Is overexposure bad for the Sundance Film Festival?
Is a reputation for schmooz bad for the Sundance Film Festival?
Is Paris Hilton (and the like) bad for the Sundance Film Festival?

We could all go on and on, right? However you choose to phrase it, the heart of the question is the same: Has the “true meaning” of Sundance become lost in the party madness?

The first wording of the question–Is overexposure bad for the Sundance Film Festival?–came from Robert Butler in a piece he wrote for PopWire on PopMatters. He doesn’t actually answer his own question, but he does raise some interesting points:

…with success has come second-guessing. Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly’s chief movie critic, has said that increasingly Sundance is showcasing films with such big names and solid financial backing that the word “independent” doesn’t apply.

Gleiberman has also written about the Sundance “bubble effect,” in which certain films generated a frenzy among festival goers and were fought over by competing distributors. The problem, Gleiberman writes, is that many of these festival favorites become real-world flops. They are “bubbles, destined to burst.”

Starting the Slamdance festival 13 years ago was obviously a way to counter the growing glitz of Sundance and the scores of people who go each year motivated by attractions other than movies.

But many people still don’t think Sundance has issues that need to be countered. Again, from Butler’s article:

Kevin Willmott, the Lawrence, Kan., filmmaker who took his mini-budgeted film C.S.A.: The Confederate States of America to Sundance in 2004, said the fest is invaluable in getting a low-budget film in front of a large audience.

“For a genuine independent filmmaker Sundance is a huge deal. The day they announced that C.S.A. had been accepted by Sundance I got about 100 phone calls from agents and other folks.”

It all comes back around to that big, hairy distribution monster, doesn’t it?