The
Advocate’s arts and entertainment editor,
Alonso Duralde, headed to the Sundance Film
Festival for a busy four-day stay that would get him
and the magazine first glimpses at some of the LGBT
movies heading to theaters in 2006, from the Robin
Williams-Armistead Maupin film The Night
Listener to microbudget documentaries like Small Town
Gay Bar. With this online diary, Duralde takes us
along on his whirlwind trip through the screening
rooms, restaurants, parties, and, um, facilities
of Park City, Utah. This is part one of three installments.
Thursday
Given my
proclivity for being devastated by the low temperatures and
high altitude of Park City, Utah, my mantra for the
past several weeks has been “I will not get
sick at Sundance. I will not get sick at Sundance.”
I now realize I should have been more specific, as I have
become sick the day before I leave for the mammoth
film festival. Nothing contagious, but my sinuses are
draining everywhere they shouldn’t, and I’m
going to have to down some major amounts of Tylenol
Sinus before I can get onto an airplane without my
head going all Scanners on me.
Friday
5 a.m.: Wake up
and get dressed to go to the airport.
7:30 a.m.: Take
off for Salt Lake City. On the flight, I have a stroke of
incredible luck: The couple sitting next to me are showbiz
people who are actually charming—he’s a
writer, she’s with one of the bigger production
houses—and the producer-lady lends me an incredible
piece of in-flight reading, a script for a movie that
my friends and I can’t wait to see.
That’s right, it’s Snakes on a Plane,
starring Samuel L. Jackson and...well, a bunch of
snakes. It’s a title that’s a pitch, and
it’s a brilliant concept. Tragically, the
stewardess does not land the plane in the
script I read, but it was a 2003 draft, so I can hope that
this dreadful oversight has since been corrected.
11-ish: Land in
SLC. The showbiz couple invites me to hop onto their
shuttle van to Park City, a trip that takes about 45
minutes. As we arrive in Park City, I ask the van
driver if Sundance is something that the locals look
forward to every year. “Oh, God, no,” he
replies. “We hate it.” And I can totally
understand why—imagine every obnoxious
me-me-my-needs-now person in film, television, music, and
the Internet crammed into one tiny ski resort town,
making hideous demands and wearing hideous ski
outfits. That’s Sundance.
To be fair, of
course, Sundance is also a great place to see exciting new
independent films from around the world. But now that
it’s become a destination for Paris Hilton and
her ilk, it’s harder and harder to get through
all the hype and corporate sponsorship to actually get to
the movies. I still remember coming to my first
Sundance in 1995, where there was one party every
night where you would see everyone from the movie
stars to the makers of short films, mingling and dancing to
some horrible local wedding band. Now there’s a
premiere party for practically every movie, and there
are any number of parties each night hosted by car
companies and magazines and vodkas. And since Paris might
be there, they get crowded and pushy and obnoxious. But
I’m getting ahead of myself.
1 p.m.: Settle
into the condo I’m sharing with filmmaker-historian
extraordinaire Jenni Olson. I note on my schedule that
there’s a press screening at 1:30 of The
World According to Sesame Street, one of the
more buzzed-about documentaries in the festival. I figure
maybe I can walk down to headquarters at the Marriott,
pick up my press credentials, and make it to the
theater, albeit a little bit late.
2:15 p.m.: Who
was I kidding? The Sundance press office is
well-organized, but there’s just so much to take in.
By the time I get my badge photo taken, check my
mailbox, and look at forms to get hard tickets to
future screenings, it’s, well, 2:15. There must have
been a fairly lengthy short film beforehand, though,
because I wind up catching most of Sesame
Street, and it merits the good advance
word-of-mouth. The film looks at how Sesame Workshop imports
the beloved kids’ show to the rest of the
world, and the specificity they try to bring to each
country where the show is aired. It touches upon the
controversy around Kami, the HIV-positive Muppet character
featured in the South African version, but the film
manages to generate genuine tension and suspense in
its final third: Will the show get on the air in
Bangladesh? Moviewise, I’m off to a good start.
4 p.m.:
Healthwise, not so much. My sinuses have been draining down
the back of my throat, taking away most of my voice
and making the remaining amount of it sound like
Tallulah Bankhead. And not to take anything away from
Miss Bankhead, but throaty doesn’t really work for
me. I nurse a hot tea with honey on Main Street and
meet up with publicist Jim Dobson, one of those
charmers who seems to know everything that’s going on
in all places at once. He introduces me to Malcolm
Ingram, director of the documentary Small Town Gay
Bar, and his boyfriend, Chris. I’ll be
seeing the film later in the festival, but I tell Ingram
that I enjoyed his first film, Drawing Flies.
It becomes immediately apparent that he doesn’t
hear this much, and we bond instantly.
4:45 p.m.: OK, I
have a few hours to kill before seeing the Tony Kushner
documentary at 8 p.m. I could either take a much-needed nap
or try to fight the crowds at the ASCAP Music
Café when Rufus Wainwright performs at 6 p.m. And
I do love me some Rufus.
5:15 p.m.:
Zzzzzzzzzzz.
7:45 p.m.: As I
walk into the Yarrow, a ski lodge that has several
ballrooms converted into movie theaters for the duration of
Sundance, I walk past indie starlet Robin Tunney. She
and Alexis Bledel are totally turning into the same
person.
8 p.m.:
Oscar-winner Frieda Lee Mock’s Wrestling With
Angels: Playwright Tony Kushner. Like
Kushner’s work, the film is provocative, witty,
and angry. The film’s timeline cleverly works in two
directions, showing us his life before Angels in
America (growing up in Lake Charles, La., before
moving to New York as a Columbia undergrad) and after
(writing Homebody/Kabul, Only We Who Guard the
Mystery…, and Caroline, or Change, among
others). One odd thing—Mock shows us
Kushner’s wedding with his partner, Mark Harris, but
we never hear anything else about Harris for the entire
film. He occasionally appears in the background,
reading or tending house, but he is never interviewed,
and Kushner never talks about him, how they met, his
importance to his life, anything. If Harris didn’t
want to participate in the documentary, fine. But
including the wedding and then otherwise not
acknowledging his existence is rather jarring.
9:45 p.m.: In the
Yarrow men’s room, of all places, I run into my old
friend John Polly, who’s now an editor at
Genre. We head over to the Queer Lounge party.
10:05 p.m.: A
recent addition to Sundance, the Queer Lounge has
immediately established itself as the place to be. During
the day, it hosts panels (I’ll be doing one
Sunday) and offers space for queer (and
queer-friendly) Sundance participants to mingle, schmooze,
and relax. And at night, the Lounge parties.
This particular party is happening in two rooms, and
both are rather full. John introduces me to some of the
CBS News on Logo folks. I finally run into my roomie Jenni,
and she introduces me to some happening lesbian
producers. I see my friend Bob King, who directed
Psycho Beach Party, and scads of other gay and
lesbian filmmakers and publicists. And then I realize that,
nap aside, I’ve been up since 5 a.m. and am
fighting off a sinus infection. So Jenni and I decide
to bail at 11 and go crash at our pad. Which we do.
Follow us on Twitter. 
Follow us on Facebook.
Page 1 of 3