The alarm sounds at 4:30 a.m., and half an hour later I’m in a cab bound for LAX. My tour covering the 2003 Sundance Film Festival has barely begun, and already I’m sleep deprived.
Sleep, for those not familiar with the annual event in Park City, Utah, is a rare commodity. With continuous screenings of more than 120 feature-length films plus 90 shorts—not to mention the various seminars, panels, parties and alternative festivals like Slamdance and No Dance—to attend, there just isn’t enough time. Something has to give, and for most people here, it’s a good night’s rest.
I take a nap on the plane. Day One is about to begin.
10:09 a.m. Arriving at the Salt Lake City airport, I’m surprised to find the sun shining and the temperature in the 40s. Usually in January, it’s below freezing in Utah’s capital city, as well as at the small ski resort town that plays host to the Sundance Film Festival.
Such conditions reveal much about the people who congregate here. In the words of Sundance Institute president Robert Redford, "It is a festival held in the cold and the snow—at the top of the mountains—but that’s why we like it. It brings good people in—people from all continents, people from the islands, people of contradiction."
10:20 a.m. I split a cab to Park City with a couple of fellow Festival-goers. During the 45-minute ride, one of my companions, a journalist, tells me he’s researching a book about the relationship between stars and their fans. The other fellow says he’s a programmer for features at Slamdance. Competition was fierce at the alternative festival this year, according to the Los Angeles Times. Approximately 2,800 feature films were submitted, and only 28 are being screened. The odds of being accepted by the Sundance Shorts competition were only slightly better. Of the roughly 2,800 films submitted, only 90 are being screened at the Festival.
11:30 a.m. I check in at Festival Headquarters, and collect my press I.D. badge and schedule of press screenings.
12:00 p.m. I attend the Holly Hunter press conference. Hunter is this year’s recipient of the Sundance Institute Tribute to Independent Vision Award. She also appears in two features screening at the Festival—Levity, by Ed Solomon, and Catherine Hardwicke’s much-talked-about Thirteen (for which Hardwicke later won the Festival’s Dramatic Directing Award). The film is noteworthy for, among other things, having been co-written by Hardwicke and 13-year-old co-star Nikki Reed.
An Academy Award-winning actress, Hunter has also dabbled in producing, so I ask her if she has any aspirations to direct. She hesitates, and then answers, "That’s tough. I think there’s almost something inappropriate about me directing. I feel like I’m born to act … [so] it’s like why should I?"
I gather then, that directing commercials is out, too.
2:00 p.m. There’s a screening of the feature documentary competition film A Certain Kind of Death, by directors Blue Hadaegh and Grover Babcock. (The film later won a Special Jury Prize.) Set in Los Angeles, A Certain Kind of Death explores what happens when a person with no next of kin dies. Unsparing in their photography—rotting corpses, etc.—the skilled filmmakers nevertheless inject the piece with a few darkly funny moments that amuse as only tragedy can.
The filmmakers’ greatest accomplishment, however, is showing three decedents as people—not cadavers—by documenting the largely bureaucratic process of tying up the loose ends of their lives, from the coroner’s investigation, to the unsuccessful search for relatives, the disposal of personal items, and finally, cremation.
Minutes into watching the film, it occurs to me how appropriate it is that I should encounter such weighty subject matter during my first Sundance screening. Weighty subject matter is unavoidable here.
5:00 p.m. There’s a screening of Capturing the Friedmans, another competition documentary. (The film won the Documentary Grand Jury Prize.) It is director Andrew Jarecki’s first feature-length film; his short, Swimming, was screened at a previous Sundance Film Festival. Jarecki, founder of Moviefone, co-produced Capturing the Friedmans with Marc Smerling, founding partner/executive producer of bicoastal Notorious Pictures, which is repped for commercials via bicoastal Cohn+Co.
As I take my seat inside the theater, director Peter Sillen of New York-based Washington Square Films comes over and introduces himself. Sillen has a short in competition at Sundance called Branson: Musicland USA. We agree to talk after the screening.
In simplest terms, Capturing the Friedmans is about an upper-middle class family that disintegrates when the father and his youngest son are arrested and charged with shocking and horrible crimes. The lingering question: Were they guilty?
The events explored in Capturing the Friedmans took place more than a decade ago. As is often the case with documentaries, the film features contemporary interviews with people reflecting on past events—in this case, family members, police, lawyers and witnesses. What’s unique about the film, however, is its use of three generations of home movies, including footage taken by the oldest son as the crisis unfolded.
Festival director Geoffrey Gilmore says Capturing the Friedmans "is such an amazing revelation because it does what the title promises—captures a family on film [and] inquires not just into the life of a family, but into a community, a legal system, an era. By changing perspectives and keeping the audience’s judgments and understandings in flux, [it] embodies the difficulty of capturing the truth."
"On a literal level," Jarecki notes, "Capturing the Friedmans is the story of a family, and we follow their history and experience through some extremely unusual territory. On a philosophical level, the film is about the elusive nature of truth; how our memories evolve over time to suit our needs."
6:30 p.m. Peter Sillen is having a good week. His feature documentary, Benjamin Smoke, is about to be released on DVD, and Branson: Musicland USA is at Sundance. The documentary short explores Branson, Mo., a town known for its live music industry. Through interviews with residents—from waitresses to hotel staffers—and the lesser-known musicians who perform there, Sillen reveals the pride of a community that resembles a low-rent Las Vegas. "It’s a contrived place," the director says. "But somehow, the [way the local economy] revolves around this second-tier music industry creates this bond among the people there."
Sillen shot the piece in ’95 and, with editor Deborah Barkow (who was at 89 Greene, New York, but is now freelancing), got about three-quarters of the way through the post process before deciding to take a break. "I was a little too close to it," Sillen explains. "It’s a fairly simple portrait, and I was trying to get more out of it, so I put it on the shelf. But it was one of those unfinished projects that you don’t like to leave unfinished."
Last year, he dusted off the Super-8 footage and called Barkow. When he got her on the line, he asked, "Would you kill me if I asked you to take another look?"
7:30 p.m. I interview freelance producer Lisa Beroud. An 18-year veteran of the spot business, Beroud produced Family Tree, a 30-minute short in competition here. Directed by Vicky Jenson (co-director of Shrek), and edited by David Comtois, who is partnered in bicoastal broadcast promo house Beantown Productions, Family Tree reveals a dysfunctional family during the Thanksgiving holiday, as seen through the eyes of a semi-outsider—the son-in-law.
The 35mm film marks Jenson’s first stab at live action, though it also features some animated fantasy sequences. The director compares them to the literary technique known as "magical realism" (a manner of storytelling in which bizarre or supernatural occurrences aren’t treated as such, but rather, are observed matter-of-factly—think Gabriel Garcia Marquez). In Jenson’s film, the long lost brother returns home, scarred by the experience of nearly having been turned into a tree.
Family Tree was a family affair. The script was written by Jenson’s husband, California Institute of the Arts instructor and commercial director Scott Ingalls, who has most recently been working through Acme Filmworks, Hollywood. Ingalls also did the title design. Beroud’s husband, Aron Beroud, was the production designer.
Additional credits go to DP Pieter Vermeer and Michael Levine of bicoastal Michael Levine Music, who composed the score. Visual effects were done by Levy3D, Culver City, Calif., and Digital Dimension, Hollywood.
"When I was first approached about Family Tree, I didn’t really want to do it," Beroud tells me. "But then I just decided to go for it, to do something that had nothing to do with money. It’s been incredibly satisfying to do something you’re just not sure you can pull off. It’s one thing to do commercials, which I love. But finding locations that cost nothing and getting people to show up day after day for no money—that’s a huge challenge."
She underscored her gratitude to the many suppliers and friends who supported the making of Family Tree with "never-before-seen deals" and other favors. It is a sentiment that’s expressed often at Sundance, as independent films are more often than not put together during nights and weekends, with shoestring budgets charged to personal credit cards, and donated equipment and services. Family Tree was made possible with help from, among many others, Marni Zimmerman at Panavision, Hollywood, Los Angeles-based Toucan Catering, Los Angeles-based Strato Films and A52, Los Angeles. "My commercial friends were very helpful and really stuck their necks out," Beroud says.
Screening the film at Sundance was also rewarding. "I’d never been to a film festival or done anything like that," the producer relates. "To be there with something you’ve put your blood and sweat into, and to see your film with an audience of a couple hundred people—that was an unexpected high."
I’d watched the film a week earlier at the Beantown offices. Later, I spoke with Comtois and Jenson on the phone. Having worked in animation for some 25 years, Jenson says she was anxious to do something more personal, and to work in the live action medium, a change she compared to "an artist switching from water colors to oil."
"I hadn’t really thought about directing commercials or music videos," she continues, "but I have been approached with a lot of scripts. Family Tree was a chance to do something without a studio being invested in my learning process—which doesn’t end here. But it was important to me not to worry about [that] and focus on the art itself. The film will indicate to people the types of stories I’m interested in, which is not Scooby Doo 4. Coming from Shrek, people might think that, but I’m ready to work with flesh and blood characters."
For his part, Comtois characterized his career these days as being somewhat "schizophrenic." He explains, "Lately, I’ve done broadcast promos, some cable documentary work and Family Tree. When I was in college, that’s the kind of thing I thought I’d be doing—narrative storytelling—but then other opportunities came up. The film really brought me back to realizing that editing, especially narratives, is what I love, and I want to build on that."
Future installments of "A Reporter’s Notebook: Sundance 2003" will feature, among other films, Angela Robinson’s D.E.B.S., Mark Decena’s Dopamine (winner of the Festival’s first annual Alfred P. Sloan Feature Film Prize), Joe Sedelmaier’s Open Minds, Ron Berger’s and Dan Klores’ The Boys Of 2nd Street Park, Eric Escobar’s Night Light, Steven Tsuchida’s A Ninja Pays Half My Rent, Vance Malone’s Ocularist (which received an Honorable Mention by the Shorts Jury), Steve James’ Stevie (which won the Documentary Excellence in Cinematography Award) and Jonas Ackerlund’s Spun.
