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.