Park City Film and Festivities:

Sundance / Slamdance 2002

byj

Colleen O'Mara Diamond

Staying until the end of Sundance, however, is like staying until the end of a rager. The music stops; the lights go on. And you don't look so good. You also begin to make steadfast rules like:

1) That girl gets in the shower first next time;
2) If a boy ends up crashing in your all-girl pad, he can stay only one night;
3) No photographs are to be taken the last two days of the event, and, most importantly;
4) Park City boys will remain soul mates only in your mind!

Besides the "Park City Rule Book," you also come home from Utah with alternate personas like "Tammy Tonic," given to our friend Leigh by "Ted the Bartender."
Last year, after my return from Park City, my uncle greeted me with: "So you're back, "Party Girl." My serious and unashamed reply: "Well, when you're drinking seven vodka tonics a day and it doesn't worry you, it's definitely time to come home." His response: a silent raised eyebrow.

For Sundance 2002, the film festival's 20th anniversary, we decided to start fresh and from the beginning:

We arrived on Friday, the second day of the festival, and checked into the quaint Copper Bottom Inn. (Now, when said quickly, or after several cocktails, the name of our condo-complex-of-choice can be misinterpreted as a come-on. So, no, you can touch neither our top nor our bottom.) The Copper Bottom is home to Chez Betty, one of the best restaurants in Park City. Tuxedo-wearing maitre d's deliver room service—avec silver and china. We like that. We also like The Happy Sumo, The Irish Camel, Kampai, and Zoom.

With just four days to our visit (2001 was nine days—way, way, way too long) we started out to see the sights. Our trek up Main Street found a subdued 2002. It was true September 11 had lowered the attendance rate due to Americans still afraid to travel combined with the upcoming Olympics, which had moved the Sundance Festival up by two weeks.

Sundance took center stage on Main Street, while Slamdance, the very first alternative festival (of now, quite a few), was held at the Silver Mine location (a great place for a party, but not a great locale for screenings). Makes you wonder if cold hard cash passed from S. Sr. to S. Jr. to get the rowdy kid out of the living room and back upstairs.

The Slamdance opening night party was initially likened to a sadly attended school dance, but by midnight the familiar pushy crowds were there. Again, lots of black, but the New York kind, and not very many smiles. That's how you knew you were at Slamdance. But then there was Ted, our very own bartender. We had scoped him out at the upstairs bar where he anointed Tammy Tonic, and filled our plastic cups all night with vodka and rank cranberry juice. Oh, what twenty bucks can do! Of course, much to the bitter dismay of a thousand twenty-year-old indies.

Listen up, kids. Arrive early. Pay off the bartender. Tips are it for the Teds of this world.

2 a.m. found us down the Silver Mine hill waiting for our favorite 1.435.649.TAXI. Next year, be sure to bring your cel so you don't end up waiting at a shuttle stop. Pick a cab company of choice, and by the end of your stay you will have made friends. And remember, you won't see those roaming charges until February.

The next morning, we awoke at what we like to term "Dark 30."
(That's what you call it when you are sleeping, but your freelance production partner has an early call for a commercial shoot. It is dark. Alarms are ringing. Lights are clicking on. Don't even think you will be getting back to sleep.) Our Saturday "Dark 30" was for a far better cause: Sundance tickets.

We hopped on the bus down to the Gateway Center off of Main. Did I mention Park City buses are free and the Copper Bottom is centrally located? We arrived at 7:30 am and made it up to the front desk by 9:30 am. We love movies. That's all that can be said. We were helped by a friendly woman, unfortunately named BJ, who had pink lipstick on her teeth. None of us had the courage to tell her. We just took the tickets we could get and returned to our hotel to freshen up.

The screenings we took in during our weekend 'o Sundance 02:

"The September 11 Program" with two features and three shorts. The first feature, a documentary by Deborah Shaffer, follows ten artists living in the targeted part of lower Manhattan. The film explores what happened to each of them during the attack and in the aftermath. One of the shorts, The First 24 Hours is exactly that, the first twenty-four hours in Ground Zero after the airplanes hit the towers. The silence is the most overwhelming and haunting element to the film. I actually paused just before we went into that screening because I thought, being a news junkie, I had seen everything that was out there about September 11. In the hands of artists and documentarians, however, the horror stories recounted are far different and incredibly moving.

We screened the "Shorts Program 1," which included Golden Gate (Palace II) by Directors Fernando Meirelles and Katia Lund. The film follows two boys in the Rio de Janeiro slums as they are sucked into working for the local drug dealer. Casablanca, by Mike Saenz, was a return to film school shorts. (Mike, dream sequences are not allowed!) Director John Krokidas was inspired to write Slo-Mo after he was dumped. The film's main character, Alex, after being left by his publishing house girlfriend, has slowed down to a turtle's pace and is out of step and time with the New York world around him—definitely a highlight in the program.

Sunday we screened 2 + 2, a short experimental film by director Benita Raphan and director/editor Clayton Hemmert about mathematician John Nash, the subject of Ron Howard's A Beautiful Mind. Accurately described by Hemmert as "a visual bridge between Nash's work and his schizophrenia," the short's narration is an aural weaving of experts on Nash discussing his contributions and the importance of each. 2 + 2 led into the documentary Derrida, by directors Kirby Dick and Amy Ziering Kofman, which profiles Jacque Derrida, the father of Deconstruction. A difficult and resistant subject, the film does to Jacque Derrida (surprisingly called "Jackie" by his loved ones) what he does in his work. It deconstructs the philosopher by studying his day-to-day moments and movements, much to his chagrin and at times, obvious irritation. The humorous highlight of the film is Derrida interviewed by a TV host. She queries him about the parallel between his work and the popular sitcom Seinfeld. An awkward silence follows. Philosophers don't watch television, didn't she know that?

Films we did not see, but had that very valuable Sundance buzz:

The Good Girl by director Miguel Arteta, starring Jennifer Aniston; Personal Velocity by director Rebecca Miller (daughter of playwright Arthur); XX/XY by director Austin Chick and starring Mark Ruffalo (You Can Count On Me); How to Draw a Bunny by director John Walter about artist and antic surrealist Ray Johnson; and last but not least, director John Malkovich's The Dancer Upstairs about an investigator (Javier Bardem) tracking down a mysterious and mythic revolutionary leader.

How could I forget the Project Greenlight film, Stolen Summer, by Director Pete Jones—produced by Ben Affleck, Matt Damon, Chris Moore, and Miramax. This film received the Sundance 2002 Buzz Prize, since the making of the film was the focus of the Project Greenlight series on HBO. Now, I love my HBO: Sex and the City, The Sopranos, Six Feet Under. Aside from not starting with an S, Project Greenlight is Matt Damon-and-Ben Affleck-Meet-Reality-Programming. The same friends that love Survivor are watching it, but I'm afraid I cannot. Besides not going along with the crowd, I just can't be riveted by a whiny, inexperienced director insisting upon the "Integrity of His Creative Vision." If I want to see that, I just need to go to work.

Big award winners for the Sundance 2002 Film Festival included:

Documentary Grand Jury Prize: Daughter from Danang directed by Gail Dolgin and Vicente Franco
Dramatic Grand Jury Prize: Personal Velocity
Documentary Audience Award: Amandla! A Revolution in Four Part Harmony directed by Lee Hirsch
Dramatic Audience Award: Real Women Have Curves directed by Patricia Cardoso
World Cinema Audience Award: Bloody Sunday directed by Paul Greengrass and The Last Kiss directed by Gabriele Muccino

All in all, Sundance 2002 was a great trip for our Girl Klatch. Besides taking in the screenings noted above, we mixed and mingled with inexperienced indies and veterans alike. In an industry based on relationships—we don't discriminate.