..Leonard Klady
..David Poland
..Ray Pride
..Patricia Vidal

You say you want a resolution?

Is it a coincidence that of the fifteen awards given out to features on Saturday night, only two (one being an audience award) went to films that got picked up for theatrical release at the festival and one more went to a film that is likely to get a theatrical deal shortly?

Welcome to the wonderful conundrum of Sundance. I'll be getting into why Peter Biskind's Village-Voice-By-Way-Of-US book, Down & Dirty Movies, misses all too much of the big picture while obsessing on Harvey's weight and Redford's transparency later this week. But one thing the book does remind us of - even if Biskind seems to consider it an afterthought - is that this festival, like most, has a serious case of schizophrenia when it comes to the relationship between money and art.

The trouble with looking back at almost anything - especially when you were not there for a first-hand perspective - is that 20/20 hindsight becomes dominant over the rocky and often unimaginably odd terrain that people and organizations travel. The urge to mythologize is great. And the details, in which the truth is usually buried, are often complicated and lacking in fun. But I'm just said that I wouldn't be writing about Biskind until later…

Now 20 years old, what is the point of Sundance? Is it to give films with backing from The Dependants and the major Indies an opportunity to launch their product in front of thousands of hungry journalists? Is it to sell films that might otherwise never have a chance to enjoy the magical event of a screening in front of a hungry audience and distributors with checkbooks in hand? Is it a launching pad to a greater infiltration of "indie" movies to the rest of the country and the world? Is it, as Sundancers keep claiming, an opportunity to celebrate the fresh young voices of filmmaking? Or is it all of the above?

The difference between the "major" film festivals and the rest is that the "major" film festivals are where films are actually sold. The exceptions are Telluride, which is like a weekend in paradise with 2500 of your favorite cineastes, and Toronto, which has become the great media festival of the world. But these festivals are the only opportunity in the film world where the public and media get an opportunity to be a part of the process, as a finished film struts it stuff and has its future determined.

This year, The Motorcycle Diaries, Garden State and The Woodsman used the festival quite successfully to do what they could have easily done in screenings in New York and/or Los Angeles… sell themselves. The difference was the extra 10 degrees of heat that come from an enthusiastic screening in front of 800 people who are desperate to love everything they see. (Do you know how hard it is to park at The Eccles?) That heat may have been worth a 25% bump in the acquisition amount on these films, maybe more.

On the other hand, a film like Napoleon Dynamite would be a 1000-to-1 shot to end up with distribution after turning up in any other venue. If it opened or closed Slamdance, with due respect to a strong alt festival, it would have still been begging for an IFC TV slot.

We Don't Live Here Anymore, which I never got to see, was kind of a tweener. It has strong elements, especially a still-heating-up Naomi Watts. But If it weren't for Warner Indie really needing to buy something before festival's end, just to make the statement that they were in business, it may not have gotten a pick-up at all. As with Napoleon Dynamite, this is not meant as a reflection of the quality of the film, but a pure business reality. Ensemble talkies are hard to sell and market and no one quite knows how strong Naomi Watts will be in a theatrical release that has no gimmick or other supporting money actors. (Love Ruffalo, but his career hasn't turned the box office corner yet.)

Maria Full of Grace got picked up by Fine Line, which has an output deal with HBO Films (by which Maria was made), but not for foreign language. So Maria's pick-up was free form. But it also, like Motorcycle Diaries, represents the distributor's sense that there Spanish-speaking market is going to be there in large numbers for high-quality product, as established by Frida last year. The reason there was not more clamoring for the film was that Real Women Have Curves did okay, but not okay enough to make up for substantial P&A costs. But then again, The Crime of Father Amaro did very good business in America with rather little in P&A expended. Maria and Motorcycle will be this year's testing grounds for Spanish-language cinema.

Sony Classics' pick-up of Touch of Pink is one of those head scratchers. The only comedy they released last year, Once Upon A Time In The Midlands, couldn't break $200,000. The year before, Crush, which featured Andie McDowell and had Four Weddings & A Funeral written all over it, managed a little less than $1.1 million. Zhang Yimou's Happy Times got to almost $250,000. I had to go back three and a half years to find a gay-themed hit from the company - The Broken Hearts Club - which managed $1.8 million. Having had a great success with Stacy Peralta's Dogtown & Z-Boyz, Sony Classics made sense for a low-risk deal for Peralta's follow-up, Riding Giants. But a company not into comedy or gay cinema grabbing the lesbian laugher Touch of Pink? It makes you go, "hmmm…"

Open Water may turn out to be the great buy of Sundance 2004, much as Super Troopers was the low-art great buy (by Searchlight) in 2001. There are a bunch of flaws with the film, but it is a lot of squirmy fun that could really sneak up on people in a summer of huge movies.

And then there are the others. Sundance felt so strongly about Easy, they not only let the Toronto Film Festival entry play in Park City, they put it into competition. Marguerite Moreau was arguably the darling of this year's festival, working rooms with the gusto of an actress shot out of Jeff Dowd's dude canon. No buy. Barely a nibble. Likewise, almost none of the distributors even bothered to attend screenings of the Tuesday-premiering teen girl drama, Speak. And the almost-gay comedy, Home of Phobia, will probably be left to gay cinema distributors, without enough motivating elements to inspire the big players.

For all the "Year of The Doc" bullshit, only one doc, Super Size Me, is likely to get more than perfunctory theatrical deal. Metallica is the biggest selling heavy metal band in the world, but distributors decided that kids who would pay $40 for a concert ticket and more would not pay to come to a Landmark Cinema and watch their heroes hit the psych couch in Metallica: Some Kind f Monster. Almost every American-made doc has money from some television outlet where an outing is on the horizon. Overnight, Imelda, I Like Killing Flies, Heir To An Execution and Home Of The Brave all got the kind of love that would make you think that distributors would find compelling in "The Year of the Doc." Hot titles Born Into Brothels, Dig! and The Corporation won awards, but still…

The two double award winners at the awards last night, Primer and Down To The Bone, might both be great. But both were written off by distributors before the end of the first weekend. (Primer was actually dead meat even before the first Saturday came around.) Most of the other winners can look forward to airings on The Sundance Channel during the festival next year.

So what does that mean? Are the films that sold unworthy of awards? Are the films that got awards unworthy of distribution? Is the perception of Sundance enhanced or reduced by the failure to match one and the other?

This is the question that the festival is still struggling with, whether they want to admit it or not. The film-unrelated hysteria of last year was reduced this year. But there is only one reason for The Butterfly Effect to play at Sundance and that is the media crush that comes from an AshDemi Moocher appearance. Splitting opening night and favoring the influx over the locals was an interesting choice. It's lovely to have a Bertolucci premiere and a first look at the next Redford film, but where is the focus supposed to be?

My personal take on the festival, in brief, follows:

MOVIES I WOULD HAVE LIKED TO HAVE SEEN
The Clearing - Searchlight's Redford thriller.

The Corporation - Sounded fascinating, covering a reoccurring theme of Sundance and Slamdance this year, but two first weekend screenings and it was gone until the end of the fest… and the tape was forever checked out.

Grand Theft Parsons - A terrific writer and an interesting story.

Heir To An Execution - If enough people know that the film is about The Rosenbergs, it could steal the Academy Award from Capturing The Friedmans.

I Like Killing Flies - A favorite of the "I remember that place" restaurant set in New York. Sounds reminiscent of Berman and Pulcini's career launcher, The Last Days of Chasen's… which was also without major U.S. distribution.

Imelda - This year's answer to The Eyes Of Tammy Faye.

Maria Full Of Grace - "Quality" is the word most used for this one.

Saw - Lions Gate thriller. Will see it soon enough.

Super Size Me - Morgan Spurlock is Sundance's Charlize Tehron, transforming himself into an award winner. The only difference is that he hasn't lost all the weight.

Tarnation - The hyper-arty choice of the fest, I think they finally got a press screening today.

We Don't Live Here Anymore - Great cast, Larry Gross script and I am a big fan of Praise, which was sadly lost in America three years ago.

The Woodsman - A serious child molestation drama with a great actor in the lead. What's not to be creeped out by?

GREAT MOVIES I SAW ELSEWHERE
Dogville
The Five Obstructions
The Yes Men
The Return

GOOD MOVIES THAT I HAVE SLIGHT RESERVATIONS ABOUT
Easy - A great performance and a story that is daringly original. But still, an almost.

Napoleon Dynamite - Sure to be a cult college hit on video/DVD. In an odd way, a variation on Garden State, which Fox Searchlight will also release. This year's awardless but cash-engorged "came from nowhere" Sundance story.

D.E.B.S. - Screen Gems short-skirted kinky teen comedy could be called "Agent Cody Wanks." Outside of Jordanna Brewster and Devon Aoki (who doesn't have to talk much) and Sara Foster's legs, the casting is not quite good enough to make this into a monster hit. But if you can deal with the silly premise, you can't really help but to smirk. And like the story about Rosemary's Baby, where audiences wrenched their necks to a side to try to see what Ruth Gordon was doing in the next room, the effort to catch a glimpse under the heroines' micro-skirts is a 90-minute effort.

Dig! - A terrific exploration of two bands that start down the same line and head in different directions for the best and worst of reasons, it's also a bit repetitive and a little long. Would make a great cable mini-series, broken into 30-minute chunks. One only wonders whether MTV could deal with the drug use in these P.C. times.

Investigation Into The Invisible World - A rather brilliant, psychotic trip to Iceland, home of 283,000 psychics and, apparently, a lot of gnomes. I don't know how you make any money on a theatrical release. But when Tommy Chong gets out of jail, he could make a fortune selling copies of the movie with a free NotBong shipping with every order.

Metallica: Some Kind of Monster - It is a memorable journey. But there isn't enough loss to make it a great movie.

Neverland: The Rise & Fall of the Symbionese Liberation Army - It's a solid historical document. But somehow, it never gets beyond that solidity.

Open Water - It's tiny, it's got frontal nudity, and it goes where filmmakers have not dared to tread without CG since Jaws.

Overnight - The story of the guy who sold Harvey Weinstein a script, who was played by Harvey Weinstein in a hype over buying a bar together, and whose ego got pathetically out of control. It needs to be finished… strangely reminiscent of Biskind's book.

MY BEST OF SUNDANCE 2004

Born Into Brothels - A deeply emotional journey beyond the ugliness of Calcutta and to the still-beating heart of youth. It's one of those films that couldn't exist were it not an act of love. A remarkable experience.

Dirty Work - It's only an hour, but it's a great perspective doc, exploring the work of a bull sperm collector, a septic tank guy and a "restorative artist" for corpses. It's not Errol Morris, but the subject is one of a kind.

Edge of America - Chris Eyre's take on the underdog sports flick, the film is as accessible (and silly) as any of them. But damned, it's fun and smart and even throws you the occasional curve ball. And will make you tear up in the end.

Home Of The Brave - A powerful documentary about one woman, Viola Liuzzo, who broke the rules of etiquette and sanity, went to Selma to march, and was murdered for her bravery. The repercussions are still bouncing off of her family. And now, we have joined them.

The Motorcycle Diaries - Easily Walter Salles most accomplished work, it is also his most relaxed. The story of Ernesto "Che" Guevara's first break from convention, on a journey with his pal, Granado, into the heart of South America, is flowing and funny, touching. It leaves you with questions and hope.

Speak - It's kind of scary to be out there pushing a film that didn't get a lot of attention, which I suspect has a lot to do with the Tuesday first screening of the film. But there is a raw emotional power to this story of a young girl who can't find a way to scream, much less speak, after suffering a date rape. Screenwriter/director Jessica Sharzer keeps her cards close to the vest, avoiding easy histrionics for the subtle truth of how people deal with the damaging events of their lives. Kristen Stewart, who you might remember as the clever daughter in Panic Room, is a real find, challenged for the first time in this film and about to start David Gordon Green's next, Undertow. A wonderful, if painful, surprise.

Day Six
Day Five
Day Four
Day Three
Day Two
Day One

 

- by David Poland