Friends,
The moment has arrived!
We here at the Traverse City Film Festival (and the State and Bijou theaters) are proud to present the Northern Michigan premiere of Steven Spielberg’s magnum opus, winner of
Best Film at this year’s Toronto Film Festival —
THE FABELMANS.
It all begins tomorrow, right here in downtown Traverse City, at our very own historic movie palace, the magnificent State Theatre.
Rolling Stone magazine has rightly called this
“The movie we’ve been waiting for Steven Spielberg to make!” And to draw an even finer point, I am certain this is the movie that Steven Spielberg has been waiting to make, a film so personal you will sit in the darkened theater and, in awe, see that his 50-year body of work — all of his great and powerful movies — have led to this moment, this movie, an intimate family story about love, art, and a boy with a magical mind — about how Steven Spielberg became Steven Spielberg.
There literally could be no better film to share with you on this Thanksgiving weekend than THE FABELMANS. Come to the State Theatre, bring the family, friends, and loved ones, and share this cinematic feast with all here in TC who seek to be with each other and experience a great movie together.
The story is a simple one, repeated for decades in millions of American homes: a mom or dad or both see that their child has a special talent, an excitable vision, a mind that is full of ideas and wonderment and joy. And like many parents, these two, instead of fretting or fearing the budding genius they have raised, instead of making him conform to a society that will not necessarily appreciate his “specialness,” they decide to
embrace his amazing view of the world around him. They take him to the movies. They buy him a home movie camera and some 8mm film. They let him cast the family and the neighborhood kids in his little movies. The mind that will, years later, bring us Jaws and ET, Schindler’s List and Close Encounters of the Third Kind, is nurtured and loved and admired by the adults around him. It hits you that every child should have this — and most, on some level, do —and when they do, when they are allowed to thrive, we not only get the Brontë sisters and Motzart and the Berrigan brothers, the Kennedys, the siblings Shirley McClain & Warren Beatty and a 12-year Tommy Edison selling newspapers on the train from Port Huron to Detroit, you also get three girls from the Brewster-Douglass housing projects who become the Supremes, the two Knoll brothers from Ann Arbor Pioneer High School who invent Photoshop, Larry Page from East Lansing High who goes on to invent Google, a baby born at Saginaw General whose parents name him Stevland Hardaway Morris but whom we know as Stevie Wonder or the two young women from Traverse City Central who become The Accidentals and write beautiful songs like
this. We also end up with a better world. The first 25 minutes of Spielberg’s “Saving Private Ryan” is the artist’s plea — his demand — that we never let this happen again.
I can’t wait to share THE FABELMANS with you. It stars Paul Dano, Michelle Williams, Seth Rogen, Judd Hirsch, and Gabriel LaBelle as the young Sammy Fabelman (the movie’s fictional stand-in for the young Steven Spielberg).
THE FABELMANS will open tomorrow on Thanksgiving Eve at 1pm with additional showtimes at 4:15pm and 7:45pm. On Thanksgiving we will show it at 5pm and 8:15p. And then on Friday, Saturday and Sunday at 1pm, 4:15pm, 7:45pm. Admission as always is $9 for adults, $8 for Seniors and $7 for children 12 and under. Matinees are $7. Popcorn and pop are as low as $2 (the same as it was when we restored and reopened the State 15 years ago this month!). THE FABELMANS is rated PG-13.
Come spend a little piece of your Thanksgiving weekend with us at this treasure of a movie inside this treasure of a movie palace which has sat here on Front Street for over 106 years. Very few towns across America have preserved their original hometown movie theater that was opened back when the motion pictures began. That we get to share this movie, by a filmmaker who took Mr Edison’s invention and gave us all this happiness for so many years — and now we get to experience his talent again during this holiday season, well for all of us here who run this nonprofit movie house for you, our neighbors and friends, it is truly an honor and a blessing and a reason for us to give thanks to you.
See you at the movies!
Michael Moore
See Trailer here:
Read Review
State Theatre
The Fabelmans
Purchase tickets
Wednesday 1:00pm, 4:15pm. 7:45pm
Thursday: 5pm, 8:15pm
Friday through Sunday 1:00pm, 4:15pm. 7:45pm
Bijou By The Bay
Wizard of Oz
Free
Friday and Saturday 2:00pm, 6:00pm
Sunday: 2:00pm, 5:00pm
The State Theatre
Elf
Purchase Tickets
$1 Kids Matinee
Saturday: 10:00am
