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07/20/2007Festival needs its friendsTRAVERSE CITY — If you're one of the 3,500 or so 2006-07 Friends of the Traverse City Film Festival, you may want to renew your membership for the 2008 festival — starting today. "We appreciate the support of the Friends and we need it for the survival of the festival,” said filmmaker and festival founder Michael Moore. "But we may need to limit the number of Friends” who will have access to early ticket sales to the film festival next year. Organizers began selling Friends memberships for the first time during last year's film festival, offering perks like advance notice of films and festival events. More than a third of current Friends joined this week in order to take advantage of early Friends-only ticket sales for this year's festival, limiting the number of films and screenings available to the general public. In the first day, the festival sold 20,000 tickets to Friends — nearly half the available tickets, Moore said. Katherine DeGood joined the Friends group during last year's festival, drawn not only by the promise of early ticket sales but by the Friends potluck on the Grand Traverse Commons grounds. "It's kind of a community bonding,” said DeGood, a philanthropic consultant from Traverse City who plans to attend the potluck with her whole family. "We don't do any of the parties. We've got a child and it was hard enough to finagle two nights for movies.” DeGood, 32, said she and her husband, Chris, plan to attend a total of six films, including two on their anniversary and four more another day. "That's the marathon day,” she said. "We have them at 1, 4, 7 and 10.” She said she believes the Friends system is one way to keep the Festival small and Traverse City-based, and that it seems fair, especially since people were given the chance to join and take advantage of early ticket sales all week long. "It feeds more into supporting the festival from the ground up,” she said. But Moore hopes people won't wait until next year to join the group or to renew their membership, so that their membership funds can be used to help offset the costs of operation all year long. "We ask people to renew it now, not to wait, because this is the money that gets us through the year,” he said.
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