flashing lights: pt. 2

When we last left off at the epic madness that was Sundance, our heroes were sitting front row at the premiere of Tom Kalin's "Savage Grace." We pick up from there...

SUNDAY JANUARY 20
10:50PM The lights come up in the cramped theater and it's clear the audience is not sure how to digest this silly, poorly constructed film. The tone was caught somewhere in between uncertain incompetence and a campy Joan Crawford movie. Julianne Moore is sensational in most things, but even she can't save the sinking ship of a movie in which she has to utter lines such as, "He likes to fuck you in the ass!", after she catches her husband running away with his mistress or "You're the best.", after she and her sexually confused son make whoopee at their tony London home. I wasn't bothered by the sex or the nature of their relationship (see "Ma Mere" and see it done better), but it felt too hollow and not sure of how to expertly handle the balance between human pyschodrama and '40s weepie. Sadly Julianne Moore was not there for the Q&A, which would have made up for this mess of a movie. The young actor, Eddie Redmayne, who plays her son looks like a freckle covered Abercrombie & Fitch model (he is in the new Burberry campaign) answered questions plainly and at times with a stammer as if he was trying to convince us it was a good movie. Convince he did not.

11:45PM Scour downtown Salt Lake for a convenient store so Stephanie can get something to feel better. As if we didn't already feel like we were on another planet, we drove for what felt like an eternity in the ghost town of downtown Salt Lake until we finally happened upon a gas station. She got a Sprite and Fiddle Faddle and I got Pringles. We were on vacations, so it makes complete sense.

12:36AM Stephanie and I pass out while watching "Janice Dickinson Modeling Agency." Don't hate. It's kind of fun to watch pretty people get yelled at by the plastic surgery monster that is "America's first supermodel." Hopefully this will cure Stephanie's illness.

MONDAY JANUARY 21
9:31AM Open my eyes to the blinding reflection of the snow outside. I wipe the sleep out of my eyes and open the window to a foot of snow that fell while we were asleep. OMG!!!!

10:28AM The rental car is swamped in a big snow bank that we physically dig out with her feet and a small ice scraper. What a cold mess.

11:16AM After a delicious quick lunch at a local cafe we head to Park City and realize Salt Lake City does not shut down after such a massive snow fall, unlike Louisville that when it sees two inches of snow you would think we're on Orange alert.

1:07PM New strategy for the day: Pick a movie we want to see but stand in line for the film or two before it so our chances are greater to get in. Our college degrees are being put to some use.

2:18PM We get our wait list numbers for Mark Pellington's "Henry Poole is Here" and decide to go to the Main St. area to gawk at celebrities.

2:20PM The great thing about Sundance is the immediate reaction the audience has to a film, good or bad. While innocently sitting on the shuttle bus carting us to Main St., some guy in a skull cap and leather bomber jacket jumps on board and shouts to everyone on the bus, "DID ANYONE JUST SEE 'BALLAST'?". The bus is silent and puzzled. "OH MY GOD THAT MOVIE WAS HORRIBLE! IT WAS SO SLOW!!!!" He continues, "I MISSED MY FLIGHT FOR THAT MOVIE! I CAN'T BELIEVE SOMEONE CONVINCED ME TO STAY!!!" Someone finally obliges him and inquires why he chose to see it. He reiterates a friend told him to see and then proceeded to explain the entire movie to the passengers on the bus with total disgust. We got off at Main St. and that guy pays dearly for missing his flight.

2:37PM My lips were expressly dry for the entire trip. I noticed a skin care place that also carried Khiel's, which I need to reup on the face wash as I ran out that morning. While paying for my overpriced, but never underused, face wash and lip balm, an intense conversation about skin care begins between the sales girl, Stephanie, and myself. They talk a lot about methods of exfoliatation, but I'm too enamored with my new lip balm to offer input. I comment on the the Evan Spray Mist and how my lovely friend Bitch, Please swears by it to which she replies with a very funny story about how her and a male friend were driving up and down Main St. in an ice cream truck over the the summer during a music festival spraying anybody and everybody. You meet the darndest people in this city.

2:40PM Our immersion in skin care has caused us to lose track of time and we must be back to the theater at 2:45 to get a ticket. That of course is not going to happen but I assure Stephanie that there were plenty of tardy people at other screenings, I see no reason why we would be turned away. As I'm commenting on how little I paid for the face was as opposed to what I pay for it in Louisville I see a throng of people spilling out of some sponsored lounge. I can't quite tell what is going on. In one swift move a tall paparazzi shoves me to the side where I fall into the side of a pick up truck, to notice about thirty or so paparazzi trailing Matthew Perry. Yes, I said Chanandler Bong. He had film at the festival and looks relatively healthy, albeit totally annoyed at the attention.

2:59PM The line is long and not looking like we have a chance to get in. We were also put at the end of the line for the late people. Dammit.

3:11PM The waiting line is never without its own drama. A rather disgruntled man in front of us is going off about how ridiculous it is to get a wait list number and if you are not back a half an hour before the movie starts, like the rules state, than you have to get in a separate line behind the wait list line. I agree but at Sundance you have to play by the rules, and this man was not having any of it. He switched lines and was asked to get back in his other line. When the announcement is made that they would not be admitting any more people the man throws his number on the ground and storms out of the tent. Bad for him, good for us. When they don't allow anyone else in, the next line starts for the next movie. We got in a new line where our numbers were in the teens, which all but guaranteed us entrance to the next movie.

5:45PM After a quick lunch and another attempt at stargazing, we head back to the Eccles Theater just in time to get in line for the premiere of Terry Kinney's "Diminished Capacity." The Sundance line wrangles begin calling people in and you better believe we got in with plenty of time to scope out the best seats and brace ourselves for the true Sundance experience.

6:12PM The anticipation was building in the massive theater (pictured above). I chose to sit in the middle and toward the back (my general preference in theaters) where we plopped down with relief and excitement. Around this time camera flashes are going off a mile a minute and about fifteen rows ahead of us the film's star Matthew Broderick and his wife, Sarah Jessica Parker, duck into the theater and take their seats. Alan Alda and Virgina Madsen follow, also stars of the film. They are as short as you would expect them to be and for a festival more about the art than the glitz, they looked appropriate but casually put together. The lights go down and the movie begins.

7:55PM I suppose with any movie it's always a crapshoot as to whether it's going to be good or not and at film festival it's especially difficult to pick the movies that will last in the end, and this was a case of a movie not being bad, nor was it very good. "Diminished Capacity" follows these very vanilla movies about dysfunctional, but charmingly eccentric families that are thrown on an uncomfortable but triumphant road trip and along the way we laugh at their predicaments and hope that all will end well. It does here (which is not ruining anything), but what disappoints the most is how these actors who are usually so watchable either chew every scene they have like a cow munching on grass or sleepwalk to collect their indie cred and paychecks. I think last year was a very strong year in American cinema, but it was the studio releases or the films with sizable budgets that stood out. Where are the American filmmakers who really have something to say? An true independence voice (take that for whatever you want it to mean) is in serious need of resuscitation if this festival ever wants to call itself the preeminent independent film festival in the country. The cast was warm and funny at the Q&A, but just like that they were gone and in a way the Sundance experience was ending as well. We attended the after party for the documentary on water scarcity and privatization that our boss Gill produced. The beer was free and the people were nice but what an exhausting day it had been. Skin care, paparazzi, short famous people--it was quite the dizzying cocktail.

TUESDAY JANUARY 22
10:37AM Woke up just in time for the Oscar nominations. Jason Reitman getting best director, really? "Diving Bell" not getting best picture, really? A technicality preventing Johnny Greenwood from getting a nomination, really? Kathy Bates having nothing better to do on a Tuesday morning, really? Okay, I can believe that one, but more importantly it's a clear showdown between the bad boys and the badder boys. Will it be "There Will Be Blood" or "No Country for Old Men"? I get excited just thinking about it.

12:15PM Our flight is at 2, so after lunch a quick trip to Urban Outfitters was needed followed by the discovery of Forever 21 Man. I've only read about this, never seen in it person. It's as crowded and overwhelming as the women's store, and just as cheap in price and quality, but I see striped sweaters and military inspired jackets and I cannot resist. I make it out alive with a very French-looking striped sweater fit for Albert Finney at the beach in Stanley Donen's "Two for the Road" (that movie keeps coming up again and again for all things style related).

1:04PM I hate waiting for a flight. You're in a small seating area trying not make eye contact with anyone as everyone reads their gossip magazines and munches on the candy they purchased at the nearby magazine shop. Things took a turn for the worst at this point. Stephanie was not feeling well and I received about ten text messages informing me that Heath Ledger had died. I wasn't sure how to handle either situation, so I hoped that my traveling partner would get well soon and the news was untrue. A quick phone call before the flight departed and it was true, Heath Ledger was found dead in his New York apartment by his masseuse. He seemed to be really coming into his stride with films such as "Brokeback Mountain", "I'm Not There", and his last role as The Joker in the upcoming Batman movie. What a terrible loss and Stephanie wasn't doing much better.

6:19PM The plane ride was not an easy one. Stephanie felt terrible the entire time and the turbulence in the last hour stirred up my stomach and made me feel nauseous. We arrive in Nashville where similar to Louisville, the air is dense and dirty but refreshing and not 7,000 feet above sea level. I'm glad to be back home.

The rest of the story is full of bowel movements, vomiting, serious re-hydration, and me taking a Greyhound to get home, but that's of no importance when I think back about my Sundance experience. It was cold, exhausting, and not at all what I expected, which is the charm and allure of Sundance. A weekend of complete privilege and luck, I can't think of any other moment in my life in which my love for film, celebrity obsession, and all things that are wrong and right with those worlds, have collided and given me such an intense feeling of elation and enrichment.