movies

During our time here, some of us ski, most watch films, and all schmooze. The most tragic condition at Sundance is being alone. It means you must be nobody.

I have been wandering around Park City for six days with a metal-and-hot-glue homunculus clinging to my backpack. Why? Because movie directors are supposed to be freaks.

Sundance Film Festival, Park City, UT, Sat., Jan. 18, 10 p.m.:The world premiere of Gridlock'd, Tupac Shakur's final film. It's just like every other screening at Sundance: I'm waiting in line to get in, subject to the whim of an arbitrary doorman.

I'm a filmmaker, but that doesn't help. You see, I'm an animator. (My film Shaft of Light is being screenedas part of Shorts Program V at Sundance.) And because I make short films (as opposed to features), I am not bustled through the crowd and past the doorman, but rather get to wait with the masses on the wrong side of the theater door.

Tonight, though, I get lucky. As a bald-faced publicity stunt, I carry around one of my actors -- an 18-inch-tall humanoid metal armature -- with his arm slung through a loop on my backpack. At this screening, as at all events here, if the right person likes you, all doors open. The doorman likes my armature, I get to watch the premiere of Gridlock'd -- and I don't even have to pay seven bucks.

The Sundance Film Festival is America's most prominent showcase of independent film. Directors, producers, actors, writers, distributors, critics, reporters, sponsors and a whole array of dignitaries and other hangers-on accumulate in Park City for 10 days (or three days, if you have to be in L.A. on Monday for a power meeting with Paramount, but I'll call you later this week. I promise.)

During our time here (Sundance '97 finished up on Sunday), some of us ski, most watch films, and all schmooze. The most tragic condition at Sundance is being alone. It means you must be nobody. Tim Roth was the only person I've seen who was walking alone and wasn't embarrassed about it (of course, he was fleeing the madding crowd out front of the Egyptian Theater, where his movie had just premiered).

The threat of the fatal disease of solitude causes everyone here to talk incessantly, and avoid silence at all costs. The trick is to be seen talking to important people, so that other people will think that you must be important, and therefore they will come try to talk to you.

At Sundance's opening night screening, I accidentally sat down in what turned out to be the row reserved for the Sundance board of directors. In due course, Sally Field came and sat down next to me. After a few minutes, when she had dispensed with the obligatory greetings pushed on her by just about everyone within three rows, she turned to me.

"Hello. I'm Sally."

"Hello. I'm Bill. Nice to meet you," I replied, and we chatted about the film we were about to see.

Now, it's not every day that a major film star introduces herself to a thoroughly un-famous, 24-year-old, just-recently-ex-student like me. I thought through the possible explanations:

1. She's an honest-to-goodness nice person.

2. She figured that a guy my age in the board-of-directors row must be somebody, or at least be closely related to somebody.

In her defense, Sally Field is a big enough star that she doesn't have to kiss up to anyone, board of directors or not. So I guess the answer is that she's just nice. All I know is that I didn't start the conversation.

So why do thousands of people congregate annually to engage in a ritual of schmoozing and being schmoozed, snubbing and being snubbed?

Because it can make your future. If Bob Redford takes a shine to a first-time filmmaker, suddenly that filmmaker finds a plush budget for his next film. Within an hour after my first screening, Bravo (one of the cable TV channels that has people prowling the back alleys of Park City around this time of year) had a handwritten note in my mailbox, asking me to call them to talk about "a possible deal." And if I see an actor I like, I'll remember him when I cast my next film.

So we all come to Sundance to see the best of the year's indy film, to meet the right people, and (since most filmmakers are attention-starved artsy types like myself) to experience the rare thrill of a packed audience watching a movie that you spent so much of your damn life on that it makes you want to throw up just thinking about it.

Here are a few day-to-day observations on this year's festival, accumulated by this Sundance novice amidst a blizzard of movie stars, freebies and promises, promises, promises.

It's the movies, stupid

This is why Sundance exists. I just saw the world premiere of Nowhere, a surreal, post-Generation-X teen flick by Gregg Araki. Sumptuous colors, exotically beautiful young actors and a soundtrack as far as I can imagine from the tunes playing in the basement Country & Western bar where I now sit with my Hugo Boss note pad. (I have all sorts of stuff from sponsors and over-eager publicity people.)

There seem to be two kinds of movies here: dramatic/compelling and innovative/exotic. (Well, three kinds, actually. Compelling, exotic and good-old-fashioned crap, although I suppose one could parse the crap into poor attempts at the first two.) Although I have seen films that made me laugh, cry, hope, blah, blah, blah (category one), I much prefer the crazy flair of films like Nowhere. The film moved blithely from a girl flirting with twin blonde Adonises named Surf and Ski to a buff, leather-clad cycle-rider beating a young punk's face in with a can of tomato soup.

It was all that, and a bag of chips.

Why are film directors such freaks?

As a budding director, I often feel the urge to act strange. I want to put my hair up in a topknot and walk around with mud smeared on my face, or call Information and ask them the molecular weight of NaCl. And, as I already mentioned, I have been wandering around Park City for six days with a metal-and-hot-glue homunculus clinging to my backpack.

Why? I guess because movie directors and actors are supposed to be freaks. An accountant who suddenly dyed his hair blue and shaved the word "TAX" in his beard would be avoided by his peers, but society provides a certain loophole for creatives. We're expected to be different, so we fulfill our role by acting up. When the 6 o'clock news displays the antics of some whiny film star, it encourages the very weirdness it seems to condemn.

(This rant inspired by a bit part played by Robert Downey, Jr. in the film Hugo Pool directed by Robert Downey, Sr. The younger Robert Downey plays a zany, egocentric director who has shot an extra for over-acting. "Thank god we're in L.A.," he says, or he'd never have gotten off.)

Cheap eats

So far I've paid for one meal in nine days. We live on hors d'oeuvres and free Absolut (one of the corporate sponsors). Starbucks has set up a free coffee stand in the Sundance Channel office, for those in the know, so I've had quite a few complimentary vanilla steamers (steamed milk with vanilla syrup). Very soothing.

Dinner tonight should be provided by the Kodak party. They'll have food and drink to court us into using Kodak film stock. I'm a confirmed Fuji-shooter, but I wouldn't want to hurt Kodak's feelings, now would I?

"So what do you do?"

These last few days have been the first time in my life that I've been scared of talking to a beautiful woman (of whom there are many) more because of who she probably is than simply because she is a beautiful woman. I'll be chatting with a friend and he'll point out someone across the room. At all other times in my life, said companion might say "Damn, she's hot!" Here my comrade offers "She's an agent." As if her perfect blondeness weren't intimidating enough...

I spend a lot of time talking to the hired help.

Hard cell

At the opening night party, a woman dissed a guy to take a call on her cell phone. Before every screening, there is a request by a staff member that audience members please turn off their cell phones. The Executive Business Center rents them for what I'm sure is an exorbitant amount. The expense pales, though, when you read of the films being picked up by distributors for $3 million because of deals made on cell phones. When I made the Bravo deal (yes, it's gone from "possible" to probable), I was on a pay phone -- but I'll bet the Bravo guy was on his cell phone.

Roger Ebert goes ballistic

I went to a panel discussion on the future of cyberspace, featuring William Gibson, Douglas Adams, John Perry Barlow and Paulina Borsook. About 20 minutes into it, the movie critic Roger Ebert, who was sitting about five seats from me, barked out that they were talking about things that had already happened and that we all already knew, and uttered a curt request that they start talking about the future of cyberspace as that was the title of the panel. To thunderous audience applause, the panelists shifted their discussion to the future.

But then a few people in the crowd felt it was their right to bark out commands, too. The panel turned into an inane Q & A. Most of the audience was annoyed by the nobodies putting in their two cents. I sat and tried to figure out why Roger Ebert is applauded for chiming in, but anyone else is shut down.

Best quote: "We will all be immigrants in a land where our children will be natives -- cyberspace."--John Parry Barlow

Runner-up: "We don't know who discovered water, but we're pretty sure it wasn't a fish."--William Gibsonquoting unknown.

Sun, Slam, Slum

Sundance is a terribly exclusive film festival. So, three years ago, a bunch of directors whose films were refused by Sundance started their own festival, which takes place in Park City at the same time. They consider themselves the alternative to the alternative (since Sundance was set up to be the independent alternative to Hollywood studio filmmaking) -- and now their festival has become nearly as hard to crack as Sundance.

Not to be outdone, a group of filmmakers who didn't feel they belonged with Sundance or Slamdance started their own gig: Slumdance. About a month before the other two festivals were to begin, Slumdance put up a Website and started collecting films for an impromptu bunch of screenings and parties to take place in an as-yet-to-be-determined location in Park City. After a couple of weeks, they secured an abandoned Mrs. Field's Cookie Factory on Main Street, right in the middle of everything. They bought out a thrift store in Salt Lake City and created the "Slum," a hodgepodge of tents, potato chips and videocassettes in their new home. They welcome everyone with free soup and no stress.

So will there be an alternative to the alternative to the alternative to the alternative next year?

Slimchance.

Who wins?

Well, Shaft of Light didn't win any awards. A film called Man About Town by Kris Isacsson and Matt Gunn took best short film. (Some consolation, though -- actress Sandra Bullock, whose directorial debut was also featured in the short film competition, didn't win anything either.)

But with all the prizes flying about in Park City (Sundance has prizes, Slamdance has prizes, even Slumdance has prizes -- including one called the Golden Rat), who really wins? I suppose it depends on what game you're playing.

Some wins are concrete, others ephemeral. A few directors leave here with lump sums in their pockets. Actors leave with roles in new films. But everyone scored something; a phone number of an agent, a promise that a producer will read your script, a set of contracts that "will be faxed to you on Monday." These might be the most important thing to happen in a young artist's life, but more than likely they will wash out. You make 10 best friends at the festival for each follow-up call that will be returned. People rave about your film, and then won't say hi when you pass them in the street. Some people in the industry are just plain mean, and probably enjoy the opportunity to destroy the enthusiasm of us neophytes, but most people here are just looking out for their own interests as best they can. What more can you expect?

So we'll all go back to L.A., New York, Paris, Rome, Philadelphia, Kansas and Japan, and see if anything actually pans out. Maybe I'll be the big discovery of Sundance 1997. Or, more likely, the last 10 days will be just a step in the right direction for my career as a filmmaker. A thousand more steps just like it, and then I'll be somebody, too. Doormen will recognize me, and I'll be invited to all the parties. Until then, I remain a 24-year-old animator, waiting in line in the snow, with a little metal figure hanging from my back.

This just in: the Bravo contract I'd been promised by Monday has still not arrived. Maybe I should stop holding my breath.