Airplane Blogging: Park City Edition

Halfway through a flight to Salt Lake City. Salt Lake is the nearest major airport to Park City, where I will be spending the next eight days or so. Many of you will know why, some of my newer readers may be able to guess. Lemme spell it out for you.

I’m going dancing. Sundancing. Slamdancing. I’m in a “festive” mood (yeah, believe it). I’m here as a production executive on something called “The Ten,” which the Hollywood reporter would have you believe is one of the two biggest buzz movies of Sundance. Look it up. I am also here for the Slamdance Horror Script Competition, which I am sponsoring and from which, I will be producing a horror movie this year.

Where was I. Oh yeah.

Sundance and Slamdance, two of the largest film festivals in the world, both take place in Park City during the last weeks of January. The story goes that Robert Redford had bought property in the area and was looking for a mechanism to develop the property into something more valuable than beautiful mountainside. Sundance, indirectly, was born out of that need.

When Sundance started, it was a much smaller deal. Films were much more “independent” in nature, meaning that they didn’t have big name actors, producers, and certainly not the parade of agents, and producer’s reps and sales agents that films at the festival today do. There were no bidding wars over the most “commercial films” at the festival, because there really weren’t enough bidders, or the films of that nature to bid on.

Through the early nineties, as Sundance matured, and after Miramax (now the fellas at the Weinstein Co.) had done a great job making indies chic again, for the first time since the early seventies, audiences actively looking for something different informed the money guys the best way they know how. They went to see movies that were not made within the studio system. They went to see Pulp Fiction (which is, I guess, an example that jumps to mind, but it of course began well before 1994).

Anyway, with the studios, and hence agents, managers, sales reps, and various comglomerates now interested in the “indie,” the face of the indie film changed. This of course was assisted along the way by the studios increasing interest in producing (as opposed to acquiring) only formula movies and tent poles, and their waning interest in kudos-type films (except for a couple per year, not nearly enough to keep actors in the hills filled to the brim with accolade). A-listers began slumming on low-budget projects, things that they thought might be more likely to (1) reinvigorate a career or (2) get the coveted academy award nomination. With this increased attention, the trickle down began, movies, good and bad, with stars heretofore beyond the means of their budgets, began pounding on the gates of Park City, looking for the magic popcorn deals (called that because the sale takes place between the sales rep and the producer in the lobby of the movie theater while the audience is still on their feet, giving the director and cast a standing ovation – anyway, that’s how the dream goes).

So when the stars and their producers and the agents and their lackeys and corporate cronies started pounding on the doors, Sundance grew and grew.

And then, there was digital.

And it was good. Once in a while.

The digital cameras developed in the eighties and improved in the nineties made it possible for almost anyone with a little bit of money to make a movie (which is a long stretch from saying that they should have made a movie). In any event, with the cheap technology, and no need to buy or develop film stock, the numbers of indies being made in the nineties skyrocketed.

Needless to say (Many sucked).

I’ll go further. Most sucked. Of course, that’s not to say they are worse than the many of the studio movies, but they didn’t have the marketing pull of those movies, with few of these micro budget films having stars or story lines that were well suited…


I’m rambling. I’m sorry. Point is, that they were a lot more movies, both made with bigger budgets and stars, and most with either Steve Buscemi or that guy who played the drug dealer in Pulp Fiction. You know, the guy from Some Kind Of Wonderful. I can’t remember his name right now. But you know the guy.

Sundance was flooded with these A-listers and international productions, and the smaller indies mostly were squeezed out, particularly genre movies (horror) and comedies (well, to be clear, they were never really invited). In the ultra-serious Sundance, there was no room for them, most of the time.

Thus, the wicked stepbrother of Sundance, Slamdance, was born. Fouunder by Dan Mirvish and Peter Baxter, Slamdance began as an itty-bitty alternative festival up the street from Sundance, taking place simultaneously. Like a remora, but in a good way.

The remora grew until it became pretty darn big. Seventh largest film festival in the world. That’s a big fish.

Still, it provided a more “indie,” less Hollywood alternative to the events in Park City. And it still does. Slamdance has movies with names, but isn’t focused on stars. In a weird way, though, Slamdance, because of the interest of the programmers in the horror genre and in documentaries, has been successful to some degree in breeding a commercial outlet for the films it shows as well (Mad Hot Ballroom was a big sale at Slamdance in recent years). As some of you may know, Hollywood is a little bit interested in horror (like a new one every other weekend in wide theatrical release) but hasn’t necessarily had the best luck in coming up with new franchises (see, e.g. remakes of every seventies and eighties horror film currently in release or being remade). So its always looking to buy.

Anyhoo, as the horror craze continued, Sundance, which had focused on drama, saw that it was missing out on something (i.e. press from big popcorn deals), and started to program midnight screenings of horror films. Independently-made but highly commercial movies like Saw and Wolf Creek debuted at Sundance, where they were acquired (Lions Gate and Harvey, respectively) and released to good financial success (great, in the case of Saw). So Sundance had jumped in on the territory that Slamdance had monopolized in the Park City events of each January.

The commercialization of Sundance has been much written about in the trades and in popular media (and now here – never claimed to be the most original grumpster). In response to the increasing conclusion, fair or not, that the festival had lost its roots, the programmers of Sundance announced that they were rededicating the festival to showing what it was previously known for, the independent voice. Sundance was stepping away, starting in 2007, from commercial projects. And the press preceding the festival seems to indicate that they’ve done just that, at least to a degree. Now there is concern from Studio execs that there wont be a Little Miss Sunshine or Wolf Creek in this year’s crop.

We’ll see, I am still on the plane so I am going to reserve judgment (at least until I get to baggage claim). Besides, I am just here for the parties and the girls.

Not really. Well, sort of.

Yeah, it’s a business.

(To be continued)