Detroit Documentary Film - (Gotta Keep Dreamin : Detroit's 21st Century Renaissance) - "American Dream : DETROIT"
Michael and Christina Kline, Michael's Manager, have been working together, over the last three years at least, in the making of a documentary film on the revival of the City of Detroit, Michigan, USA. In this thread hope to share some of the steps along the way as well as details on the film's Premiere which will take place at the Fox Theatre, Detroit on 2nd October, 2015.
Michael announced, a few days ago, that a new website has been set up to share information about the film and it can be found at GottaKeepDreamin.com There has also been a FB page created and it can be found at https://www.facebook.com/gottakeepdreamin?fref=ts along with a Twitter account which is at @gkdreamin and also an Instagram account at gotta_keep_dreamin Here is Michael's tweet where he made announcement:
excited to share our website http://gottakeepdreamin.com for the documentary film about Detroit!! Follow @gkdreamin !!
Here is the profile/avatar pic that is used on the FB page:
and the cover photo which is used on FB, Twitter and website
There is an album in the Gallery containing photos that have been posted to the FB and Twitter account and here is link to album http://www.michaelbolton.com/photo/albums/michael-s-detroit-documen... and it, of course, will be kept up-to-date as new photos are added to the various sites.
2018 up-date
"American Dream : DETROIT" to be screened in over 450 cinemas in USA on 15th May.
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Permalink Reply by sylvia doughty on
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Link to Michael's interview on Live in the D today
https://www.facebook.com/4liveinthed/videos/1548385201938867/
Sylvia Your wee Scottish friend
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Interview Michael gave Ann Marie LaFemme today for WXYZ 7 News
https://www.wxyz.com/entertainment/around-town/michael-bolton-one-o...
Sylvia Your wee Scottish friend
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Interview Michael has given Billboard and which Gotta Keep Dreamin shared on FB
https://www.billboard.com/articles/news/8455837/michael-bolton-amer...
here is transcript ....
Michael Bolton has loved Motown all his life as a music fan. Now, he's made a cinematic "love letter" to the Motor City.
Michael Bolton Presents American Dream: Detroit -- a documentary about the city's dramatic recovery from a 2013 bankruptcy -- screens at more than 450 theaters on Tuesday (May 15) via Fathom Events. Bolton, who co-directed the densely detailed 90-minute film with Christina Kline, was inspired by Detroit's story after a visit to the Motown Historical Museum to make an ad for his 2013 album Ain't No Mountain High Enough: A Tribute to Hitsville U.S.A. There, he was introduced to people who were working to bring Detroit back, including entrepreneurs such as Quicken Loans' Dan Gilbert and the Ilitch family, who owns the Little Caesars Pizza chain as well as the Detroit Tigers and Red Wings sports franchises.
"We had been told there was a major effort to bring back Detroit on a very large scale," Bolton, who will host a special screening of the film on Tuesday at Detroit's Redford Theatre, tells Billboard. "I got to meet some amazing people and found they were completely committed to this entire comeback of Detroit. I realized this story was so much bigger than my album. Hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars are being focused, wisely, on bringing back a community.
"Like anybody else I heard all of the (bad) things people say about Detroit. I thought someone needed to tell the story about all the good things that were happening there."
Bolton, Kline and their team visited Detroit more than a dozen times during the five years of the film's production, conducting interviews with more than 100 people and finding the situation had improved even more each time they returned. "There were new restaurants, more office spaces filled, more people living," Bolton recalls. "It was exciting."
The film -- whose soundtrack includes well-known and obscure Detroit songs as well as two new Bolton originals, "Out of the Ashes" and "Keep Dreamin'" -- offers a concise history of Detroit's rise and fall leading up to 2013, as well as interviews with entertainers (Aretha Franklin, Smokey Robinson, Alice Cooper, Mayer Hawthorne, the Supremes' Mary Wilson, Martha Reeves and film directors Francis Ford Coppola and Jerry Bruckheimer), business luminaries such as native John Varvatos and politicians. The film also spotlights small-scale entrepreneurs and citizens impacted positively by the changes.
"When people say, 'Hey, what's going on in Detroit?,' it starts with a lot of great people," Bolton says. "We covered the stars and the giant entrepreneurs and their commitment, but it's more important at a human level, because these are individuals whose lives are moving in a great direction because there's all this activity going on and someone gave them the opportunity, and they're doing great things.
"You find yourself rooting for this story, for the success of the story like you would for a sports team.
After the film's premiere this week Bolton hopes to find it "the best home where it can have the longest life...between network and cable and streaming," though no deal has yet been announced. Meanwhile Bolton has other creative projects in development, including an album that will feature orchestral versions of his greatest hits that he'll record during June in Perth, Australia, for release later this year. He's also developing some new television projects and is contemplating some sort of commemoration of his 50th anniversary in the music business.
"I think maybe I feel more permission to enjoy myself now," Bolton says. "I feel like the first 20 years was a long, steep climb, and then 10 years after that was learning what I wanted to do with my voice and what my capabilities are, getting to sing with Ray Charles and Luciano Pavarotti, which was, like, beyond any dream I had. And now there's just a lot of fun to be had with music and comedy and whatever else looks interesting -- as long as music is always part of that mix."
Sylvia Your wee Scottish friend
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Mitch Albom has tweeted that Michael will be on his radio show in the 6 pm hour tonight and here is Mitch's tweet
tune in to
@wjrradio in the 6pm hour for@mbsings is live with us in studio!#mitchalbomshow http://wjr.comSylvia Your wee Scottish friend
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Two pics that Buddy's Pizza have shared when Michael called in for lunch today.
Sylvia Your wee Scottish friend
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Pic of Michael in radio station being interviewed by Mitch Albom on his show tonight,
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Permalink Reply by meggy on
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I love the black olives...but not the green ones:)! It's Not long now til"The Show",,, who all will be attending? I know Meg @ I will be there with Bells-n-whistles....got Us a few lil extra's to take along:)! I will be back on here tomorrow nite...where do we start our reviews? Here?Let me know:)!
Mary (meg's mom)!
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All reviews welcome on here of course Mary for this is thread for film which still has a long way to go if, as Michael hopes and is working on, it ends up on all our screens, someway, somehow, worldwide.
Have fantastic time tonight and know you will ... have a bag of popcorn for me !!! lol
Sylvia Your wee Scottish friend
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Little piece of information for Michael has revealed, in answer to a tweet, that OLIVES are his favourite topping on a pizza.
Sylvia YWSF 27
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Permalink Reply by Usha Ramadhar on
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Lovely photos. Olives eh! Thx Sylvia
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Short article with video of Michael talking to Fox 2 about film
http://www.fox2detroit.com/news/local-news/michael-boltons-american...
Article Detroit Free Press, Freep Entertainment, has published which also contains a video which comes up at side.
https://www.freep.com/story/entertainment/movies/2018/05/14/michael...
here is transcript ....
Five years and 100 hours of film footage later, Michael Bolton's cinematic love letter to Detroit is finally hitting the big screen.
"American Dream: Detroit," which explores the entrepreneurial and cultural turnaround in key parts of the city, will premiere Tuesday evening in a onetime, simultaneous showing at more than 400 theaters across the country, including 15 cinemas in southeastern Michigan.
Bolton will be at the Redford Theatre at 7 p.m. Tuesday for the documentary's Detroit screening — the latest of many recent visits from the Motown-loving singer, who was inspired to start the project while shooting an infomercial at Hitsville, U.S.A., in 2013.
Read more:
The 90-minute film will be followed by performances from four of the artists whose music is featured in the movie: Jena Irene Asciutto, Charity, Adventures With Vultures and Stephie James.
(They're part of an onscreen soundtrack that is perhaps the most prominent collection of Detroit music ever assembled in a single film, including songs by Aretha Franklin, Eminem, Bob Seger, Madonna, Smokey Robinson, Alice Cooper, the Temptations and Jackie Wilson. The full Spotify playlist is below.)
"American Dream" is a self-described labor of love for Bolton, 65, the husky-voiced soul-pop singer who became a fixture of the Top 40 and adult contemporary charts starting in the late '80s.
With manager Christina Kline as his co-producer and co-director, Bolton tackled the project amid his busy life of music commitments, including recording sessions and international touring. Each trip to Detroit for shooting would uncover new projects and stories, and individuals featured in the film range from C-Suite power players (Dan Gilbert, Christopher Ilitch, Bill Ford) to grassroots activists.
Bolton also secured interviews with some of the city's best-known showbiz figures.
"We didn’t have to twist anybody’s arm to come and sing the praises of Detroit and their love for Detroit, from Aretha Franklin and Smokey to Francis Ford Coppola — so many amazing people in film, TV and music," he told the Free Press Tuesday at Redford Theatre.
Poster for Michael Bolton's documentary "American Dream: Detroit." (Photo: Passion8media)
The documentary's seeds were planted during Bolton's 2013 trip to Motown, as he was readying the release of his album "Ain't No Mountain High Enough: A Tribute to Hitsville U.S.A." After decades of Detroit visits, he sensed something different was afoot.
"Every time I (would) do a concert anywhere in the Detroit area, I (would) keep looking around and wondering, ‘When is the redevelopment going to happen? Who’s in charge of this?' " said Bolton, a Connecticut native whose father once headed New Haven's redevelopment agency.
This time, he said, "we heard there actually were people talking about and creating redevelopment projects, and we wanted to interview them and find out what was going on. And we found an enormous story in that — not knowing it was going to take five years."
Lengthy segments from the in-progress film were shown at the Fox Theatre in October 2015, a red-carpet event that drew Gilbert, Ilitch, Mayor Mike Duggan, U.S. Sen. Debbie Stabenow and Motown's Martha Reeves.
Michael Bolton with riders from Slow Roll Detroit in front of "The Spirit of Detroit" statue in downtown Detroit. (Photo: Passion8media)
Since then, Bolton and his team have fine-tuned the film, in what he called a painstaking editing process that helped put a human face on the Detroit comeback.
"To take a hundred hours (of footage) and turn it into 90 minutes, that's a lot of cutting and re-cutting, a lot of rethinking and stepping back," he said. "I think probably most filmmakers will say: If you did your job, the story will reveal itself. In this case, the protagonist is the city, but we all know you (must) have people who are attractive and compelling human beings, by their nature and character.
"It needed to take a few steps in a certain direction to be the voice of Detroiters, and to deliver the message we had originally intended," he said.
Bolton got in during the first bloom of the Detroit rebound, and the film captures much of the fresh energy he encountered during those early months of filming — the Slow Roll Detroit bike rides, the Detroit Institute of Music Education, community startups such as the Empowerment Plan.
And while the resurgence continues apace — including the multibillion-dollar development work led by Gilbert and Ilitch — some of the local dynamics have shifted in the five years since Bolton began his project, including emerging concerns about gentrification and worries that a divide is emerging between the booming central district and struggling Detroit neighborhoods elsewhere.
Bolton said he's sensitive to those concerns, and knew they'd be in the mix even as he started the project.
"What I do feel is the success that feeds a city like this has a lot more opportunity to help other people become successful," he said. He related it to his 25 years running a charitable foundation in Connecticut, where he said outsider contributions dry up during tough economic times and flourish when big companies and donors have money to give.
"When there's more of a tax base, more income to work with, it's a lot easier to say, 'Let's make this opportunity happen. Let's focus on this block. Let's widen our scope,' " he said. "All of the possibilities become real."
Bolton has witnessed another shift since he embarked on "American Dream": a wider national awareness of what's happening in Detroit.
When taking off for his latest visits to the Motor City, "everybody I see goes, 'Oh yeah, have a great time, man!' " Bolton said. "I think there's been a huge change from the first time I said I'm going to Detroit and I'm going to film. It was like, 'Why?!' Now they know why."
Buy PhotoThe marquee for singer Michael Bolton's film American Dream Detroit is seen on Monday, May 14, 2018 at Redford Theatre in Detroit. (Photo: Ryan Garza, Detroit Free Press)
Bolton recently screened the film for a Hollywood-hardened crowd in Los Angeles. Some audience members were in tears, he said.
"What I found was that people were really moved," Bolton said. "There were two things people had to tell me after the film: One, they were just moved by a lot of the people we covered in the film, and they were now aware of the kinds of efforts and investments that have been made in the city. The second is that they were enlightened ... in a way that they now knew the past of Detroit. They saw how powerful the city was."
Plans are still coming together for the film's long-term future, but Bolton's team said there will be some kind of wider distribution.
At this point, Bolton said he's an all-around Detroit devotee, a lifelong New York Yankees fan who now finds himself rooting for Motor City teams. And he's confident that the revival captured in his movie is just the start of what he describes — citing Ilitch — as "the greatest urban comeback in American history."
Michael Bolton Presents 'American Dream: Detroit'
One further article from Detroit Press
https://www.detroitnews.com/story/entertainment/2018/05/14/review-m...
here is transcript ...
Michael Bolton isn’t out to save Detroit. He doesn’t have all the answers. He just wants to sing the city a love song.
That’s the upshot of “American Dream: Detroit,” the Detroit documentary helmed by Bolton, the soft rock balladeer, inspired by his love of the city.
Bolton began working on the documentary in 2012, and he previewed footage to media in 2015, ahead of a Fox Theatre gala event with many of the star’s subjects in attendance.
Two and a half years later, the completed film will air in select theaters Tuesday, with Bolton appearing at a special event at the Redford Theatre.
The 90-minute doc features interviews with many notable Detroiters, among them Smokey Robinson, Aretha Franklin, Alice Cooper, Francis Ford Coppola, Jerry Bruckheimer, Mitch Albom, John Varvatos and others. They help tell the familiar tale of Detroit, its rise and fall, from manufacturing mecca and birthplace of Motown to the 1967 riots, the 2008 auto bailout and the resurgence of today.
Bolton, who directed the film alongside Christina Kline, doesn’t dig too deep or get any dirt on his hands; “American Dream” skims the surface of its subject and keeps a general sense of positivity flowing throughout. It often feels like a production of Detroit’s tourism board.
Occasionally it loses its focus; at one point, Bolton begins telling the story of his own career and his struggles to hit it big, which has as much purpose in a Detroit documentary as a sidebar on the Montreal Expos.
And much of what he uncovers is familiar, including the revitalization efforts of Shinola, Dan Gilbert and others in the downtown sphere. A lengthy section with “Detroit ambassador” Bruce “Detroit Bruce” Schwartz feels like being trapped on a Bedrock property tour.
Meanwhile, the film focuses on figureheads who wax on Detroit from afar — Bruckheimer, Coppola and Cooper haven’t lived in the city for decades — while voices of everyday Detroiters are lacking. And the film centers squarely on the efforts being made downtown, never venturing out into the city’s neighborhoods, the true heartbeat of the city.
But it’s a film by Bolton, which rose in part from “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough: A Tribute to Hitsville U.S.A.,” his 2013 album of Motown covers, so it was never going to be a hard-hitting look at the city’s issues. If it came as a DVD with that set, it would be an impressive bonus feature.
Late in the film, Bolton calls the movie “the positive story I was determined to tell” and a “love letter” to Detroit. There, he succeeds. Like any love letter, “American Dream: Detroit” is sincere, gushy and starry eyed, but it gets its point across.
agraham@detroitnews.com
(313) 222-2284
@grahamorama
‘American Dream: Detroit’
GRADE: C+
Not rated: Nothing objectionable
Running time: 90 minutes
Live appearance by Michael Bolton
7 p.m. Tuesday
Redford Theatre, 17360 Lahser, Detroit
$16
Sylvia Your wee Scottish friend
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Thanks for sharing those pics Sylvia, very nice:)! I just wanted to tell you All that we went & we had a good time @ the show, Meghan was sooooo excited to go w/me....After all...we listened to him All of the time when she was little....I saw a young man there with what looked to be his Mom, he was jumpin' around being a kid:)! Gotta say there was only 10 people@ our venue:( .....
On with the show, well 1st lets talk about that popcorn...LOL:)! The sign read if we bought the Large bucket, we could get a FREE refill...heck yeah I wanted that, just because it was so Good:)! We took it Home to her husband...(ha-ha)! I also got Us some pretzel bites...HOT just out of the oven...:)!
We were impressed with the message (letter) he gave to Us in great detail....He of course interviewed lots of people, I mean Lots....I love to hear Smokey talk, @ he just let us know everything;;;the list goes on, but I can't be a spoiler...there was this young lady that showed him her (coat) that turns into a (Bed)...the story is Amazing & moving:)! Alice was just lettin' it all out...what a funny guy:)!
MIchael is on a MIssion to help this city back & the people in it 2 get back on there feet again....keep dreamin'....I didn't know any of this, now I am filled w/knowledge....
Thanks Michael we had a really nice time:)!
Mary (meg's mom)!
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