Michael Moore, July 2006
By Anthony Bozza
Feature intro: Last year, in just eight weeks, renegade filmmaker Michael Moore transformed a grassroots idea — screening under-the- radar films among friends, solely for the love of the medium — into a nationally acknowledged, unparalleled happening. In one week, the Traverse City Film Festival admitted more than 50,000 people and generated an estimated $5 million in revenue for local businesses.
Its second incarnation, July 31 through Aug. 6, is poised to break those records and duly establish the festival as a tradition worthy of what Moore sees as the burgeoning cultural evolution underway in the Traverse City region. Moore, who lives on Torch Lake, talked with Hour Detroit about how a spontaneous gesture became, in the words of one local newspaper, the greatest event to hit the area “since the Ice Age.” And how, for the love of film, he’s willing to put politics aside. Seriously.
Interview highlight:
Hour Detroit: Why Traverse City? It’s not exactly in the industry loop.
Michael Moore: Why Traverse City? Very simple: because I live there! Why would I want to travel 1,000 miles to do a festival? Robert Redford lives in Utah; that’s why the Sundance Film Festival is there. Utah would be the last place you’d think would have the premier film festival in America, but they do. I’m here, so the festival is here. … There is something happening up in northwestern Michigan that is very vibrant culturally, artistically, socially, and politically. For example, Traverse City has three public radio stations. There’s only like 20,000 people in the city, and they’ve got three separate public radio stations. Detroit doesn’t have that. There also is a more diverse group of people up there than there used to be. It used to be a very conservative, Republican area. But Traverse City voted for Kerry in the last election. So things are changing. Not that the politics have anything to do with the film festival, but just, in my opinion, that fact is a clear indication that there’s not just one homogenized voice going on up there anymore.
Kid Rock, July 2009
By Jim McFarlin
Feature intro: Usually, Hour Detroit’s most prestigious annual award [Detroiter of the Year] has been reserved for titans of local industry, urban-development\ visionaries, or legal lions. Well, this year our industrialists are scrambling to keep their businesses from circling the bowl. Big-name politicians have let us down. And securing a loan to reshape the city’s skyline? Hey, good luck with that. It’s been an unconventional year, to say the least. But in the category of creative pioneers, lanky 38-year-old Robert James Ritchie — the boy from Romeo, Michigan, with a musical dream and sheer determination in his heart — surely qualifies.
In truth, even the Kid himself was surprised upon receiving the news. Informed that he is the first musician to receive the Hour distinction, “That’s probably because them other people must have said no,” he cracked. “You start thinking of Bob Seger, Aretha Franklin, people like that.”
Interview highlight:
Detroit will make a comeback, he says. As the man said, our city is always a year or two ahead of everyone else; it was so for the recession and should hold true for the recovery. … He plans to be here to witness the next renaissance. But can Ritchie still be “Kid” Rock as 40 approaches?
“Yeah, I’m going to be a kid forever,” he replies with a laugh. “I’ve often thought about how you grow old gracefully in this business. I’ve never done anything gracefully. I’ve just put the pedal to the metal and did it. It’s kind of funny, because I’ve got rocking chairs on my porch and I always envision myself when I’m old and gray, sitting up there drinking my beer, maybe watching the grandkids. And somebody’s going to come up and say, ‘What are you up to, Kid?’ I’ll be going back and forth in my chair; I’ll look up and say: ‘Still rockin’.’”
This story originally appeared in the July 2025 issue of Hour Detroit magazine. To read more, pick up a copy of Hour Detroit at a local retail outlet. Click here to get our digital edition.
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