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Sundance Fever

Posted by Sean Blake on January 23, 2009 at 1:18 p.m.

Sundance Part Deux Day 8

Today we get up early to get in line for a special event at the Music Cafe. Political activist and historian Howard Zinn is here to present readings from his book, “A People’s History of the United States.” It’s a collection of letters, and other documents from the view of the oppressed. Here to read selections from the book are several big name actors, including Benjamin Bratt, Marisa Tomei, Woody Harrelson and Robert Redford.

The Music Cafe is a venue that only holds about 200 people. My girlfriend, Lori, and I are the third and forth people in line — since we arrived two hours before seating was to begin. We start chatting with numbers 1 and 2 in the line, Tim and Susan. Susan has brought two of Zinn’s books, in the hopes she might have an opportunity to have them signed. Tim was hoping to save a spot for his wife, who he calls Little Miss Sundance, since she has become such a fan of the festival.

For the first hour or so there are only about 50 people in line behind us. We are near the door, and able to see many of the stars as they arrive. Zinn arrived while I was away at the nearby Brita Hydration Station filling up our water bottles for the long wait, but I saw the arrival of Bratt and Harrelson. We see members of the press being allowed in, and many people trying to finagle their way in.

“I’m with Karen — she’s the coordinator for such and such, and said she could get me in.”

“Sorry, your name isn’t on the list.”

Some succeed in making their way in; some are turned to the back of the line. Making only the roughest of guesses we estimate maybe 60 or so people have been let in before any of the people who have been waiting in the cold drizzle outside. There are maybe 200 people behind us at this point. Tim’s wife shows up, and though she can’t get to the head of the line now without causing some sort of riot, she happily takes a picture of the four of us, Tim, Susan, Lori and me – each holding up our respective numbers in line: 1, 2, 3, and 4.

Overhearing the communications of festival staff working the door, we find out that 120 “invited guests” have already been seated. More VIPs arrive at the door. Tim asks the man working the door if it’s possible that “real people” who have been in line for hours might not get seated because of all the VIPs. The guy said, there is no seating left — it will be standing room only. Behind us now are more than 400 people waiting for a chance to get in. Tim tells the doorman – he thinks Zinn wouldn’t like that only those with connections to the money and the power would be the only ones to hear the reading. The doorman agreed and said that he wasn’t happy about the situation — with the rules being bent and changed repeatedly.

About a half hour after the doors were supposed to open, they finally let 20 people from the line get in. We end up uncomfortably sandwiched between some tables and the sound and video equipment in the middle of the room. The reading is being filmed for a documentary. A woman gets on stage to welcome everyone to the reading – and makes the mistake of asking how everyone is feeling. A voice from one of the common folk shouts back, “(Expletive) pissed off!!!”

The remark is pretty well ignored, and I don’t think it will make it into the documentary.

The reading begins — sometimes we are able to sneak a glance of the stage when a camera operator’s arm moves out of the way. Mostly, though, we are resigned to watching the performance on a large flat screen monitor that is placed in such a way that it does a good job of blocking our view of the actual performance.

After the 4th or 5th reading we have been standing for between three and four hours and our legs are practically begging us to leave and find someplace to sit. Since we’re mostly seeing it on a TV anyway, we make our way to the exit.

It’s our last day at the festival — and by the evening, the crowds have thinned out even more. A bartender tells us that sales on Main Street are down by almost half compared to last year. While we are making our way to our final night at the Film Maker Lodge, a man tells us about a party around the corner — open bar and no invitation required. We also pass another open party. It would seem businesses that stocked up for numbers like last year’s festival are now giving away inventory just to avoid storage costs after the fest. At the Film Maker Lodge we get to chat with the director of one of the most popular films at the festival “Adam” — it was on my list to be seen, but we didn’t manage to get tickets. Luckily, the film was picked up by Fox Searchlight and will likely be in theaters within the next year.

Sundance will continue through the weekend, with an awards ceremony on Sunday night. There were a few films we wanted to see that we didn’t quite make it to, but managed to find something memorable to do every day we were at the festival. We learned many lessons during the festival that we hope put to good use when we return.

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Posted by Sean Blake on January 22, 2009 at 4:42 p.m.

Sundance Part Deux Day 7

First thing this morning I went to Sundance’s Salt Lake City Box Office to try exchanging tickets for a different show time for a movie called “Arlen Faber” because the tickets we had for the next day conflicted with another event we wanted to attend. Unfortunately the other screening was sold out, and after our previous experience not quite getting in with the wait-list, we decided we’d rather go for a sure thing.

Tickets were available to a movie called “Endgame” a political thriller about the end of Apartheid in South Africa. It was showing in a theater in Ogden, which is about 45 minutes away from Salt Lake City — making it a solid hour and a half away from Park City. The shows there often don’t sell out because of the distance. I’d never been to Ogden, so I thought it would also be interesting to see a different festival venue.

We had some time to kill before heading out, so we decided to go to the Sundance Cafe, which was within walking distance of the hotel. The Cafe is actually The Beehive Tea Room, a classy little coffee and tea shop, with several rooms of Victorian era furniture and décor. The festival catalog explains that it was decorated by a Hollywood set designer. We ordered a pot of tea and scones, and enjoyed the quiet atmosphere. After we walked back to the hotel it was time to grab some food and head out to Ogden.

On the way there, we speculated about Ogden. Why would they use a venue so far from the main part of the festival? Was Ogden perhaps another resort town like Park City? When we finally go there it became clear that was not the case. Where we arrived was actually a pretty run down part of the city, lots of empty buildings and boarded up windows. As the GPS reported that we were getting close, I got a little nervous, thinking, “Do I really want to park my car around here?” But in the last couple of blocks of the drive we hit the revitalized part of the downtown area. A huge, state-of-the-art cinema with LCD displays around the outside of the building along with an equally advanced-looking sports venue weren’t far off. The theater we were heading for wasn’t in the high-tech multiplex we saw, but just down the road. This was Ogden’s Egyptian Theater. The outside was impressive enough, but as we entered the lobby, I thought, “If nothing else, it was worth coming to see the building itself.”

As we approached the auditorium of the theater, I noticed organ music playing … we stepped into the auditorium and my breath was absolutely taken away. I have a special place in my heart for old theaters. The Augusta Theatre in my own hometown was a huge part of influencing me to get into filmmaking as a career. But the live organ music playing some classics of the silent film genre, including some of Charlie Chaplin’s own compositions, left me in complete awe. I would guess that the theater was built during the 1920s but has obviously been well taken care of and restored. One day I hope to have my own film play here. Then the movie started.

“Endgame” stars Chiwetel Ejiofor, Johnny Lee Miller and William Hurt. None of the actors were in attendance, most of whom we had run across downtown over the last few days, but the director was on hand to introduce the movie. The movie felt a lot like “Syriana.” The musical underscore was extremely similar to that film and the shaky camera work and jump-cut filled editing seemed copied almost directly. This movie however really lacked the rhythm and I suppose what you might call “the poetry” of “Syriana.” They got the words right but not the music. What they ended up with is a movie that is basically a bunch of guys sitting around a table talking — interrupted by an occasional car chase or explosion. I think the film made a mistake in trying to portray Nelson Mandela. Because of his imprisonment, his interaction with the other characters is limited, and because of our familiarity with him, the actor playing the part has a real challenge in making us forget that he doesn’t much resemble the man. Another challenge is the South African accents. Most of the actors pull this off well enough — but William Hurt’s accent, which may be accurate, is at times almost impossible to understand. A good 30 percent of what he said was lost to me.

Part of the Sundance experience for a budding filmmaker is to encounter films that don’t meet your expectations. In an odd way, it is encouraging — because if you’re crazy enough to be in this business, you’re also crazy enough to believe you could do better. And surely if your film is better than this, you too could one day be up on that stage taking the Q&A after the movie.

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Posted by Sean Blake on January 21, 2009 at 1:37 p.m.

Sundance Part Deux Day 6

Sundance is about halfway over at this point — and the crowds are thinning out. The local shopkeepers say the rough economy along with the presidential inauguration has had an effect on turnout for this year’s fest.

Almost entirely gone this year are the massive amounts of freebies once offered by most of the festival’s sponsors. The tent where free T-shirts, hats, pens, blankets, tote bags and more were previously given away is now called the hydration station. Sponsored by Brita, it offers free Nalgene water bottles featuring the Brita and Sundance logos. Well, it’s not entirely free. It’s given in exchange for signing a pledge to allegedly protect the environment by using their refillable bottle — and a Brita water filter — instead of disposable water bottles. Once you have the bottle you can refill it at any of several Brita Filtered water stations located around the festival.

Today was a fairly light day for events. We attended a panel discussion on how to get production grants from some of the big names in film supplies and services: Panavision, Kodak and a number of post-production companies were on the panel. The hit film “Napoleon Dynamite,” which was a Sundance entry when we were here in 2004, was made using grants from these very providers.

Later in the evening we attended “An Evening with Steven Soderberg.” Soderberg, who is one of my favorite directors, had one of the first major hits to come out of the festival: “Sex, Lies, and Videotape.” There had been a bit of mystery about the event — which turned out to be a sneak peak of his next film. It was an exciting opportunity to see a work in progress and be the first audience to see the film. The movie, currently titled “The Girlfriend Experience,” is told through a disjointed timeline, much along the lines of Quentin Tarantino’s “Pulp Fiction” and many of Soderberg’s own previous movies. I really enjoyed the way the characters were slowly revealed — and I hate to spoil the revelations, so I won’t go into it much here — but it’s a largely improvised story. And with one major exception, none of the actors who appeared in it have been in front of a movie camera before. After the screening he answered several questions about the production.

One of the great things about Soderberg is that he doesn’t feel the need to hide his techniques from you, or wrap his process in mystery. He’s very direct and straightforward in his answers, which often seem impossibly simple.

To finish out the evening, we received invites to a party sponsored by Kodak. The free coat check and an open bar were definitely a nice touch — it can be tough to find a meal for under $25, but easy to find $7 bottles of beer on Main Street. There was a live band doing a pretty good job of playing mostly ’80s music. When they started playing Joan Jet’s “I Love Rock ‘n Roll,” my girlfriend remarked with a laugh, “It’s obvious they’re playing to a crowd of thirtysomething women.” The party was a chance to network a bit — most of the members of the discussion panel on film production grants were there. So I managed to get a little face time with some people I hope to be dealing with again when I embark on my own project in the not-too-distant future.

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Posted by Sean Blake on January 20, 2009 at 1:43 p.m.

Sundance Part Deux Day 5

We got to a late start today. We were going to try and wait-list for “Sex, Lies and Videotape” which was having a one-time screening at the Egyptian on Main Street. The movie is one of the “Sundance Collection” movies that came out of previous years of the festival. Unfortunately, getting in a bit late combined with getting on the bus that took the longest possible route to find downtown, made us miss the chance to get a wait-list number.

We grabbed a late breakfast at a café called Java Cow. As with every eatery, theater, club or panel discussion, there was quite a line and a bit of a wait. In the line behind me was actress Gina Torres -- familiar to me from Joss Whedon’s television shows “Firefly” and “Angel.” She was very stunning in a long white overcoat, and much taller than I realized. We managed to catch a table, and were able to sit down and relax with our coffee and sandwiches.

As we headed out of the cafe, we were stopped by a bit of shifting of the crowded line, someone was posing for a picture with fans, but we couldn’t see who it was until the crowd dispersed a little, and we made our way to the exit. He turned around and it was actor and comedy legend Robin Williams. My girlfriend, Lori, and I both had brief exchanges with him as we passed him on the way out.

I needed to get a hat -- because up in these mountains, the sun is really unforgiving. While in the shop, the woman behind the counter noticed my “The Only Good Indian” cast and crew credentials and asked about our movie. It turns out she was from Santa Fe, where our lead actor, Wes Studi lives. She asked if this was our first film in the festival and I told her about “C.S.A.,” our 2004 festival entry. A customer in the store overheard those initials, and said, “Do you mean ‘Confederate States of America’?” I said yes, and he said the film was one of his favorites and explained that he first saw it on cable channel IFC but had later ordered it on Netflix and kept it for a month and a half – watching it repeatedly. I had to ask him where he from -- because it still is a bit unexpected to me when someone outside of Kansas tells me they know of the film, let alone that they are a big fan. He said he was from Utah but hadn’t seen the film when it was at Sundance.

We had a midnight screening to wait for, so we were basically killing time checking out the different venues at the festival. We met up with assistant editor and postproduction coordinator Vickie Goetz at the Queer Lounge. It’s a sort of cafe with seating arranged for conversation -- sponsored by Absolut vodka and GLAAD, there were free bottles of Fiji water and small packages of trail mix among other treats. While we sat to re-hydrate -- one of the actors in the film we saw last night sat down next to us for an interview with a Spanish language interviewer. His name was Rodrigo Santoro, and he had played another of Jim Carrey’s love interests in “I Love You Phillip Morris.” We told him that we had really enjoyed the movie, and having earlier asked his publicist if it would be all right, Lori posed for a photograph with him.

It was quite a day for celebrity sightings. Later on we would see British actor Chiwetel Ejiofor -- his film “Dirty Pretty Things” is one of my favorites. We also saw country singer Wynonna, who would be performing in the Music Cafe later on. The crowning celebrity sighting however might have to be when Lori and I stopped in one of the bars at the bottom of Main Street and noticed actors Peter Gallagher and Kevin Bacon chatting at the end of the bar. I mean… it’s Kevin Bacon, right? He’s like the nexus of all celebrity. If you’ve seen him, you’ve seen them all!

We met up with director of photography Matt Jacobson for dinner, and later stopped by the Film Maker’s Lodge and ran into our supervising sound editor Bob Hurst, and editor Thad Nurski. While in the lodge we spotted actor Ewen Bremner -- best known for playing Spud in the movie “Trainspotting”

We left the lodge about an hour before our midnight screening of “White Lightnin” which is a sort of fictionalized version of the crazy life of Jesco White, an Appalachian man who grew up in poverty and addicted to huffing gasoline. A short documentary about his life called “The Dancing Outlaw” was made in the early 1990s. This fictionalized version makes real some of Jeco’s wild imaginings and does an amazing job of conveying his chaotic mindset. The movie was filled with shocking, disturbing images. More than once Lori had to cover her eyes. At the Q&A afterwards, I asked the director about the extensive use of black in the movie. There were many dissolves or cuts to black in the film, and the screen was often black during main character’s narration. The film’s director, Dominic Murphy, explained that it was an idea that was decided upon very early in the process, and was a way of evoking both the stream-of-consciousness speaking style of Jesco’s, and also the fragmented memories of the character.

It was an amazing film, and an interesting counterpart to the Jim Carrey movie we had watched the night before -- both being based on real-life characters but taking vastly different approaches. It’s been an exciting glimpse of the range of films at the festival this year -- and I can’t wait to see what’s next.

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Posted by Sean Blake on January 19, 2009 at 1:14 p.m.

Sundance Part Deux Day 4

Today my girlfriend and I had our own experience getting on the wait-list for a Sundance screening. “When You’re Strange,” a Tom DiCillo documentary about The Doors, had sold out all of its screenings very early on. There were two possibilities for getting tickets. One was going to the box office extremely early the day of the screening and being lucky enough to buy one of the handful of tickets they save for the day of the screening. The other possibility was to get a wait-list number by showing up at the theater a few hours before the screening. After waiting in line to get your number you can leave until 30 minutes before the screening. When you return to the theater you line up by your wait-list numbers. They count the empty seats and allow that many people from the wait-list to buy a ticket. We got numbers 24 and 25. Somehow I couldn’t imagine that many seats being available, but we decided to take the chance.

There were murmurs in the line -- people taking approximate head-counts of the people in the ticket-holders line and comparing it to the number of seats in the theater. Some people thought maybe 10 people on the wait-list would get in … some guesses were as optimistic as 30 or 40. To my surprise, our line began moving. They quickly let 10 people in. Then 8 more. Not all of the 23 people with higher waitlist numbers than us had returned so with 18 people let in, we were now at the head of the line. We could be in the theater within minutes. A Sundance volunteer with a headset would report in how many remained in the waitlist and everyone in the line waited with baited breath to see if they would let in any more people. She told us it was starting to look very tight in the theater. About then, two people who had bought tickets showed up less than 15 minutes before show time. According to the agreement you make when you buy the tickets -- you forfeit your seat if you’re not there 15 minutes before the movie starts. So the wait-list line grumbled as the latecomers were let in after we had been waiting in line for a few hours. And then the volunteer told us “Sorry! The theater is full.” So close … yet so far away.

After that we decided to check out the Music Café -- our pricey credentials should get us in -- but events and ticketing are so complicated at the festival -- you try not to get your hopes up. When we got to the venue -- we saw two long lines waiting to get in. One line was for credential holders, the other was for people without credentials. For every 8 people with credentials allowed in, they would let in 2 people who didn’t have them. Luckily, we didn’t have a long wait, only about 20 minutes. While we waited we started a conversation with the woman in line in front of us -- talking about the strange liquor laws in Utah, and the complicated ticketing system at the festival -- and seeing my Cast and Crew credential, asked about our movie and when we got inside she bought us each a drink. We were packed like sardines into the tent -- John Reznik, the lead singer from the Goo Goo Dolls, was scheduled to play. We wound up stuck behind a large plasma screen TV, and for half of his set, it blocked our view of the stage. All this way and all this waiting, just to watch him on a TV set. Eventually, though, we got into a better position – at one of the few tables available. At the next table over, was actor Jake Busey – so we got another celebrity sighting in while we were there. After Reznik’s performance was over, the tent cleared out quite a bit and we were able to move closer for the next act: Rachel Yamagata. She was one of the performers we had looked up on YouTube before heading out to the festival, so we already knew we would enjoy her performance of soft and soulful ballads.

After her set, we left the Music Café to get some food. Stepping out of the café, we were passed on the street by actor Alan Cummings, who was walking with comedienne and actress Sandra Bernhard. We heard a girl scream in excitement a little further down the street -- we couldn’t see who was the raven haired woman she was reacting to -- but she politely turned down the girl's request to have her picture taken with her. Shortly after that, actor Johnny Lee Miller crossed the street nearby and though moving fast, made a quick stop to pose for a photo with a fan. It seemed that the bottom of Main Street would be a good place to make celebrity sightings downtown.

You overhear a lot of conversations at the festival, on the bus, or waiting in line, or walking down the street. We heard someone talking about Ashton Kutcher turning down a drink offered to him by his wife, Demi Moore. “He said he wouldn’t drink absinthe, he said that it’s poison!” A very excited girl ran out of a building on Main Street exclaiming “Oh my God! I just peed next to Paris Hilton!”

After meeting with some of the crew for pizza, we decided to call it a day and head back to Salt Lake -- a little disappointed to reach the end of the day without seeing a movie. We hopped onto a bus to get back to the festival parking area. My girlfriend overheard a couple of women next to us on the bus trying to get rid of 2 tickets for a premiere screening of a movie called “I Love You Phillip Morris.” We took them up on the offer.

“I Love You Phillip Morris” is a comedy starring Jim Carrey as a real-life con man who winds up committing all kinds of fraud -- getting thrown in and then conning his way out of prison. While in prison he falls in love with fellow inmate Phillip Morris (no relation to the tobacco company) who is played by Ewan McGregor. The two stars were there for the premiere and answered questions after the movie. The movie plays a bit like a cross between “Catch Me if You Can” and “American Beauty” with lots of fun and playfulness in portraying the acts of fraud and some soulful moments of self realization mixed in with the humor.

After the movie we hopped back on the bus and headed back to our car to return to Salt Lake. After our disappointment with the wait-list, we were happy that a chance meeting on the bus allowed us to catch a world-premiere film at the festival.

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Posted by Sean Blake on January 18, 2009 at 5:40 p.m.

Sundance Part Deux Day 3

Our movie’s second screening was in Salt Lake City. This was my first chance to see our movie, "The Only Good Indian," with a large audience. The nice thing about screenings outside of Park City is that they tend to have more "regular folk" rather than industry insiders or film buffs. We sold out the theater once again.

Most of the time at the festival some tickets become available at the last minute -- because not everyone who purchases tickets necessarily attends. Some might have had last minute schedule changes or just didn’t get to the theater on time. You show up two hours before showtime to get on the wait-list for tickets. When we were here in 2004, we had many KU students traveling with us and helping us promote the film. They made it into nearly every screening they wait-listed. At our screening today, we had 50 people waiting for those tickets to be made available, but not a single seat was empty 15 minutes before showtime.

The film was well received by the audience-- with a majority of the viewers staying for the Q&A afterward. There were whispers among the crew of some big names taking a look at our movie, and the only downer of the day was a lukewarm review in one of the trade newspapers.

After the afternoon screening, the Lawrence crew headed back to downtown Park City to try out some of the local brews. A brewery at the top of Main Street called Wasatch Brew Pub was our first stop. Not everyone cared for the Polygamy Porter -- but I was quite a fan. An illustration on the tap showed a group of women gathered around the logo with the slogan “Why settle for just one?”

Aside from those velvet-rope, invitation-only parties, most of the clubs and bars end up with a “one in, one out” policy -- so they don’t exceed their fire-code capacity. If you have the patience you can wait outside for a chance to get in and mingle with the crowd, maybe for a chance to see some celebrities. In the club above us at the brewery, supposedly the lead singer for Counting Crows was in attendance, as well as members of the Broken Lizard comedy troupe. Some of the gang got in line for the club -- which had a reasonable $4 cover charge. The rest of us headed to the bottom of Main Street to check out the 3D gallery and the Music Café. We weren’t really into the DJs playing at the café -- and the $40 cover was a bit much, while the gallery had a huge line. Amazingly, one of the crew managed to get us a table for 10 at one of the restaurants and we enjoyed getting in from the cold.

Many of the gang had partied all-night the night before and were ready to call it an evening. My girlfriend and I decided to check out the Film Maker’s Lodge before heading back to town. Yes, we had been turned away the night before without tickets, but it never hurts to ask, right? Again we were asked for tickets at the door, so we were ready to leave. One of the festival organizers happened to be near the entryway and stopped us because she recognized the movie’s name on the festival credentials hanging around my neck. “Oh, you’re with Kevin’s crew?” she asked. I nodded, and she told the security guy to let us in. No cover, not too crowded and good music -- plus the ego-stroke of getting past one of those velvet ropes -- it ended up being quite a nice way to end the evening.

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Posted by Sean Blake on January 17, 2009 at 11:38 a.m.

Sundance: Part Deux, Day 2

So in the Day 1 blog I mentioned one of the lesson’s learned was that it was worth the extra money to purchase credentials that give you admittance to several venues otherwise off limits to you at the festival. Today’s lesson is one of humility.

The day began pretty nicely -- a short night’s sleep notwithstanding. We had our free breakfast at the hotel, went to pick up actress Laura Kirk and give her a ride into Park City. She had arrived late the night before-- and was staying only 10 minutes away from our hotel in Salt Lake. We got into town early enough that we got a very good parking spot -- and Laura was nice enough to pick up the pretty reasonable $10 parking fee.

My girlfriend, Lori, and I had tickets to a screening of one of the New Frontier films at the festival called “O’er the Land.” It was an experimental documentary film -- and another short experimental film ran before it called “Out of Our Minds." Oddly enough, we wound up at the same screening as two other members of the "TOGI" crew. ("TOGI" is our handy abbreviation for “The Only Good Indian”.) Bob Hurst, our supervising sound editor, and Mark von Schlemmer, who was an editor on the movie, wound up next to us in the theater.

Both movies had a lot of lengthy, seemingly random shots with long droning sounds or ambient noise. It seemed to me that I would have enjoyed them more if they had either been a little shorter or a little less abstract. The short that ran before seemed particularly long -- and full of over-the-top, sometimes too-obvious, sometimes too-confounding symbolism. The trees that were bleeding as they were being chopped down had some obvious meaning -- but the Viking warrior that walked through the middle of the movie seemed pretty random.

Not the most enjoyable time I’ve spent in a movie theater, but now we’ve seen our weird, artsy, obscure movie at the festival and we can move on to the more story-driven stuff that I enjoy.

After the movie we headed out for a party being thrown by the Kansas Film Commission recognizing all three of the Kansas-connected films that are in Sundance this year. It was a standing-room only crowd, and a great chance to connect with other film makers to celebrate. The party ran up until our premiere screening at the festival. Tickets had sold out for this screening early on-- which is always a good feeling. I wasn’t able to get tickets for this showing -- but we were able to get in for the Q&A after the movie. The movie was extremely well received by our first audience -- and director Kevin Willmott is a master of Q&A’s. His interaction with the audience often gets as much buzz as the movies themselves.

So this all sounds well and good, doesn’t it? “Where’s the humility come in?” you may be wondering. Well … here it comes …

So after the successful screening -- we all head downtown to what has become one of our favorite spots: Flannigan’s. After a while the gang begins to disperse. Lori and I get unintentionally left behind and try to catch up with some of the gang elsewhere downtown. There are parties all up and down the street -- lot’s of velvet ropes and lists. We thought we might be able to get into one of the parties -- producer Scott Richardson had an invite but he wasn’t able to get the rest of us in, so we moved on.

Downtown Park City is a lot like downtown Lawrence: a lot of trendy shops, restaurants and bars, but it's up in the mountains and pitched at almost a 45 degree angle, so walking up and down Main Street is like doing laps on a Stairmaster. Lori and I decided to head back to Flannigan’s where the Gin Blossoms were supposedly playing. After buying a couple more $7 beers and hanging around to catch the band -- it became clear that they weren’t playing as advertised. So we left to try and catch up with the rest of the gang … again. On the way down Main Street, we passed the Film Maker Lodge-- one of those venues your $200 credential gets you into. So we went up the flight of stairs (why did they have to put it UPstairs?) to check it out. The security guy checks our badges and says “Great, you’ve got your badges out, thanks! Do you have your tickets?” “Tickets?!” I say.

Apparently the $200 credential gets you in … as long as nothing is going on. Are you beginning to see the humility thing?

So we catch up with the gang, now a little exhausted -- but the bar is too crowded and we decide to move on yet again. We’re now down at the lowest end of Main Street, and will have to hike back up the mountain to get to the transport center and catch a shuttle to our car.

On the way out, though, we see some digital displays showing a new 3D format. It’s honestly one of the most amazing technological things I’ve ever seen. You put on a pair of polarized glasses -- not the red green kind. High definition images seem to stretch out of the screen at you. It’s not blurry or dim. It doesn’t make you feel cross-eyed while watching it, and you’re not seeing double around the edges. The video is filled with sports and concert footage. The wide shots are amazing, but what blew me away were the close-ups. The concert footage is of U2, and at one point there is a close-up of Bono reaching out towards the camera, and it literally looked like his arm was passing through the glass and reaching out of the screen. Amazing.

So on that note, we decided to head back to the car and get back to the hotel. The next day’s schedule would be a lot lighter: Five more days to enjoy and find our way around the festival.

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Posted by Sean Blake on January 16, 2009 at 10:14 a.m.

Sundance: Part Deux, Day 1

My name's Sean Blake, and I supervised editing on "The Only Good Indian." It's my third go round with Kevin Willmott and his growing "stock company" of Kansas filmmakers, and I'm glad to be part of the gang.This is our second trip to the Sundance Film Festival - which is a pretty good feeling. The great thing this time around is we've learned a lot about the workings of the festival - so it's not the unfamiliar experience we had with "C.S.A." back in 2004. We know where to go to get things done, and how to really enjoy the festival. (Lesson one: It really is worth the $200 for festival credentials - they'll get you in to a lot of cool stuff at the fest that's off-limits otherwise.)The weather at the fest is being pretty good to us so far. We left freezing early morning temperatures in Kansas to arrive in comfortably cool weather that had us shedding extra layers and wondering if all that money we spent on extra-thick wool socks was such a wise investment. Sundance is in Park City, Utah, which is a ski-resort town the rest of the year, and in years past they've had as much as TEN FEET of snow fall during the festival - so we're extremely lucky.One of the free pastimes at the festival is doing a little star watching - back in 2004 my luck was pretty limited. The first celebrity I saw that year was the guy who played Mr. Belding on "Saved by the Bell." He's a fine actor to be sure, and I certainly mean no offense to him or his fans ... but when I kept arriving in places just after Robert Redford, Demi and Ashton, or Danny DeVito had left, it was a bit of a let down. Shortly afterwards, my second sighting was Kato Kaelin - yeah, the OJ guy. Oddly, he was the only person I saw surrounded by paparazzi at the fest. True to form, when we arrived at the airport - I got a phone call from my friend Vickie. She was assistant editor on the movie and had arrived on the same flight as my girlfriend and I. "Did you see Spike?"Nope. I must have just missed him.This year, we've got some star power in our own film with Wes Studi. He was my first celebrity sighting this year - as the gang got together to enjoy food, drink and fun in downtown Park City. My girlfriend and I sat at the bar with Wes giving us the opportunity to get to know him, and the three of us to get to know some of the strange liquor laws in the area. One of the interesting restrictions is that the bartender cannot pass a drink over the bar. Instead, she has to walk all the way down to the other end of the bar to the single exit/entrance and bring your drink to you on the seated side of the bar. It was a new experience for so many of us, that it was a story repeated throughout the night. A new person would arrive at our gathering and ask "Why didn't she just hand me the drink across the bar?"And you thought Kansas liquor laws were strange.

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