filmmakers from around the world to Northern Michigan for the annual summer event, now one of the largest in the country.

The organization led the preservation and restoration of the historic State Theatre in Downtown Traverse City, which it continues to own and operate as a year-round, community-based, volunteer-staffed art house. The festival later expanded to renovate a WPA building from the FDR era and turn it into a sister screen for the State Theatre — the Bijou by the Bay. Both venues combine world-class state-of-the-art presentation with classic hometown movie palace experiences.

Join fans around the world and follow TCFF on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube.
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It shows how out of it I was in trying to be in it, acknowledging that I was out of it to myself, and then thinking, “Okay, how do I stop being out of it? Well, I get some legitimate illogical narrative ideas” — some novel, you know?

So I decided on three writers that I might be able to option their material and get some producer, or myself as producer, and then get some writer to do a screenplay on it, and maybe make a movie.

And so the three projects were “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep,” “Naked Lunch” and a collection of Bukowski. Which, in 1975, forget it — I mean, that was nuts. Hollywood would not touch any of that, but I was looking for something commercial, and I thought that all of these things were coming.

There would be no Blade Runner if there was no Ray Bradbury. I couldn’t find Philip K. Dick. His agent didn’t even know where he was. And so I gave up.

I was walking down the street and I ran into Bradbury — he directed a play that I was going to do as an actor, so we know each other, but he yelled “hi” — and I’d forgot who he was.

So at my girlfriend Barbara Hershey’s urging — I was with her at that moment — she said, “Talk to him! That guy really wants to talk to you,” and I said “No, fuck him,” and keep walking.

But then I did, and then I realized who it was, and I thought, “Wait, he’s in that realm, maybe he knows Philip K. Dick.” I said, “You know a guy named—” “Yeah, sure — you want his phone number?”

My friend paid my rent for a year while I wrote, because it turned out we couldn’t get a writer. My friends kept on me about, well, if you can’t get a writer, then you write.”
~ Hampton Fancher

“That was the most disappointing thing to me in how this thing was played. Is that I’m on the phone with you now, after all that’s been said, and the fundamental distinction between what James is dealing with in these other cases is not actually brought to the fore. The fundamental difference is that James Franco didn’t seek to use his position to have sex with anyone. There’s not a case of that. He wasn’t using his position or status to try to solicit a sexual favor from anyone. If he had — if that were what the accusation involved — the show would not have gone on. We would have folded up shop and we would have not completed the show. Because then it would have been the same as Harvey Weinstein, or Les Moonves, or any of these cases that are fundamental to this new paradigm. Did you not notice that? Why did you not notice that? Is that not something notable to say, journalistically? Because nobody could find the voice to say it. I’m not just being rhetorical. Why is it that you and the other critics, none of you could find the voice to say, “You know, it’s not this, it’s that”? Because — let me go on and speak further to this. If you go back to the L.A. Times piece, that’s what it lacked. That’s what they were not able to deliver. The one example in the five that involved an issue of a sexual act was between James and a woman he was dating, who he was not working with. There was no professional dynamic in any capacity.

~ David Simon