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Photo By Steve Ramos
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PARK CITY, UTAH -- Disaster struck somewhere around the first reel. It was without warning that a 25-pound and 4-by-6-foot slab of ventilation tile fell from a projection booth wall and struck three Sundance Festival filmgoers.
One could forgive documentary filmmaker Chris Smith for insisting that he was battling some Park City curse. Fifteen minutes into the Jan. 26 screening, the sound went out on American Movie, Smith's film about the escapades of a wannabe slasher filmmaker named Mark Borchardt. Later, the film stopped and began burning in the projector. Even for a festival notorious for its threadbare facilities, Smith's travails are the stuff of Sundance legend. Showing a movie -- even at Sundance -- was never meant to be so difficult.
There have always been mob scenes at Sundance. Its logistical nightmares have always been part of the festival's unique charm. So it's commonplace to watch crowds fight their way into a screening of Allen and Albert Hughes' American Pimp, a genealogical examination of the urban pimp. Studio executives shoved their way past an unruly press. Even Hollywood heartthrob Ben Affleck had a hard time getting past the crowd into the screening. The Hughes brothers watched the chaos with admiration. It was a positive sign that their film had arrived.
It was a unanimous decision: 1999's Sundance Film Festival was the year of the documentary. The breadth of stories was impressive: an impoverished Appalachian family from Saul, Ky., in American Hollow; Chuck Workman's The Source looking at the origins of the Beat Generation; Paola di Florio's spotlight on violinist Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg in Speaking in Strings; Regret to Inform, Barbara Sonneborn's look at the Vietnam War through the eyes of American and Vietnam war widows; and On the Ropes Nanette Burstein and Brett Morgan's portrait of three boxers from Brooklyn.
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Photo By Steve Ramos
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Paola di Florio
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There were packed audiences for Sex: The Annabel Chong Story about the life and career of the notorious porn actress made famous by having sex with 251 men in 10 hours. At a festival best known for past dramas such as sex, lies and videotape, The Brothers McMullen and Shine, the packed auditorium for a Jan. 24 screening of veteran filmmaker Errol Morris' Mr. Death: The Rise and Fall of Fred A. Leuchter, Jr., the story of a self-made engineer of execution devices and his involvement with a Holocaust denial movement, proved that documentary film is finding its own Sundance niche.
"This is a great time to be a documentary filmmaker," says Speaking in Strings director di Florio. "There are so many additional opportunities for your film to reach an audience with cable TV. And to see all the great documentaries here, well, that just makes me even more passionate about the future."
Sundance, after all, has always been a place for films and filmmakers to gain new respect. So musicians such as Sheryl Crow and Lyle Lovett appear in front of the cameras. R.E.M. frontman Michael Stipe plays film producer. TV starlets Katie Holmes (Go) and Tori Spelling (Trick) look for some indie credibility. And ex-Brat Packer Ally Sheedy, who rejuvenated her career with last year's Sundance hit, High Art, returns with the family drama Autumn Heart and the L.A. comedy Sugar Town.
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Photo By Steve Ramos
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Annabel Chong
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Lightning has been known to strike more than once at Park City. So it's with firm resolve that Chong looks to put her porn past behind her to re-emerge as a credible independent actress and moviemaker. At Sundance, yesterday's porn star is easily transformed into tomorrow's indie queen.
"The press here is so much different than the porn press I'm used to dealing with" says Chong, watching the passers-by on Park City's Main Street. "Yeah. I think I'm getting respect here. That's why I came. I'm making my own porn movies. I want to branch out. I've been here all week, and I'm confident that it's paying off."
It's a nasty business, this buying and selling of independent movies. Run Lola Run director Tom Tykwer reads an item in The Hollywood Reporter confirming his upcoming project with Miramax Films. The only problem is that Tykwer doesn't know of any project. His name, he's told, is just part of the endless spin-cycle of festival gossip. Tykwer is not pleased.
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Photo By Steve Ramos
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Tim Roth
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"Can you believe this?," says Tykwer, sitting in his publicist's condo. "I've never even spoke to them (Miramax). This is what I hate. This is the part of American moviemaking I can't stand."
Despite Robert Redford's begrudgery, Sundance has emerged as a serious marketplace. Not that every business deal finishes with an unhappy ending. Happy, Texas director Mark Illsley couldn't have been more pleased with the attention given to his audience-friendly comedy about two ex-cons masquerading as gay beauty-pageant organizers.
"This was a fair deal for all involved," says Illsley. "The film will be released in October. There will be a guaranteed number of cities. I have final cut. Listen, I didn't know anything about making a deal. But I'm confident that this was a good deal to be made."
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Photo By Steve Ramos
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Happy, Texas director Mark Illsley and
co-screenwriter/co-producer Ed Stone
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The fact that Happy, Texas took part in an all-night negotiating session was not surprising. It was the reported details of the deal that left rival acquisition execs shaking their heads with disbelief. There were rumors that competing bids brokered by Cassian Elwes of William Morris Agency exceeded $10 million. But Miramax execs, who bought the film, insisted that they paid a minimum guarantee of $2.5 million.
The battle of words between Miramax and the competing distributors, Fox Searchlight, Paramount Classics and New Line Cinema, turned ugly. It was a Sundance first: a distributor spin-doctoring to the press a lower price for a film they just bought. It was a sign of the times after the controversial $10 million purchase price for The Spitfire Grill by Castle Rock some years ago. A high acquisition cost no longer benefits the perception of an indie movie. It's a bad sign if one is perceived to have paid too much. Still, after a slow start, with the horror mockumentary The Blair Witch Project, emerging as the lone opening-weekend deal, this year's Sundance proved to be another banner year for business.
This is the strangest of festival bubbles, a film land where entertainment lawyer John Sloss earns major press coverage as an indie celebrity. After all, Sloss sold the film Take It Like a Man, based on the true story of a Nebraska teen-age girl who posed as a boy and was then murdered, to Fox Searchlight based on just 20 minutes of footage. Even Viacom Chairman and CEO Sumner Redstone was at Sundance, promoting Blockbuster, Showtime and his interest in the Sundance Channel. It's a strange movie marriage, Sundance's partnership of film artistry and Hollywood commerce. They are a boisterous pair. Late into the evening, a publicity rep barks into the phone at the local supermarket. Poor reception is making conversation difficult with his director/client, until a cash register clerk tells him to be quiet. The director is standing in the next aisle.
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Photo By Steve Ramos
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Judy Berlin writer/director
Eric Mendelsohn
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The 1999 festival crop further sealed the idea of the "Sundance Film." Overtly serious and downbeat with high production values could best describe most of this year's entries. For British actor Tim Roth, Sundance was the only place for him to premiere his somber family drama The War Zone.
"After watching this you just might want to go out and get drunk or go home and see your kids," Roth said, speaking from his makeshift office inside a Main Street tavern. "But you could almost make the movie for Dan Quayle," he said, laughing. "It's a family values movie."
After all the snow, the icy cold and endless days of sleep deprivation and caffeine highs, it's always a welcoming sign when another year's Sundance stumbles to a close. For those filmmakers battling a bad case of the Park City flu, it's a fitting conclusion: survival of the fittest. So there is an anticipated excitement at this year's Saturday night awards ceremony. The bustle of TV crews and photographers is evident. A wall of Sundance banners create a backdrop of red, and the onstage antics dissolve into an appropriately surreal festival finale.
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Photo By Steve Ramos
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Three Seasons writer/director Tony Bui
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Judy Berlin director Eric Mendelsohn is attacked by a CNN reporter. Hers is an ironic question: Will winning a Sundance award make your film a hit? Sundance success is seldom that cut-and-dry. For Mendelsohn, there is something purer than a "killer" distribution deal. Maybe the critical response is more important than money.
"I made my film for personal reasons and, if it gets out, then I'll be overjoyed," Mendelsohn said, yelling above the onstage chaos. "And if not, I have a piece of artwork 30 years from now. I'll be able to put my head down on my pillow and know that's it on a reel somewhere. It doesn't get much better than that. It really doesn't."
Tony Bui didn't think he would make it to the awards. His voice is scratchy. His eyes hang heavy from multiple doses of cold medicine. The flu, not his film, hangs heavy on Bui's mind. But Bui's Three Seasons, an ensemble drama that interconnects the fortunes of a flower girl, a street urchin, a cyclo driver, an ex-Marine and a prostitute in a tale set in the bustle of postwar Saigon. Bui's film is the first American indie to be shot in Vietnam. It's evident that Bui's film has given Sundance a more international flavor, distinct from its American indie emphasis. Now, with Three Seasons' double victory of a Grand Jury Prize and Audience Award, the definition of American Independent Film really has been broadened. For Bui, it was an unexpected victory that managed to soothe his aches and pains.
"It's so amazing," says Bui, pulling at his wool cap. "Usually it's films like Reservoir Dogs, Clerks or sex, lies and videotape that get recognition. Although it truly is an American film. It's American financed, American produced, an American crew and I'm American. I never would have thought, though, we would be here right now. I had so many people come up to me and say, 'I forgot there were even subtitles in this film,' and that's just truly amazing."
Breakout dreams are supposed to happen at Sundance. Such hope is what keeps the festival's mythology going: the lure of the big deal and the unexpected discovery. So Mark Borchardt was feeling some of that Sundance magic. The subject of the award-winning documentary American Movie, he was feeling the tense minutes before a midnight Sundance premiere of his short horror film Coven on Jan. 25 at the Egyptian theater. The throngs of moviegoers tells him he is a long way from Milwaukee. The falling snow clings to his long hair and scraggly beard. For a would-be slasher-film kingpin like Borchardt, his screening turned out to be the event of a lifetime. He had no idea. Moviemade fairy tales like these happen all the time. ©
