"Cane Toads" Hits It Out of the Park At the Traverse City Film Festival

Caption: Australian film director Mark Lewis, Michael Moore and Discovery Channel President Clark Bunting at a sold out showing of the Lewis directed and Discovery produced documentary Cane Toads.

Today marked Clark Bunting's 25th anniversary with Discovery Channel. A quarter of a century after Bunting, Michigan born and MSU educated, walked into the Education Cable Network—now the Discovery Network—in 1985, Bunting is president of Discovery Channel. The anniversary coincided with a sold out showing of Cane Toads a movie produced by Discovery and personally shepherded by Bunting. Bunting, Cane Toads director Mark Lewis (fresh from his home in Australia) and Michael Moore were all on hand to talk about the first documentary to be filmed in 3-D (yep, we all wore those nerdy glasses to watch it!), and the second film about the homely invasive species-toad that is taking over Australia. (Second only because Mark Lewis made a first film about the toads 25 years ago.)

The film that was a darling at the Sundance Film Festival had the TCFF audience roaring. As Michael Moore pointed out in a question and answer session afterward, it has all the markings of a cult classic.