Michael Moore to use film tax credit for community development project

Film director Michael Moore has announced that he will use the expected $1 million dollar film tax credit from his Traverse City-based production Capitalism: A Love Story to develop a project that will revitalize Michigan towns by promoting non-profit movie theaters.

“We want to turn on the marquee lights, bring in some jobs, pump money into the local economy,” Moore told the Traverse City Record Eagle. “This is just my effort to think of ways to do more.”

The project would give grants, to be used as seed money, for three main purposes: to reopen theaters that sit vacant, to sustain those that are open but struggling, and to start downtown movie theaters where there are none.

Moore said theaters that receive project grants would have to become nonprofit theaters. Owners and operators would come here to learn about the State’s volunteer-based model.

He’s spoken to officials in Flint and his hometown of Davison about the project, and was in Manistee on Saturday to scout a long-shuttered downtown movie theater.

Moore has been key to the restoration of the Traverse City’s State Theater which reopened in 2007 as a state of the art non-profit community theater specializing in independent and foreign films and documentaries.

He also founded the Traverse City Film Festival, scheduled to begin this week, which brings an estimated $10 million dollars into the town each year.

Last September at the regional premiere of “Capitalism: A Love Story” in the tiny Antrim county town of Bellaire, I asked Moore how he felt about accepting tax breaks from a state on the verge of economic collapse.

He said at the time that he was unsure whether he would apply for the credits.

“I am under pressure from the studio to do this,” he said.

Moore said that he had personally trained a dozen people in film related work during the 18-month-long production of Capitalism and said he was unaware of recent criticism of the state’s film incentive program.

“If it’s not good for Michigan,” he said, “Michigan shouldn’t do it.”

Since then criticism of Michigan’s tax credit program, which refunds up to 42 percent of the costs of making a movie here, has expanded as studies indicate it has dubious value as a jobs program.

The Film Office was also been criticized for a lack of transparency and last month the long time director of the film office, Janet Lockwood, announced that she would retire amidst controversy over a questionable $10 million dollar credit awarded to Hangar42 Studios in Grand Rapids.

Michael Moore is a member of the Michigan Film Office Advisory Council.

The Mackinac Center for Public Policy and State Sen. Nancy Cassis (R-Novi) have called on Moore to reject tax breaks from the state.