Director of Programming James McNally is attending this year’s Sundance Film Festival from January 20th to February 1st.
Festival Day 3
I had a slightly better night’s sleep last night (thanks earplugs!) but was still up around 7:30am. I didn’t need to be at the Egyptian Theatre until 10:00am but ended up down on Main Street around 9:00am. However, trying to find coffee in downtown Park City is tough! Lots of the Sundance venues have free coffee but they don’t open until 10:00am. In any case, I found a nice breakfast spot called the Main Street Deli that serves breakfast stuff from 7:30am-11:30am, so I’ll probably have a proper breakfast at some point next week. There was a pretty big lineup but it was shorter than the lineup at Java Cow, the only other place I found that had coffee. I ordered a bagel with cream cheese which for some reason took about as long to arrive as if I had ordered a full breakfast. By the time I took it to go, I was racing to get to the Egyptian by about 9:45am.
This morning’s premiere was for the Doc Shorts 2 lineup, which consisted of just two longer films, but one of them (It’s Me, Hilary: The Man Who Drew Eloise) featured Lena Dunham as producer (she’s also in the film), so we had a pretty robust press line. Lots of cameras, and interviews not just of Lena Dunham and director Matt Wolf (who directed the excellent TEENAGE) but of the other film team, from Abandoned Goods, which was great for them. They had the “opening band” slot which might have made them feel overshadowed, but instead brought them a bigger audience and more press interest.
There were a LOT of publicists in the room, and I actually recognized one I first met at TIFF 2013 when she was a junior publicist in LA. She just moved to New York to take a more senior position, so it’s really nice to be following her career and see her doing well. And despite the presence of such a large entourage, Lena herself was really low-key and lovely.
After the screening we had about 90 minutes to ourselves, so I wandered along Main Street and popped into a few of the little brand “venues” where you can get free coffee and swag. I ended up signing up for the SundanceNow Doc Club, described as a “Netflix for docs.” I’m not even sure it will work in Canada, despite the sales guy’s insistence. I have a 30-day free trial, in any case.
I headed over to the Yarrow Hotel cinema early and ended up going into Fresh Market, which seems like one of the only grocery stores in all of Park City. Luckily, I was able to use one of my “volunteer grub stubs” to get a free lunch: a ham and swiss sandwich, a small bag of chips and a can of pop. I bought a few other snacks for later and then headed to the cinema. Our press line for Shorts Program 5 featured Riz Ahmed and Gordy Hoffman (Philip Seymour Hoffman’s brother), two fairly high profile directors, but everything went really smoothly. In fact, I was pretty happy to escort Gordy and his mum (who was using a walker) up to the green room in the hotel’s employee elevator. The hotel is only two stories high, like many buildings here, but they didn’t have a regular elevator. While in the elevator, Gordy looked at my credential badge and told me my name was familiar, which felt sort of nice. I wonder if he remembers this review I wrote of Love Liza, a film he wrote and in which his brother starred. If I remember correctly, he won the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award here at Sundance for that film.
I also had another nice interaction with Riz Ahmed. He didn’t sit through the film, opting instead to give his ticket to a friend. While he was inside waiting to be acknowledged during the intro, I took his ticket to the lobby and waited for his friend to arrive. When the film started, he went upstairs to where the green room was, but just sat on one of the couches outside in one of the public areas of the hotel. A group of ladies drinking wine were up there and began to talk to him rather a lot. I grabbed him and put him back into the now empty green room, where he stretched out on the couch for a rest. Another happy filmmaker!
From there it was back to the Film Office to man the desk until closing time at 6pm. For the first time so far, I had a free evening and a chance to see a film. However, I’ve had no luck with the eWaitlist system, and I missed my chance at getting on the list for all three films I wanted to see tonight. It’s just 8:30pm but my chances of seeing anything are pretty slim, so I was rather hoping to go out for some food or drinks with some of the many people I know who are in town. Unfortunately there isn’t any great way to connect with everyone at once. I tweeted a couple of times, but if people are in a screening, the tweet scrolls away pretty quickly. Texting individually would feel a bit too intrusive, not to mention time-consuming.
So I’ll probably have an early night, and hopefully plan a little better for the days ahead.