Utah Saints

Before heading to the mountains to start work on Time Out's daily Sundance diary, Dave Calhoun looks ahead to the festival.

Jan 19 2005

Last year, a book cast a shadow over the Sundance Film Festival, fuelling gossip on the icy streets of Park City, Utah.

The culprit was Peter Biskind, the author of 'Easy Riders, Raging Bulls', who smartly timed the publication of his latest hatchet-job to coincide with the start of Robert Redford's annual indie film hoedown.

The main target of Biskind's book – 'Down and Dirty Pictures: Miramax, Sundance, and the Rise of Independent Film' – was Miramax boss Harvey Weinstein, who stood accused of bullying filmmakers and burying their films.

But Redford caught an eyeful from Biskind too: the author was less than kind about the actor's motivations for founding the festival in the early '80s – he even goes as far as to criticise Redford for making the most of a sensible tax break.

Also, Biskind took issue with the 'indie' credibility of an ever-growing festival that now sees half of Hollywood pitch up in snow gear each year in the hope of making a buck out of some hopeful young filmmaking turks or, in turn, stealing some down-and-dirty kudos for their own barely alternative efforts.

Biskind is right; Sundance has changed since its early, more lo-fi days, and some titles in the line-up are questionable (the dire 'The Butterfly Effect' snuck in last year). Yet I'd still argue it remains the first important stop-off in the annual film festival calendar.

The Sundance crop of films, though patchy, always throws up some real gems and, most importantly, introduces new talent to the world.

This year, Sundance starts on January 20. For ten days, over 50,000 attendees will crowd the plush mountain ski resort of Park City in Utah – an island of mammon in a sea of Mormons – and in attendance will be a mix of punters, journalists, filmmakers, industry types and a hardcore contingent of perma-tanned hangers-on, all up from LA and looking for a good time. (Which, I imagine, explains why Paris Hilton was in town last year. As far as I know, she has only ever starred in one 'indie' film, and that showcase of night-vision technology clogged up enough Hotmail accounts to rival Viagra.)

And forget the hippy connotations of its name. Serious business is done at Sundance and, in turn, business takes Sundance very seriously. The festival and its attendant celebs attract corporate sponsorship by the lorry-load. You can't move for free stuff: lollipops and pens if you're a journalist; TVs and luxury cars if you're Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore, as reportedly happened last year.

The hope of eagle-eyed film distributors with cash to splash in Park City is that they'll find a bargain. They usually do. Consider two of last year's more high-profile purchases: 'Open Water' and 'Napoleon Dynamite' were both made for peanuts and then snapped up by distributors who turned them into runaway successes at the box office. 'Napoleon Dynamite' cost about $500,000 to make; it took over ten times that in the US alone.

So, what of this year's films? As ever, the delight is in the discovery, but of the big hitters, Dane Thomas Vinterberg ('Festen') returns with 'Dear Wendy', scripted by his Zentropa buddy Lars von Trier, and so does British filmmaker John Maybury, with psychological thriller 'The Jacket' (starring Adrien Brody), his first film since his superb study of Francis Bacon, 'Love Is the Devil', in 1998.

Intriguingly, Don DeLillo has scripted his first feature film, 'Game 6', which will premiere in Park City; it's the story of a down-on-his-luck playwright, played by Michael Keaton.

Hal Hartley – the American indie stalwart whose star has fallen in recent years – will also present a new feature, 'The Girl from Monday', while Kevin Bacon takes a second shot at directing with 'Loverboy'.

Away from the big names, 16 new fiction films will compete in the American Dramatic Competition section, most of them by little-known filmmakers. Steve Buscemi, though, enters the fray with 'Lonesome Jim', while celebrated music promo-maker Mike Mills offers his first feature, 'Thumbsucker', with Tilda Swinton in the cast.

Beyond fiction, Sundance is great for American documentaries ('Super Size Me' emerged there last year). Subjects getting the doc treatment this time include Enron, musician Daniel Johnston, the New York Dolls, paedophilia in the US Catholic church and ex-Peruvian president, Alberto Fujimori.

Really though, the highlights are always the surprises. The rest, as ever, will soon become clear…

For Dave Calhoun's daily Sundance updates, check out the site's 'Latest Film News' section from Friday.

• 
•