Partying Shots by Tony Phillips
Picture it: Salt Lake City is iced-in, making for hours of airport delay. A white-knuckled van ride up the mountain to Park City, Utah, across the ice follows. Those not savvy enough to arrive a day early to give their body a chance to adjust to the elevation are also suffering from all the hangover meets asthma fun of altitude sickness. And now, all these merrymakers are jammed outside, sardine-like in a line that's braced up by the sub-zero mountain air.
Welcome to the opening night of the Sundance Film Festival. Once past the Checkpoint Charlie and into the Deer Valley Ski Lodge, where this joint is being held, I split with my guests. They are off to cash in their two measly drink tickets, which come attached to a Sundance-logoed hospital bracelet (if only), while I'm off in search of the "Todd Oldham decor" the press release promised.
I eventually give up and cash-in my drink chits as well. Sitting down with my double-fisted cocktail, I tumble off the back of a foam cube covered in fabric ala Mr. Rush in the open for Too Close For Comfort as my drinks fly across the room. I realize this dorm room beautification project I just plummeted from is the "Todd Oldham décor," and this isn't a party anyone is going to be talking about in 20 years. I won't even get into the cheese wheel buffet.
But if Sundance was not exactly crawling with hot parties this year, it was crawling with savoir-faire programmers from New York snapping up films for their festivals back home. Party ideas to accompany those films were, thankfully, left in Park City. First up, there was the Gen Art Film Festival, which just wrapped last week. With their tagline of "7 premieres. 7 parties," Gen Art doesn't even pretend it's about the programming, but their parties rock, in an offhand, casual way.
Take Thursday night's bash at B.E.D. for grand jury prizewinner Wristcutters. Shea Whigham, who stars in the film, is currently shooting the NYC police drama Pride and Glory with co-star Colin Farrell, so he simply dragged Farrell out on the town with him. And though he was squirreled behind a fairly crashable velvet rope, many of the Gen Art partygoers were just as casual about his attendance. Witness this exchange: "Hey, there's Colin Farrell! Who cares, how much longer is the open bar? Dunno, let's ask Colin!"
A newish festival that also seems to plan their accompanying events much more carefully than their film programming is the upcoming Tribeca Film Festival. And this year, they're no longer confined to Tribeca, with screenings and events all over town. This festival, no doubt due to the caliber of its founders, Bob and Jane, and their post-9/11 mission, tends to be a little corporate, velvet-roped and just generally gross.
This puts filmmaker Adam Green in an interesting position. He's bringing his slasher homage Hatchet to the midnight section of this festival and needs to come up with an event that will make it stand out against the earnest 9/11 docs and big-budget, disaster movie summer previews like Poseidon. Green promises a rock band and is scouting locales like Don Hill's and the new club opening that week from Nur Khan, the man who brought us Hiro under the Maritime Hotel.
No telling whether a posh new venue and a band will be enough to overcome the bad taste factor of a hatchet-wielding swamp thing amuck in New Orleans, but we kind of have our fingers crossed for the breakout potential of any movie billing itself as "boobs, beer, beads and blood."
Even Sundance gets a chance to pull it out of the muck when they cherry pick 10 days of this year's finest for screenings at BAM's Rose Cinemas kicking off on May 11. Opening night is the buzzed about pre-teen, beauty pageant ensemble comedy Little Miss Sunshine and Grey Goose and Brooklyn Brewery signing on as "Official Providers" just might obliterate the memory of those awful, two-drink minimum hospital bracelets for good.