On March 6, 1985, in Albany, New York, a pop culturally anonymous young boxer scored an electrifying first-round knockout in his first professional fight. On Friday night, there's a fair-to-decent chance that the same guy will be at the cavernous Racquet Club Theatre in Park City for the first screening at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival of a movie about his legend, James Toback's "Tyson."
Like Mike Tyson, who once predicted that he would "fade into Bolivian" when his boxing days were done -- vanish from the public consciousness, that is, not relocate to South America -- the Sundance Film Festival was just getting started in 1985. That's the first year that actor Robert Redford and his film-fostering Sundance Institute assumed sole management of what had previously been a little-known midwinter diversion.
(Begun with the aim of reviving the film industry that had formerly flourished in Utah, the festival was started in 1978 in Salt Lake City as the Utah/US Film Festival.)
Now in its 25th year since Redford took the reins, the festival is an international event that draws filmmakers and film buyers to Utah from around the world. And though Redford, who's 72, may not live to see the festival's next 2.5 decades, it's hard to imagine that there won't still be a Sundance Film Festival in ... 2034.
Festival programming director John Cooper was in another life in 1985, a stage actor and director, a jazz singer and an employee at Orso, a famous restaurant, in New York City. "Working as a maitre d' in a place like that is where you get your training for something like this," Cooper said. "You smile and nod your head and then you just walk away. 'Yeah, I'll get right on that.' "
He's downplaying his own contributions, but Cooper -- whose first job for the festival, in 1990, was to drive prints around to all of the theaters -- said that even a world-famous, 25-year-old film festival can't function without the people, nearly all of them volunteers, who address the nuts-and-bolts, day-to-day details. "The guys who get everything where it's supposed to be," he said. "Every sign, every table, every chair. They have lists for one day with, like, 400 different cues.
"They're my real heroes."
For everyone who pitches in, the goal is the same as it's been from the beginning. As Redford put it last year while speaking to reporters at the Egyptian Theatre on Park City's Main Street, the festival's "mission" is what it's always been, "supporting the filmmakers and helping their work get seen."
The filmmakers are a diverse lot. Some of them are film school students who are just getting started making films, much like Brigham Young University's Jared Hess, who created a Sundance sensation in 2004 with "Napoleon Dynamite." Some are actors switching sides of the camera -- John Krasinski, who plays Jim on NBC's "The Office," is the first-time writer and director of "Brief Interviews with Hideous Men," a dark comedy about relationships and one of the dramatic films in competition at this year's festival.
Others have experience elsewhere in the film industry. Another of the films in competition this year is the Iraq War drama "Taking Chance," the writing and directing debut of producer Ross Katz. Katz, 37, is a two-time Oscar nominee as a producer (for the films "In the Bedroom" and "Lost in Translation"), but that doesn't mean that he felt like getting into the festival was a slam dunk.
"I wasn't confident at all," said Katz, who remembers being 14 years old, with big hair and a musical "identity crisis" involving Duran Duran and AC/DC, in 1985. "I was incredibly anxious."
It's a crowded field, after all. There are around 7,000 total entries submitted each year, but the 2009 festival's film guide lists only 117 features and 94 shorts. Yikes.
The number of films that get programmed has remained constant for a while now -- in 2008, it was 122 features and 85 shorts -- and Cooper said he doesn't think that will change, or at least not in the near future.
"We actually consciously keep it small," he said. The festival could easily increase the number of films that screen, but there's a level of intimacy and comprehensibility that would be missing.
"If you're playing 250 features, how do you even wrap your head around that?" Cooper said. "I don't want to ride on a shuttle where one person mentions a movie and nobody else has seen it."
Don't think that you'd never end up sitting next to the festival's programming director on your way to a screening, either. If he doesn't catch you on the shuttle, Cooper might pick you up in his car. "Whenever I'm driving around" between screenings or other duties, he said, "I pick people up and pump them for information." (We're not telling you what he looks like. It would ruin the surprise.)
Even for the films and filmmakers that get in at Sundance, success at the festival doesn't always translate to success in the real world. "Frozen River," which won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance last year, reaped a tidy $2.3 million domestic gross and may land star Melissa Leo a Best Actress Oscar nomination. "Forty Shades of Blue," which won the Grand Jury Prize in 2005, never played in more than seven theaters and earned $75,828.
Money in your pocket, movies in your head
The festival doesn't just cram around 45,000 out-of-towners into Park City for 10 days, either. Local economists study the festival's economic impact each year, and Sundance was as lucrative as ever in 2008, when $63 million flowed into the Beehive State. Utah-based Business Connect magazine reported last month that Park City and Summit County aren't the only beneficiaries, either: Salt Lake County got a $2.7 million piece of the Sundance pie in 2008, while Utah County had a $1.4 million helping.
With the national and world economies struggling, it remains to be seen whether Utah will reap a smaller-than-usual windfall from Sundance in 2009.
There are larger problems on the mind of festival director Geoffrey Gilmore, who wrote earlier this week in a guest column for film Web site indieWIRE that more films were sold at the 2007 festival than in any previous year. In 2008, however, not even half as many films were sold as during the 2007 festival.
Gilmore said that, even though he thinks the success of the festival shouldn't be measured by its sales of films, there's still cause for concern -- the festival has to be attractive to young filmmakers in order to remain a going concern.
"It's not at all clear," Gilmore said, "that a new generation will embrace festival attendance and exposure in the same manner of the last generation."
On the other hand, there's at least one local indicator to suggest that the business of the festival may be more or less business as usual. Chad Linebaugh, general manager of Sundance Resort in Provo Canyon, said that the resort has a strong base of customers who stay there each year during the festival, and that the number of reservations is as healthy as ever.
And Marshall Moore, director of the Utah Film Commission, which tries to draw filmmakers to Utah, said that the economic impact of Sundance isn't just in direct spending during the festival. "We already have meetings set up during the festival with people who want to make projects here," Moore said.
The Utah Film Commission, which is a sustaining sponsor of the festival, will also be working the room. The commission sponsors an annual filmmaker's brunch, and Moore said that he'll be sitting on a panel with representatives of like-minded groups from nine other U.S. states to discuss the business of negotiating tax incentives for filmmakers.
(In case you were wondering, Moore, 46, was working as a location manager in Los Angeles in 1985. Two of the films he worked on that year are "Black Moon Rising" and "A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 2: Freddy's Revenge.")
The people who run the festival are mindful of its economic impact. Mostly, however, they're mindful of its films. Even of some of the ones that didn't make the grade -- Cooper said that the festival frequently refers films it doesn't program to other festivals.
As for the films you can see during the festival, there's probably at least one film suitable for almost anyone's tastes. Maybe even one that you won't be expecting to enjoy.
Cooper said that he ended up mesmerized while watching "The Cove," a documentary in competition at the festival that slips beneath the public face of a company in Japan that raises and sells dolphins. "I couldn't turn it off," he said. "I had to stop it because I had a meeting. The whole time, I couldn't wait to get back to it and see what would happen."
The festival wants to help you make your own discovery like that. "Taking Chance," based on the actual experiences of a U.S. Marine Corps officer who volunteered to escort the body of a fallen soldier across the country to his parents, is already locked into a distribution deal with HBO Films. But Katz is giddy about seeing firsthand how audiences respond to it.
As a kid, he said, "there was nobody in my life who had anything to do with the movie business. I never knew anybody in the movie business. When I dropped out of school and drove my car to L.A., I would never have thought I'd be at the Sundance Film Festival someday.
"It's beyond thrilling."
Thumbing through the Sundance catalog
There are 117 feature-length films waiting to be discovered at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival. Some will pop up at theaters across the nation later this year, while others may eventually be available on cable TV or DVD. Some may vanish, never to be seen again. Only time will tell which films are the cause of heated discussions on the street corners of Park City, or which ones have studio reps speed-dialing the home office on their cell phones. Here's a sampling of what's in store.
-- All summaries by Daily Herald film critic Cody Clark.
"Mary and Max" The first film to screen at the 2009 festival (Thursday at 6 p.m. and 9:30 p.m. at the Eccles Theater in Park City) is a claymation (think "Wallace & Gromit") animated film about an 8-year-old Australian girl and a 44-year-old New York man who exchange letters for 20 years, because have you seen what it costs to get the Internet in New York City? No, you're right, it's actually because they're both timid and lonely.
"The September Issue" A fashion documentary is the festival's pick to welcome state and civic leaders in Salt Lake City (Friday at 6:30 p.m. and 9:30 p.m. at the Rose Wagner Performing Arts Center). The movie is about celebrity couture-ist Anna Wintour guiding the production of a fall issue of "Vogue" magazine, because who would have come to see it in Salt Lake City if they had made it about Hugh Hefner and "Playboy"?
"Earth Days" It won't actually be the last film screened during the festival, but the designated Closing Film is a documentary look back at the rise of environmental consciousness in America, beginning in the 1970s. ("Dude, what's the environment?" "Dude, that's where weed comes from." "Whoa.")
"Adventureland" Instead of roaming around Europe after graduation, a college kid reluctantly accepts employment at an amusement park. At least he gets to hang with Bella from "Twilight" (actress Kristen Stewart, playing a fellow park employee).
"Brooklyn's Finest" Eight years after the release of "Training Day," director Antoine Fuqua switches from Los Angeles to New York and finds that, in terms of its police culture, the Big Apple has a few worms.
"I Love You Phillip Morris" A former cop (Jim Carrey) cons his way into and out of jail to be with the love of his life, a fellow inmate (Ewan McGregor). It's Ben Kenobi and Ace Ventura as we've always pictured them: reimagining "Cool Hand Luke" for the Prop. 8 generation.
"Manure" With a title like that who cares what the movie's about, right? Prepare for multiple reviewers making analogies to nose-holding, putting one's foot in it, etc., in regards to this screwball comedy about, yes, a homegrown fertilizer operation.
"Moon" Sam Rockwell is a lonely astronaut at the tail end of a three-year moon mission. Say, did anyone else just think of the classic "Ren & Stimpy" cartoon about "space madness?"
"Rudo y Cursi" Mexican brothers who work at the same banana ranch are driven apart by their soccer rivalry. Uh-oh. Which one of them will be the first to fall victim to the ol' banana peel on the playing field pratfall?
"Crude" Has clean-gasoline hyping Chevron been dumping billions of gallons of toxic oil waste into the major tributaries of the Amazon River in Ecuador? Bet those claymation cars in the TV ads don't have anything cute to say about this.
"Dirt! The Movie" A documentary that wants you to feel the Earth move under your feet. The word is that they're already working up a sequel called "Mud! Just Add Water."
"We Live in Public" The life of visionary exhibitionist Josh Harris gets a fresh look. Among other things, Harris wrecked his love life by convincing his girlfriend to be filmed, along with himself, at all hours of the day and night.
"When You're Strange" At long last, we have proof that Jim Morrison really does look like Val Kilmer - or is it the other way around? - in this rockumentary retrospective about The Doors.
"Big Fan" The guy who did the voice of the gourmet chef rat in "Ratatouille" plays a devoted NFL football fan who follows his favorite player to a strip club to ask for an autograph. Disney does not invite him back for "Ratatouille Touille."
"Humpday" Former college buddies dare each other to attempt something really, really stupid. What is it, you ask? Think of Kevin Smith's recent movie about Zack and Miri, only with, uh, Ben and Andy. Hmm. On second though, don't think of that. Don't think of it at all.
"Paper Heart" Yet another Earth woman is powerless to resist the charms of pasty, skinny shrinking violet Michael Cera, stammering star of "Juno," "Superbad" and "Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist." Men everywhere cease to exercise and consume food.
"Sin Nombre" The unofficial entry for 2009 in the ongoing "stories of the Mexican border" Sundance sub-genre is a grim tale of two Mexican lads and a girl from Honduras fleeing from the clutches of sinister gang members.
"Big River Man" A Slovenian endurance swimmer attempts to stroke the length of the Amazon River, fueled by two bottles of wine per day. Did anyone warn him to watch out for the Ecuadoran oil slicks?
"Kimjongilia" The world's most comical tyrannical dictator is no joke to the people who have to live under the sole of his boot. The film is named for the rare hybrid begonia bred to honor the god-ruler of North Korea.
"Prom Night in Mississippi" In 2008, actor Morgan Freeman agreed to foot the entire bill for senior prom at Charleston High School in Mississippi, in exchange for the school's agreeing, for the first time in its history, to hold an integrated prom that welcomed both black students and white. No part of the preceding sentence was made up.
"Bronson" What could be more appealing than a biographical film about the most violent prisoner in the British prison system? Why, nothing at all, unless it's ...
"Cliente" A film about a meek family man who hatches a second, secret career as a high-priced escort. That's kind of pathetic, except by comparison to ...
"The Maid" A housemaid has been employed by the same family for so long that, after the family hires more help, intending to ease her burden, she spitefully sabotages her new co-workers to maintain her place. Talk about your depressed economies.
Posted in Lifestyles on Tuesday, January 13, 2009 11:00 pm
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