stories & info for an optimistic doc on Detroit

[Antoine]

Antoine, it seems to me that this is not the way a valid, paid researcher goes avbout doing his homework.

We're still at a pre-development stage and haven't decided on a specific direction yet. When the project will be clearly defined, of course we won't only do research on blogs and emails. But as the proverb says : "You can't make an omelette without breaking some eggs".

Can we have more information about your antecedents/credentials before we open the kimono any further? What were your other projects and where are they available?

Thus far, we've only worked on fiction films, which includes several award-winning short films and a feature film that'll be released next year. This film is a road movie that was partly shot in Toyota City. This gave us the idea to compare this city to its twin one : Detroit.
If you're more interested, please PM me and I'll give you more details.

Got to admit, I can;t imagine why anybody would pull the chain of Detroiters at this point in history but, if anybody would, my money is on you.

I know several docs about Detroit have already been shot. But as I said before, our particularity is to compare its history to the one of Toyota City.

I am working, by the way, on a project involving comparisons of cheese in Wisconsin and Emmenthal. Any help you could give me would be appreciated.

Again, if this is not a joke you can PM me [[please don't feel sorry if it wasn't, but since I've been spoiled on another blog for a unknown reason, I've decided to be more cautious this time).

Antoine

[night-timer]

Antoine, if you need a stills photographer for this proposed movie, contact me. I sent you a PM and hope you still visit this forum.

[George Cassidy]

I had my tongue way up my cheek on that one.

[Lowell]

Antoine, actor Max Gail [["Wojo" on Barney Miller) did a documentary on the Poletown debacle several years ago. If you can contact his Full Circle productions, it might be beneficial.

That's not quite accurate^. Max was featured prominently in the outstanding documentary called "Poletown Lives", made by George Corsetti, who is a Detroit activist, lawyer, film maker and a leader of the fledgling Green Party. The film follows the community's resistance to the demolition of Poletown - a must-see film IMO for anyone's Detroit 101 education.

[fryar]

The revitalization of Detroit is very significantly affected by the axis along Woodward Avenue from the recently redeveloped Riverfront up to a renovated Campus Martius Park to the sports stadiums around Grand Circus Park and up along the proposed M1 Rail to Wayne State University and the "New Center" or midtown neighborhood for which WSU is an anchor [[along with the Detroit Institute of Arts and the Detroit Science Center). I only lived in Detroit for three short years, and even in that time, the change in downtown was dramatic. There's a real upward trajectory that begins at a low point, when the JL Hudson building is demolished in a cloud of smoke, which may have seemed to Detroiters very symbolic at the time, and includes the new baseball and football stadiums, the new Riverwalk area and Campus Martius park along with other downtown parks [[Cadillac Square, Harmonie Park/Paradise Valley, Capitol Park), the renovation of many [[sadly not all) Detroit landmarks, such as the Opera House, the Fox Theater, the United Artists Theater building, all of which has improved downtown greatly, and this will spread to midtown as soon as the M1 Rail is built. I don't have all of the facts at the ready on my fingertips, but these are some things I might try to find out more about, even just by googling them, in order to find out more about the ways in which Detroit has turned some important corners in the last ten years. If I were to do an optimistic piece about Detroit, I would take the developments in downtown as a sign that the era of sprawl is over and the city is being made interesting again for people, that this is likely to spread more visibly to an improving midtown via the M1 rail [[in fact, there is a new park there as well called New Center Park, I believe), and in areas that are not directly affected by these efforts [[maybe yet), organizations of volunteers like the Georgia Street Community Collective, the Central Detroit Christian Community Development Corporations, Motor City Blight Busters, and many others are picking up the slack. That would be my positive doc about Detroit.

There you go, I have given you plenty of stuff to google, methinks. :-)