The Reeler Features Distributors Map the Market

http://www.thereeler.com/cgi-bin/mt/mt-tb.cgi/381

This entry from The Reeler about the lengths New York film distributors go to prepare for Sundance just kills me. Park City, Utah for the next ten days will be transformed as stores clear out to make way for temporary night clubs and ski instructors make a bundle of money playing high-end cab driver for a week. The streets will be oozing over with film-makers and film-lovers wearing dark-rimmed glasses hustling through the snow to their next screening.

Sundance is the spectacle it is because of its late-night deals where an unknown movie geek becomes the next Quentin Tarantino. It’s the drama that creates the fever which draws so many people. And to read about the distributors who orchestrate this drama coming up with game plans just to get through the throng and make it to their seat in time makes me chuckle.

Sundance has become the over-commercialized spectacle critics accuse it of being, but there’s definitely no other experience to match its insanity. It’s a blast. At least until about 9:00pm when little guys like me are cold and hungry and can’t get a seat in a restaurant and our names aren’t on any of the lists for the two dozen parties happening on Main Street.