Gary Dretzka
Leonard Klady
Emanuel Levy
David Poland
Doug Pratt
Ray Pride

JANUARY 22, 2005

8:15p - We're 15 minutes into the Sundance premiere of Hustle & Flow, which is being attended by Universal's Scott Stuber, Paramount's Tom Freston and Columbia's Elvis Mitchell, among many, many others.

There is a good chance that a deal will be done tonight. There is even a rumor floating about that a preemptive offer was made earlier in the week and not accepted, anticipating the current building heat.

The movie has now started… the clock is ticking…

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6:50p - The "What's Elvis doing?" question reverberates through the streets of Park City. Here's the deal… he is here as a paid consultant for Sony Pictures… no particular division, though when he picks up his hotline, it rings at Amy Pascal's house.

Word is that he is advocating one picture in particular… and I would put $100 up guessing that any person reading this and having any awareness of Sundance buzz could figure out what that film is in less than 30 seconds.

Here's an interesting stat (I hope)…

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Only four Sundance films have been released by major studios - which is to say, not true indies or studio art-house Dependent arms - in the last decade. Two of the films were released by Sony/Columbia/Screen Gems, The Spitfire Grill ($12.9 million) and Girlfight ($1.6 million). Then there is Narc, which came to Sundance as a Lions Gate film and soon thereafter got hooked up with Tom Cruise and Paramount, leading to a disappointing $10.5 million release. Finally, we have Love Jones, which is a borderline entry since it was financed and released by New Line before Sundance, where it did premiere and win the Audience Award. It went on to gross $12.5 million domestic.

I'm not counting the HBO Films to New Line deals (Maria Full of Grace, American Splendor and Real Women Have Curves), since they are technically Fine Line deals. But each has grossed between $5.9 million and $6.5 million domestic. (Perhaps Maria will move forward if its young star gets an Oscar nod.)

Anyway… with the huge success of Miramax and their Sundance pick-ups and last year's bonanza for Fox Searchlight with Napoleon Dynamite, one has to wonder whether a major is equipped to really make the kind of specialty films that come to Sundance fly. It's not that they aren't very smart at the majors. But there is a different mindset at the Dependents and indies. Would a major have had the patience with and paid attention to Open Water or Garden State the way that Lions Gate and Searchlight did?

In a festival year that already has people talking about how much better Cannes is going to be this year, could this be one of those landmark moments for a major to buy and release a Sundance film? And if so, could the film actually gross more than $12 million?

Or is it worth it to buy a Sundance film just in hopes that you've brought the next John Singleton or Robert Rodriguez or QT?

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3:04p - The Matador is a crowd pleaser... my only question is whether any distributor can find a crowd that's willing to go to the movies to see this story with these stars. Pierce Brosnan is excellent as an assassin on the road to burnout. And Greg Kinnear, who I never quite like as an actor, was quite good here as a regular guy who gets drawn into a world he secretly digs.

The style of the film, directed by Richard Shepard, emulates Guy Ritchie and other hipster directors to little advantage. And the script, while charming for not falling into stereotypes, isn't quite clever enough But this could be a really, really good HBO movie... really. That is not meant to be damnng with faint praise. It's just that line of what is marketable and what is not. The audience, including me, really did enjoy this film.

I can't say the same for Forty Shades of Blue. Rip Torn was great and it was great to see him playing a lower key character than he has in a while, but Dina Korzun, who was really the lead of this movie, offered the emotional resonance of a snow bank... not even a melting one like the ones we are currently surrounded by in Park City.

The weather here is amazingly beautiful. No coat today.

But now, I need to eat an early dinner with Heather Havreilesky of Salon at Bandits... she liked Forty Shades of Blue and Happy Endings... go figure. She also loved Rize, of which I approve.

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1:29p - A quickie...

Running from screening to screening… the consensus continues to be that festival is kind of blah… films are good - not many real dogs - but a distinct lack of greatness so far.

Honestly, I am getting exhausted by my own negativity at this point. Today is Hustle & Flow and Pretty Persuasion, so perhaps things will pick up.

I'm at the Chinese Restaurant picking up something I can sneak into the movies and eat, since I forgot to do so this morning. Argh!

More later on yesterday's docs, Shelby Knox and The Matador…

Day Two
Day One
Preview: The Hot Button