Basically I want to work for Sundance, or work in film. I want to be a part of this beautiful process of taking an idea, a thought, a story and putting it on camera for the purpose of entertaining people, teaching people, showing the public a world they know nothing about, or a person they've never met, among other things. The collaboration of directors, actors, editors, composers, musicians, cameramen (and women), producers, animators in some cases, and most of all the audience, is so exciting! I can't describe the feeling I get while sitting in the theater watching a film at the Sundance festival. Take Skateland, the cast and crew were mere seats away from Meg and me, it was the premiere of the film and we got to be there while the people who made that movie watched it with an audience for the first time. Or Frozen, for example. That film is made to get a reaction, to scare people, and we were able to sit in the Egyptian theater with the director and cast and crew as they witnessed the audience squirming and gasping at the screen. Can you imagine the high a filmmaker must get off that experience? I love being a part of this.
Okay sorry to go off like that! Let's talk about what we did, who we saw, where we went... aren't you all dying to know?! I have sadly been back to reality for a little over 24 hours at this point and this blog will allow me one last dip into my Sundance Film Festival 2010 experience! It was AWESOME to have Meg out here to do this with me!! SO SO SO AWESOME and UNFORGETTABLE!!!!! I think we really made the most of our time. I can't believe it's all over and that she's back east again. When I got back to the apartment yesterday it was weird to be alone... too quiet, too boring, and then on top of that I had all this laundry and cleaning to do. Like I said, sadly back to reality.
Let's start this RE:trospect from the beginning. And if you're wondering why I keep writing retrospect like that it's because that's the Sundance thing this year- words with RE at the beginning. REbel, REnew, REvolt, REbirth. You get the idea. This is the... slogan, we'll say:
This is the
renewed rebellion.
This is the
recharged fight against
the establishment of
the expected.
This is the rebirth
of the battle
for brave new ideas.
This is sundance,
reminded.
renewed rebellion.
This is the
recharged fight against
the establishment of
the expected.
This is the rebirth
of the battle
for brave new ideas.
This is sundance,
reminded.
That is what's written on the front flap of the festival guide I received with my pass and it is also what was displayed on the screens while you waited for the films to start. Pretty cool, huh?
On Friday morning I picked Meg up at the airport and when we got into Park City I drove her up to Main Street so that she could start to feel the excitement of the festival. I think it worked! After eating some lunch, resting a bit and a showering- Meg had been up since 4am eastern time, mind you, we decided it was time to get in on the action.
Apparently the free shuttles did not think it was time for us to head up to Main Street since we waited for almost 45 minutes in the (very wet and heavy) snow before finally taking a cab into town. We wanted to see The Fray at the Music Cafe, but after waiting another 45 minutes in the wet, heavy snow and hearing one of the event volunteers explaining that the cafe had been at maximum capacity for 3 hours and he really wasn't sure anyone else would get in, we decided to go across the street for some hot chocolate. Once we had warmed, and dried, up a bit we braved the huge snowflakes and started a trek up Main street. We weren't very far when we had our first celebrity sighting of the fest. The Sundance kid himself, Mr. Robert Redford!! He was talking to some people so we didn't want to interrupt but decided from then on to at least say hello to any film makers, actors etc. who we ran into. By this time it was getting dark and the snow hadn't let up at all, the streets were slushy and we were cold so we decided to call it a night since we had a very long day planned on Saturday. We headed over to the transit center and waited for over an hour for the bus to arrive, but it finally did. I think that between the weather and all of the people it was just really hard for the buses to stay on time, but hey, it's completely free so one can't complain.
Saturday morning we got up and headed to The Canyons, where Kristi works. She had gotten us lift tickets so that I could finally experience the "best snow on earth" after living here for a year and a half! We had such a blast skiing and riding- Meg decided to snowboard. We did pretty well except for Meg's little spill at the first chairlift, but we're blaming that on the chairlift operator who was too busy sweeping and chatting to slow the darn thing down! It was different to ski in the famous powder, but it all came back to me pretty quickly! When we were finished skiing we stopped by the Red Pine lodge to see Kristi while she was bar tending and then went to see my friend Ann and grab a bite to eat at Smokies, a bar and grill at the bottom of the mountain. Here we had our second "celebrity" sighting. I don't particularly care for this person, nor do I like calling him a celebrity, but Jon Gosselin was entering Smokies as we were leaving. Ewww. So after skiing we ran a few errands and then came back to the apartment to relax before our first film at 11:30pm.
We saw Teenage Paparazzo at the Prospector Square Theater. Adrien Grenier of Entourage fame directed this documentary about a 13-year-old paparazzo named Austin Visschedyk. Grenier befriended Visschedyk after being photographed by him in order to understand the world of paparazzi and the obsession with celebrity. It was a really fun and interesting film that looked at it's subject from all angles. After the screening there was a Q & A with Grenier, his crew and even Austin! It was so cool to see him and how much he has grown up since the film was made. On our way out the door we shook hands with Grenier and told him what a great job he had done! He IS as adorable in person as he is on film!
High off the excitement of seeing the first film we ran home to get some sleep before seeing Jack Goes Boating at 9:15am on Sunday! My friend and coworker, Nancy, was nice enough to let us park in her driveway anytime we wanted so we took her up on the offer that morning as her house is just a short walk to Eccles theater where our screening of Jack Goes Boating took place.
We sat next to a woman named Holly who is from Texas and comes to Park City to volunteer for the festival every year. She was really nice and fun to talk to. She volunteers at New Frontier, a venue on Main Street that houses exhibits and performances that experiment with traditional art, media and film making. She told us all about it and was explaining how often Joseph Gordon-Levitt was there for his hitRECord.org installation, and that actors had been stopping by to see him, like Parker Posey and James Franco. Meg and I had thought about trying to get into a screening of The Runaways that night but instead we ended up going to New Frontier and seeing Gordon-Levitt and the other film makers he's collaborating with explain their project. More on that later...
Jack Goes Boating was a funny, sad, touching film with great performances. It is Philip Seymour Hoffman's directorial debut and I think he did a great job. Following the film was a Q & A with Hoffman, Amy Ryan, John Ortiz and Daphne Rubin-Vega, the stars of the film. It was so neat to hear them speak about the film. After that we met one of Meg's friends for lunch. he lives in Salt Lake City but drove up to visit Meg while she's here! This was a nice little break from all the craziness of the festival, and we went to Red Rock, my favorite restaurant in Park City!
We went back to the apartment to take it easy for a bit but then we ended up taking the bus into town around 4pm with no real plan in mind except to explore Main Street and check out the venues to which our credentials allowed us access. On our travels up and down Main Street we saw Taryn Manning, Colin Hanks and Jason Ritter. I wanted to go talk to Jason Ritter but he was with people who he seemed to know and they were having a conversation so I didn't want to bother him, We actually saw him again later on but he was crossing the street, so we didn't get to say hello then either. We checked out New Frontier and saw Holly who explained once more what the venue is all about and gave us some info on the exhibits and panels. The exhibits were interesting and weird. There was one that was really cool called Cloud Mirror where you take one of these small panels that is on a string and put it around your neck, then type the number you find on the panel and your Facebook log in information into the provided computer and then go stand in front of a TV with a camera attached to it. Somehow things connect and you see yourself on the TV with little thought bubbles that have information from your Facebook profile in them!! I have no idea how this works but it's really cool! On the panel that you have around your neck you can see photos from your profile!
Other exhibits included something called Bordertown that had models of buildings that were about as tall as me and in the windows there were scenes from different films playing. Another exhibit was titled Post Global Warming Survival Kit and it was a room with no lights that had a tent in it with a screen that just showed an ocean and you wore night vision goggles to see. And yet another had a screen spanning the entire length of three walls with a really weird film playing on a loop. There were these pads, or mattresses I guess, on the ground where you would lie down to watch the film. This was called Lobe of Lung and the idea was to lounge inside the film. And as I said before hitRECord.org was set up down there so we got a glimpse of that as well. Joseph Gordon-Levitt was down there at one point while we were looking around but then we didn't see him again after that. We did see his brother, Dan, however, who looks exactly like him except he has dreads.
After we had explored all of the exhibits we decided to get a drink at The No Name Saloon. It was really packed and after ordering our drinks we finally got a table when these 2 older couples from Arkansas came over and offered to buy all of our drinks if we let them share our table. We told them that they could share our table but they didn't have to worry about our drinks. They were really fun and in the end not only did they end up buying us some drinks, they also bought us mozzarella sticks! Yum! We had to leave them after a little while though so that we could go BACK to New Frontier to see the hitRECord.org presentation. This was actually really cool!
They explained the whole idea behind the website which I will attempt to sum up... anyone can join and post things like videos, recordings, text, music, anything and you give everyone else the right to do anything with what you have submitted. And if at some point something you contributed to makes money, you get paid. I am not explaining it right so just go to the website and sign up to get the idea. There were maybe 30 people in the audience and we all got to participate in a few collaborations. They are making a film called Morgan M. Morganson's Date with Destiny and they needed some sound bites for a restaurant scene so they recorded the audience. They also filmed us all standing around Gordon-Levitt as he acted out a scene for a video they are putting together to accompany a song that Sean Lennon wrote for them called Nebulullaby. Pretty cool stuff! At the end of the presentation one of the film makers, Tori, came up to me and asked if she could film my earrings! I was wearing big red circular earrings and their logo is a big red circle, like a recording sign. I obviously said yes and then she wanted to interview me so we did that too. I don't even remember what I said- probably something dumb. But they are making a documentary about the whole Sundance experience so maybe I'll show up on there. I'm going to try and make the screening of it tomorrow night. After the interview I panicked because I didn't know how to sign up on the website so I just grabbed Joseph Gordon-Levitt and asked him. When I told him about Tori interviewing me he said "Yeah those are cool earrings" Haha, isn't that great?! I was stoked! Lame I know, but you'd be excited too!!!
We still had some time to kill before our midnight screening of Frozen so we headed to Java Cow, a cafe down the street, for some refreshments. There we ran into a couple of guys who I had met a few days earlier when they came into J. Crew. They work for an entertainment show in Toronto, Canada and they are here covering the festival. They are really nice so we chatted for a while before they had to go do press coverage of Frozen. We actually hung out with them for a little while as they waited for the cast and crew to arrive but then Meg and I noticed that the line was getting long so we decided to hop in it to make sure we got good seats. We met some people in line and one of the girls had lived in Portsmouth! We chatted with them to pass the time but we were actually waiting in line for quite a while. We jokingly wondered if it might be for affect since the film is called Frozen, but we found out that someone who was working at the Egyptian had actually had a seizure and had to be taken away in an ambulance! This is just what someone told us so I don't know the whole story. The film was pretty awesome, but a little gruesome! The Q & A was great too! Adam Green, the director, was so energetic and funny and he told some great stories about the filming process. Adam Green is from Massachusetts and Frozen takes place at a fictional ski resort in New England but it was filmed at Snow Basin, right here in Utah. My friend Anna's husband did lighting for the film and I remember her telling me about it when he was working on it. I did get a photo with the cast that you can see on my Facebook! The guys, Shawn Ashmore and Kevin Zegers (who I have a little crush on) weren't really paying attention while I was trying to get the photo. I would have rather been between them than all the way on the end next to the girl, Emma Bell, but I wasn't going to press my luck!
The next day Meg and I had a film screening at the Temple Theater- a Jewish Temple up the road that they turn into a theater for the fest. You cannot park there so you have to take a shuttle and we had a little trouble figuring out where were supposed to park and which shuttle we were actually supposed to get on. Four buses and many helpful festival volunteers later we made it to the venue where we saw The Freebie following a short film called Young Love. The short, made by a young Australian director, was really funny. The Freebie was directed by Katie Aselton who has been to Sundance many times but this was her first time directing. The film was really cute and funny and it starred Aselton and Dax Shepard who was hilarious! We got a ton of info in the Q & A, and Aselton was full of energy and seemed really excited to be showing her film. She explained that there was no script, only a 6 page outline she had written and the film was completely ad-libbed! Shepard wasn't there but other cast members and her crew were in attendance.
That evening we saw Skateland at the Racquet Club theater- you guessed it, a gym that they turn into a theater! You'd never know it though, they do a really good job with these venues! Another first time director, Anthony Burns, headed up this film about a group of teens in 1983, good year, don't ya think? It had a Dazed and Confused feel to it. This was the premiere so no one had seen the film before then and the whole cast and crew was there, except for Ashley Green, who thanks to the Twilight saga, is the most famous person in the film. Adrian Brody was also there to check it out, as well as Christopher MacDonald, whose name I just had to look up because I only recognized him as Shooter McGavin from Happy Gilmore! The film was awesome and funny and I loved it. Afterwards everyone came up on stage for the Q & A and Burns, very attractive FYI, was all nervous to be talking in front of the audience. It was so cute! Then someone asked Shiloh Fernandez, also adorable, and the actor who played the lead, a question and he was all cute and nervous too! It was very endearing to witness! After the Q & A I went over to talk to Shiloh and he was so cool and sincere. He seemed genuinely grateful and flattered that I liked the film and his performance. I introduced myself and he told me it was nice to meet me and when I asked if I could grab a photo he was totally cool about it and even acted a little excited that I had asked. Right as I was giving Meg the camera he saw someone he knew and started talking to them so I thought he had forgotten about the picture but then he excused himself and came back over, put his arm around me and we got a great photo! This can also be seen on my Facebook. I asked him if it was his first time at Sundance and he told me that he had been here once before for a film called Red with Brian Cox. I said I'd check it out and he warned me that it's nothing like Skateland. I looked it up later and he's right! looks like it's about some kids who kill a guy's dog and the revenge he gets on them. Yikes! I'm not sure if I can handle that!!
Late Tuesday morning we saw our final film, Howl. Loved it!! It's about the trial against the man who published the poem Howl and also about Ginsberg. Some of the film is in color, some in black and white and some parts were animated. James Franco puts on an amazing performance as usual. Most of the dialogue is taken directly from recordings and the transcripts from the trial. The directors, Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman, were there to answer all of the questions about their wonderful film and even one of the actors, Todd Rotundi, who played Jack Kerouac, was there to talk about his role. No James Franco but oh well, I'll live.
That night Meg and I wandered Main Street one last time before she left. We went into the boutiques for some shopping and she bought some festival souvenirs to distribute back home. We lounged in the Lobe of Lung at New Frontier for nearly an hour and just talked, something we hadn't had all that much time to do with all the activities we had crammed into 6 days. We had a dinner reservation at The Purple Sage where my roommate, Kelly, works. The food was delicious and it was a nice ending to the trip.
I had a wonderful time at Sundance and I really hope to attend next year and every single year after that! I want to volunteer and who knows, maybe one of these days I'll work for the Sundance Institute and be a part of the programs that allow independent film makers' dreams to become realities. When an artist's vision become's a film we can all experience, everyone wins.
So that's it! Longest. Post. Ever. For those of you who made it this far, congratulations! The festival isn't over yet and I don't go back to work until Saturday. Someone gave me vouchers for 2 waitlist tickets which I'm going to attempt to use tomorrow. I'll let you all know how it goes!!
On Friday morning I picked Meg up at the airport and when we got into Park City I drove her up to Main Street so that she could start to feel the excitement of the festival. I think it worked! After eating some lunch, resting a bit and a showering- Meg had been up since 4am eastern time, mind you, we decided it was time to get in on the action.
Apparently the free shuttles did not think it was time for us to head up to Main Street since we waited for almost 45 minutes in the (very wet and heavy) snow before finally taking a cab into town. We wanted to see The Fray at the Music Cafe, but after waiting another 45 minutes in the wet, heavy snow and hearing one of the event volunteers explaining that the cafe had been at maximum capacity for 3 hours and he really wasn't sure anyone else would get in, we decided to go across the street for some hot chocolate. Once we had warmed, and dried, up a bit we braved the huge snowflakes and started a trek up Main street. We weren't very far when we had our first celebrity sighting of the fest. The Sundance kid himself, Mr. Robert Redford!! He was talking to some people so we didn't want to interrupt but decided from then on to at least say hello to any film makers, actors etc. who we ran into. By this time it was getting dark and the snow hadn't let up at all, the streets were slushy and we were cold so we decided to call it a night since we had a very long day planned on Saturday. We headed over to the transit center and waited for over an hour for the bus to arrive, but it finally did. I think that between the weather and all of the people it was just really hard for the buses to stay on time, but hey, it's completely free so one can't complain.
Saturday morning we got up and headed to The Canyons, where Kristi works. She had gotten us lift tickets so that I could finally experience the "best snow on earth" after living here for a year and a half! We had such a blast skiing and riding- Meg decided to snowboard. We did pretty well except for Meg's little spill at the first chairlift, but we're blaming that on the chairlift operator who was too busy sweeping and chatting to slow the darn thing down! It was different to ski in the famous powder, but it all came back to me pretty quickly! When we were finished skiing we stopped by the Red Pine lodge to see Kristi while she was bar tending and then went to see my friend Ann and grab a bite to eat at Smokies, a bar and grill at the bottom of the mountain. Here we had our second "celebrity" sighting. I don't particularly care for this person, nor do I like calling him a celebrity, but Jon Gosselin was entering Smokies as we were leaving. Ewww. So after skiing we ran a few errands and then came back to the apartment to relax before our first film at 11:30pm.
We saw Teenage Paparazzo at the Prospector Square Theater. Adrien Grenier of Entourage fame directed this documentary about a 13-year-old paparazzo named Austin Visschedyk. Grenier befriended Visschedyk after being photographed by him in order to understand the world of paparazzi and the obsession with celebrity. It was a really fun and interesting film that looked at it's subject from all angles. After the screening there was a Q & A with Grenier, his crew and even Austin! It was so cool to see him and how much he has grown up since the film was made. On our way out the door we shook hands with Grenier and told him what a great job he had done! He IS as adorable in person as he is on film!
High off the excitement of seeing the first film we ran home to get some sleep before seeing Jack Goes Boating at 9:15am on Sunday! My friend and coworker, Nancy, was nice enough to let us park in her driveway anytime we wanted so we took her up on the offer that morning as her house is just a short walk to Eccles theater where our screening of Jack Goes Boating took place.
We sat next to a woman named Holly who is from Texas and comes to Park City to volunteer for the festival every year. She was really nice and fun to talk to. She volunteers at New Frontier, a venue on Main Street that houses exhibits and performances that experiment with traditional art, media and film making. She told us all about it and was explaining how often Joseph Gordon-Levitt was there for his hitRECord.org installation, and that actors had been stopping by to see him, like Parker Posey and James Franco. Meg and I had thought about trying to get into a screening of The Runaways that night but instead we ended up going to New Frontier and seeing Gordon-Levitt and the other film makers he's collaborating with explain their project. More on that later...
Jack Goes Boating was a funny, sad, touching film with great performances. It is Philip Seymour Hoffman's directorial debut and I think he did a great job. Following the film was a Q & A with Hoffman, Amy Ryan, John Ortiz and Daphne Rubin-Vega, the stars of the film. It was so neat to hear them speak about the film. After that we met one of Meg's friends for lunch. he lives in Salt Lake City but drove up to visit Meg while she's here! This was a nice little break from all the craziness of the festival, and we went to Red Rock, my favorite restaurant in Park City!
We went back to the apartment to take it easy for a bit but then we ended up taking the bus into town around 4pm with no real plan in mind except to explore Main Street and check out the venues to which our credentials allowed us access. On our travels up and down Main Street we saw Taryn Manning, Colin Hanks and Jason Ritter. I wanted to go talk to Jason Ritter but he was with people who he seemed to know and they were having a conversation so I didn't want to bother him, We actually saw him again later on but he was crossing the street, so we didn't get to say hello then either. We checked out New Frontier and saw Holly who explained once more what the venue is all about and gave us some info on the exhibits and panels. The exhibits were interesting and weird. There was one that was really cool called Cloud Mirror where you take one of these small panels that is on a string and put it around your neck, then type the number you find on the panel and your Facebook log in information into the provided computer and then go stand in front of a TV with a camera attached to it. Somehow things connect and you see yourself on the TV with little thought bubbles that have information from your Facebook profile in them!! I have no idea how this works but it's really cool! On the panel that you have around your neck you can see photos from your profile!
Other exhibits included something called Bordertown that had models of buildings that were about as tall as me and in the windows there were scenes from different films playing. Another exhibit was titled Post Global Warming Survival Kit and it was a room with no lights that had a tent in it with a screen that just showed an ocean and you wore night vision goggles to see. And yet another had a screen spanning the entire length of three walls with a really weird film playing on a loop. There were these pads, or mattresses I guess, on the ground where you would lie down to watch the film. This was called Lobe of Lung and the idea was to lounge inside the film. And as I said before hitRECord.org was set up down there so we got a glimpse of that as well. Joseph Gordon-Levitt was down there at one point while we were looking around but then we didn't see him again after that. We did see his brother, Dan, however, who looks exactly like him except he has dreads.
After we had explored all of the exhibits we decided to get a drink at The No Name Saloon. It was really packed and after ordering our drinks we finally got a table when these 2 older couples from Arkansas came over and offered to buy all of our drinks if we let them share our table. We told them that they could share our table but they didn't have to worry about our drinks. They were really fun and in the end not only did they end up buying us some drinks, they also bought us mozzarella sticks! Yum! We had to leave them after a little while though so that we could go BACK to New Frontier to see the hitRECord.org presentation. This was actually really cool!
They explained the whole idea behind the website which I will attempt to sum up... anyone can join and post things like videos, recordings, text, music, anything and you give everyone else the right to do anything with what you have submitted. And if at some point something you contributed to makes money, you get paid. I am not explaining it right so just go to the website and sign up to get the idea. There were maybe 30 people in the audience and we all got to participate in a few collaborations. They are making a film called Morgan M. Morganson's Date with Destiny and they needed some sound bites for a restaurant scene so they recorded the audience. They also filmed us all standing around Gordon-Levitt as he acted out a scene for a video they are putting together to accompany a song that Sean Lennon wrote for them called Nebulullaby. Pretty cool stuff! At the end of the presentation one of the film makers, Tori, came up to me and asked if she could film my earrings! I was wearing big red circular earrings and their logo is a big red circle, like a recording sign. I obviously said yes and then she wanted to interview me so we did that too. I don't even remember what I said- probably something dumb. But they are making a documentary about the whole Sundance experience so maybe I'll show up on there. I'm going to try and make the screening of it tomorrow night. After the interview I panicked because I didn't know how to sign up on the website so I just grabbed Joseph Gordon-Levitt and asked him. When I told him about Tori interviewing me he said "Yeah those are cool earrings" Haha, isn't that great?! I was stoked! Lame I know, but you'd be excited too!!!
We still had some time to kill before our midnight screening of Frozen so we headed to Java Cow, a cafe down the street, for some refreshments. There we ran into a couple of guys who I had met a few days earlier when they came into J. Crew. They work for an entertainment show in Toronto, Canada and they are here covering the festival. They are really nice so we chatted for a while before they had to go do press coverage of Frozen. We actually hung out with them for a little while as they waited for the cast and crew to arrive but then Meg and I noticed that the line was getting long so we decided to hop in it to make sure we got good seats. We met some people in line and one of the girls had lived in Portsmouth! We chatted with them to pass the time but we were actually waiting in line for quite a while. We jokingly wondered if it might be for affect since the film is called Frozen, but we found out that someone who was working at the Egyptian had actually had a seizure and had to be taken away in an ambulance! This is just what someone told us so I don't know the whole story. The film was pretty awesome, but a little gruesome! The Q & A was great too! Adam Green, the director, was so energetic and funny and he told some great stories about the filming process. Adam Green is from Massachusetts and Frozen takes place at a fictional ski resort in New England but it was filmed at Snow Basin, right here in Utah. My friend Anna's husband did lighting for the film and I remember her telling me about it when he was working on it. I did get a photo with the cast that you can see on my Facebook! The guys, Shawn Ashmore and Kevin Zegers (who I have a little crush on) weren't really paying attention while I was trying to get the photo. I would have rather been between them than all the way on the end next to the girl, Emma Bell, but I wasn't going to press my luck!
The next day Meg and I had a film screening at the Temple Theater- a Jewish Temple up the road that they turn into a theater for the fest. You cannot park there so you have to take a shuttle and we had a little trouble figuring out where were supposed to park and which shuttle we were actually supposed to get on. Four buses and many helpful festival volunteers later we made it to the venue where we saw The Freebie following a short film called Young Love. The short, made by a young Australian director, was really funny. The Freebie was directed by Katie Aselton who has been to Sundance many times but this was her first time directing. The film was really cute and funny and it starred Aselton and Dax Shepard who was hilarious! We got a ton of info in the Q & A, and Aselton was full of energy and seemed really excited to be showing her film. She explained that there was no script, only a 6 page outline she had written and the film was completely ad-libbed! Shepard wasn't there but other cast members and her crew were in attendance.
That evening we saw Skateland at the Racquet Club theater- you guessed it, a gym that they turn into a theater! You'd never know it though, they do a really good job with these venues! Another first time director, Anthony Burns, headed up this film about a group of teens in 1983, good year, don't ya think? It had a Dazed and Confused feel to it. This was the premiere so no one had seen the film before then and the whole cast and crew was there, except for Ashley Green, who thanks to the Twilight saga, is the most famous person in the film. Adrian Brody was also there to check it out, as well as Christopher MacDonald, whose name I just had to look up because I only recognized him as Shooter McGavin from Happy Gilmore! The film was awesome and funny and I loved it. Afterwards everyone came up on stage for the Q & A and Burns, very attractive FYI, was all nervous to be talking in front of the audience. It was so cute! Then someone asked Shiloh Fernandez, also adorable, and the actor who played the lead, a question and he was all cute and nervous too! It was very endearing to witness! After the Q & A I went over to talk to Shiloh and he was so cool and sincere. He seemed genuinely grateful and flattered that I liked the film and his performance. I introduced myself and he told me it was nice to meet me and when I asked if I could grab a photo he was totally cool about it and even acted a little excited that I had asked. Right as I was giving Meg the camera he saw someone he knew and started talking to them so I thought he had forgotten about the picture but then he excused himself and came back over, put his arm around me and we got a great photo! This can also be seen on my Facebook. I asked him if it was his first time at Sundance and he told me that he had been here once before for a film called Red with Brian Cox. I said I'd check it out and he warned me that it's nothing like Skateland. I looked it up later and he's right! looks like it's about some kids who kill a guy's dog and the revenge he gets on them. Yikes! I'm not sure if I can handle that!!
Late Tuesday morning we saw our final film, Howl. Loved it!! It's about the trial against the man who published the poem Howl and also about Ginsberg. Some of the film is in color, some in black and white and some parts were animated. James Franco puts on an amazing performance as usual. Most of the dialogue is taken directly from recordings and the transcripts from the trial. The directors, Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman, were there to answer all of the questions about their wonderful film and even one of the actors, Todd Rotundi, who played Jack Kerouac, was there to talk about his role. No James Franco but oh well, I'll live.
That night Meg and I wandered Main Street one last time before she left. We went into the boutiques for some shopping and she bought some festival souvenirs to distribute back home. We lounged in the Lobe of Lung at New Frontier for nearly an hour and just talked, something we hadn't had all that much time to do with all the activities we had crammed into 6 days. We had a dinner reservation at The Purple Sage where my roommate, Kelly, works. The food was delicious and it was a nice ending to the trip.
I had a wonderful time at Sundance and I really hope to attend next year and every single year after that! I want to volunteer and who knows, maybe one of these days I'll work for the Sundance Institute and be a part of the programs that allow independent film makers' dreams to become realities. When an artist's vision become's a film we can all experience, everyone wins.
So that's it! Longest. Post. Ever. For those of you who made it this far, congratulations! The festival isn't over yet and I don't go back to work until Saturday. Someone gave me vouchers for 2 waitlist tickets which I'm going to attempt to use tomorrow. I'll let you all know how it goes!!
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