Audiences at the Sundance Film Festival may be cosmopolitan, even blasé. But even they have their tender spots. After James Clauer and Brent Stewart premiered their short film “Aluminum Fowl” during the festival’s opening weekend, word came back that viewers at the first screening were slightly taken aback. Apparently, no one informed the audience that it was the only film in the surrounding program that wasn’t fiction. Not coincidentally, it was also the only one with unsimulated cockfighting.
Clauer was the only Nashville director with a film in competition. His subsequent screenings went much better, and he took off directly from Utah to the Rotterdam film festival, where he was scheduled to arrive minutes before his film screened there. But while he was traveling overseas, the rest of a surprisingly diverse Nashville contingent was wrapping up their final days at what Tennessee Film, Entertainment and Music Commission executive director David Bennett calls “the Mardi Gras of film.”
The scene Bennett describes at the festival—a sloping street glutted with movie nuts and digital cameras, where the high altitude and steep walk produce a kind of oxygen-deprived euphoria—sounds like the Sundance that was blogged to death all week on the Internet and flogged by breathless TV correspondents. And yet the many Nashville participants all viewed the festival from a slightly different perspective, either as a participant, a programmer or a film scout. Here’s what some of them saw.
• Like Bennett, DAVID SIMMONS didn’t get to see a single movie. The Nashville filmmaker got shut out after standing in line six hours to see Little Miss Sunshine, a farce with Steve Carell that made headlines the next day with its record-breaking sale. After more bad luck with the crime drama Lucky Number Slevin, he had a better time on the street, where he engaged director Kevin Smith in a conversation about digital distribution. “Everybody knows digital distribution is coming,” Simmons says, “but nobody wants to make the jump.”
The subject is of special interest to Simmons. His first feature, a locally shot psychological thriller called Prism (www.prismmovie.com), was filmed using a new Sony digital master tape with two magnetic layers. He gave fireside chats about digital filmmaking at both Sundance and Slamdance, but he refuses to say that either festival was better than its rival. “The fireside chats at Slamdance were very passionate,” Simmons says. “At Sundance, they were a little more technical. Slamdance has truly more of an indie feel. Sundance is more grown-up.”
Contrary to the stereotype of pushy jerks with cell phones, Simmons found the Sundance crowd surprisingly likable. “If you’re sincere about what you’re trying to do, there’s something disarming about Park City,” he says. “It’s not L.A., it’s not New York, and everybody’s just a little off-kilter. By the end, I was introducing people I’d just met to other people.”
• Of all the Nashvillians who went to Sundance, TOBY LEONARD may stand to benefit most. The Belcourt programmer was invited by the festival along with representatives from 14 independent arthouses around the country. As part of Sundance’s 25th anniversary celebration, the festival is opening its archives to these independent theaters and allowing each to program an exclusive package of 25 films from its vaults. Since that basically covers the past 25 years of American independent cinema, the program should be a real coup.
“All these people coming together was a really positive thing,” says Leonard, who came away encouraged by the camaraderie among the indie bookers, and by the reputation the Belcourt’s been getting outside Nashville. It was a vindication when Bingham Ray, the former October Films chief who introduced movies like Breaking the Waves to U.S. audiences, met Leonard and exclaimed, “The Belcourt? I love you guys!”
Whether the scrappy historic theater will actually be able to book any of Sundance’s 2006 acquisitions is another story. But of the 20 to 25 films Leonard estimates he saw, he came away loving the Charles Bukowski adaptation Factotum, with Matt Dillon; The Hawk Is Dying, adapted from the Harry Crews novel, with Paul Giamatti; the kaleidoscopic Beastie Boys concert film Awesome! I Fuckin’ Shot That; and the popular documentary This Film Is Not Yet Rated, an exposé of the secretive MPAA ratings board. “That last one just reinforced all the crap we have to go through,” Leonard says. “I was about to jump up and down in the aisle.”
• The best thing about the 25 to 30 movies BRIAN GORDON saw throughout his nine-day stay is the chance that we’ll get to see the good ones. As artistic director of the Nashville Film Festival, he attends every year hoping to cherry-pick titles for his own festival in April. Attending Sundance, he says, is mandatory to raise the NFF’s profile with the producers, distributors and sales agents who can secure key films. “There are so many festivals now that you have to be more than a voice or an email message,” he explains.
He came away impressed with films like the French-Georgian award winner 13 Tzameti and the Ashley Judd drama Come Early Morning, a low-key character study with a score by former NFF president Alan Brewer. Getting them for the fest is another story. “The big challenge is the distribution black hole that opens up after the festival,” he says. “Everybody plays their cards close to their chest, waiting for that deal.”
Watching that many movies, Gordon says, he began to “hit the wall” mid-week. “In that kind of pressure cooker, it’s easy to get cynical about things,” he observes. But just as he started to feel the fatigue, he saw a movie called Old Joy by director Kelly Reichardt that lifted his spirits. It’s about a camping trip in the Cascades, starring Will Oldham and featuring music by Yo La Tengo. Gordon says that Sundance now is essentially two festivals—the glitzy one that gets all the headlines, and the one that gives uncommon films like Old Joy their due.
“It was my idea of an indie movie,” Gordon says, his voice taking on enthusiasm. “No commercial aspirations, just a beautiful movie no one else would make. It’s what film festivals are for.”
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