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08/03/2007Movie MarathonFor some film buffs, the festival is a full-time affair
Tricia Noss holds her tickets for 20 films at the beginning of this week’s Traverse City Film Festival. “Because there’s so many good choices, it’s too hard to narrow it down,” she said. TRAVERSE CITY — Tricia Noss has her entire film festival week meticulously planned out. A typed schedule shows exactly where she'll be for every time slot and who she'll be with. A little pouch holds all her tickets, and her e-mail inbox is filled with exchanges between friends and family coordinating schedules. But don't make fun of her. "I do get teased about this, about how many movies I go to, and my family does think I'm a little crazy, but I look at this as my week,” said Noss, a Traverse City resident. "This is my vacation week.” This year Noss will go to 20 movies: opening night, three movies Wednesday and four movies Thursday through Sunday. But despite seeing around a third of all movies offered, she still agonized about which ones to attend. "I spent ... hours mapping out my schedule and picking out what I wanted to see and comparing time slots to see if I could squeeze everything in, which of course you can't,” Noss said. Noss is not alone. At the opening night film, "Once”, festival co-founder John Robert Williams took a crowd poll of people going to see more than 10 films. Dozens of hands shot into the air. Even Bryn Lynch, who is the festival box office manager, said she'll manage to sneak away to see 14 films. "Usually the selection here in Traverse City is so limited, and a lot of the things that they show out at the mall is not stuff I want to see, and when I actually get the chance to see things I want to see, I just do it,” Lynch said. But it's not just the locals who get enthused. Lynch said she's filled ticket orders for people from all over the country, including Iowa, Washington, D.C. and California. "I was so geeked about this,” said Harbor Springs resident Sheryl McCleery. "I absolutely love it. I'm from the Ann Arbor area, and the one thing I missed up here was good film, and now at least I get a dose once a year.” McCleery said she's going to 16 films this year. And McCleery and Noss both said they'll go to more films if organizers add more days. "I'm actually sad the next day (after the festival ends) that I don't have any more movies to go see,” Noss said. "I must be quite crazy, but really the past two years when it's all over, it's kind of a letdown from that pace. I love it.”
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