It's a measure of how successful the Sundance film festival has become that even my mom has heard of it. "When are you going to get to go to Sundance?" she'll ask at family dinners, and through a mouthful of potato casserole I'll mumble something about how I wouldn't want to go anyway because I've heard it's too cold, too crowded, the air's too thin, the movies are weak and it's all about celeb-watching now, not cinema. But I'm lying to her, naturally. Yes, I want to go to Sundance. What movie buff wouldn't? To be one of the first people to see something like sex, lies and videotape, Reservoir Dogs, You Can Count On Me, The Squid And The Whale or Once? C'mon. That's worth any case of the sniffles.
This year will be my first trip to the 'Dance–in fact I'm posting this from Park City, less than 24 hours before the first screening–and given how strong the programs have been over the last few years, I'm pretty excited. There are some films on this year's schedule that look pretty intriguing, including Sugar, a baseball drama from the creators of Half Nelson, and Man On Wire, a documentary about a man who once walked between the World Trade Center buildings on a tightrope. Just a month into the year, and I'll likely have seen some of 2008's most significant films, not to mention getting a nice week's vacation barely a fortnight after cleaning up Christmas. The only possible stumbling block is the heavy weight of expectation.
Of course I'm no festival virgin. I grew up in Nashville, former home to Sinking Creek, the kind of low-key regional fest that Sundance used to be, full of 35-minute 8mm documentaries about hard-luck Appalachian folk artists. And shortly after college, I trailed my future wife up to Charlottesville, VA, where each October the Virginia Film Festival combined (and still does) vintage Hollywood classics, odd new experimental films and premieres of late-fall awards-bait. After we got married and moved to Arkansas, I started driving one state over in March to check out Austin's SXSW film festival, the bastard child of its better-known music fest, and a good place to see some of the high-profile films that were a hit at Sundance but didn't get accepted at Cannes. And since 2002 I've been a regular in Toronto, the festival of festivals, where the best of Cannes and Sundance share space with the first wave of Oscar candidates and the superstars of world cinema.
So I consider myself something of a fest-vet, and I look forward to seeing how Sundance stacks up to the competition, in terms of organization, programming, and between-fest cuisine. I doubt I'm going to eat anything as satisfying as the street vendor hot dogs and Asian noodle bowls I pound down on the fly in Toronto. But here's what I do expect:
1. Temperatures as cold as the teats of the chilliest witch. I packed long-johns and thick socks and every handmade scarf my wife has ever knitted. I'm a southern boy, and I don't function so well amid the icy. However I did snip the right index fingertip off my gloves, so that I can operate my iPod Touch.
2. Celebs. I know I'm supposed to be a jaded entertainment journalist who's no longer impressed by celebrities but OH MY GOD THAT'S MICHAEL KEATON! HEY BATMAN, OVER HERE! True, stars are people just like me, which is something I discovered years ago when I saw Kevin Kline and Phoebe Cates looking decidedly downmarket in shorts and T-shirts as they pushed a baby stroller through the High Museum in Atlanta. I felt bad for gawking at them, but for a moment I thought they were one of the exhibits. (Canvas covered in red squares…sculpture made out of coiled rope…performance art installation featuring the stars of The January Man and Drop Dead Fred…yep, that's art!) Yet since most of my daily life consists of sitting on my couch, tapping away on my laptop while watching Unwrapped marathons on Food Network, it gives me something interesting to tell my friends when that day is broken up by, say, a phone call from Nicole Kidman or Ben Affleck. So when I get muscled aside on the street by entourages, I want them to be the entourages of name actors. Peter Sarsgaard doesn't count.
3. Jaded critics. I see these at every festival, actually. Most of them are my friends. Sundance could screen The Magnificent Ambersons with the long-lost ending restored and after it was over I'd run into colleagues on the street who'd say, "I can't imagine anyone thinking that was great. What? You liked it?"
4. Atonal guitar-based soundtracks. Don't independent filmmakers know any decent local bands that'll work cheap? Why does nearly every low-budget American drama (or comedy, or dramedy) feature the same spare score of acoustic guitar plucking overlaid with electric guitar drone? Can the drummer get some, y'all?
5. Awful, awful movies. This is not a knock on Sundance, which has a higher hit-to-miss ratio than most film festivals, but let's face it: There aren't that many masterpieces to go around in a year. Inevitably, some percentage of every fest's program is going to be taken up by well-meaning-but-artless advocacy docs, inert foreign films that use long static takes to demonstrate "formal mastery," and dreary Amerindies about alcoholic college professors looking for second chances back in their tiny hometowns (set to atonal guitar-based soundtracks, natch).
Actually, my biggest anxiety going into my first Sundance is that I'm going to miss something major and as-yet-undiscovered. What will be this year's Iraq In Fragments or Mysterious Skin or The Devil And Daniel Johnston? What's the movie that no one's heard of yet that everyone will be talking about next week? And will I be playing it safe and watching Be Kind Rewind while it unspools?
Because unlike the Toronto festival–which primarily gives attendees a chance to confirm the known–Sundance's slate is mostly uncharted. One of the best films of 2008 is waiting for me, behind door number 1, 2 or 3. Behind the other two doors? Toxic gas.
Hey, at least it'll keep me warm.
Tomorrow: Opening Night! Plus whatever screeners I can scrounge.