More Sundance

Last Thursday after skiing some pretty vacant hills we headed into town to see some movies. Now we didn’t have tickets to any shows which meant that we needed to show up at least an hour early to try and get waitlist tickets. So we show up more than an hour in advance to the theater showing God Grew Tired of Us and proceeded to the tent outside where you have to line up to either get in the theater or for waitlist tickets. Unfortunately there was already about seven fifty people on the waitlist (this theater only seated about 150) so we decided ot waitlist for Shorts V instead. It’s too bad we didn’t get to see God Grew Tired of Us since it won the Grand Jury Price: Documentary, but we did see a few good shorts. My favorites were Aruba and Before Dawn (you can watch them online). John would have also enjoyed One Sung Hero about a karoke missionary (go watch it!). After the shorts they brought up all the directors for Q&A and I felt like an idiot when an audience member would ask ‘so, why did you decide to do one long take for the entire movie? how many takes did it take before getting it’? I would sit there thinking, that movie was just one long take. Who knew! …After the shows and Q&A, the actress who played the karoke missionary in One Sung Hero tried to convince me to come out for some karoke but I wimped out.

Friday we skied some more. It wasn’t as sunny but still really good. After skiing we tried to see the world premier of Alpha Dog introducing Justin Timberlake. Again, even though we showed up way early there was a huge line. Fortunately someone approached us and sold us their tickets to the 9:30pm showing for $40 each. Festival tickets are normally $10, but these tickets were going on Craigslist for $125+, so we gladly paid $40. We later found out that NO ONE on the 6:30pm waitlist got in to the movie.

Having the tickets freed us up to go see Quinceanera. Quinceanera was a really good movie and ended up wining the Grand Jury Prize: Dramatic. It’s a movie about coming of age and gentrification in LA bookmarked by two Quinceanera celebrations. Definitely go see this when it gets picked up and released.

After Quinceanera we needed to grab a bite to eat before movies so we called our driver (uh yeah, the trip was paid for by someone else). And they called ahead to their sister-in-law’s restaurant, and we were whisked in past the line and were greeted with apetizers and a great meal before heading back out to see the later showing of Alpha Dog. The theater was packed (1200 seat theater in a highschool) and they started the show out by bringing out all those involved in the movie, including Justin Timberlake. Now while I’m sure this movie will take a bit of a ribbing because it’s Justin Timberlake’s introduction to movie stardom, it really is good. Unfortunately though none of the people involved in the production stayed around for Q&A (and we heard the 6:30 Q&A was really good), I guess they were too busy celebrating their premier.

After the movies on Friday night we headed out to Main Street to party. Our destination was Harry O’s the only club on Main Street that had been taken over by Cargo Magazine for private parties every night (you had to be on ‘the list’). Friday Liz Phair and Ben Folds Five played, but we missed them because we showed up so late. We also had a bit of a situation getting in, but one of our friends on the inside (who knew people) was crafty and got us in and up to the VIP room (free drinks!). Of course, we rolled in at 12:30 and in Utah they stop serving at 1:00am :P.

Saturday, again, we got a few tracks in and then tried to see some movies. Unfortunately we completely struck out! First we tried to go to see Kinky Boots and they didn’t let a single person from the waitlist in! (Originally we were like 140 on the waitlist, failed to by tickets on the street, but got someone else’s waitlist number and moved up to 45). Next we tried to see Friends With Money (a Jennifer Aniston movie) and again, were way back on the waitlist and had no luck. Even worse was that it was super snowy out. Here’s the line; keep in mind that there are several hundred people waiting inside for tickets and this was the overflow!

Waiting in line at Sundance

And needless to say the snow wasn’t good for my cold:

Waiting in line at Sundance

Pretty sucky we didn’t get to see any movies but we did get a decent dinner before heading back to Harry O’s for some partying. Now this team we didn’t have any connections inside but still high off my Las Vegas bribing success I tried similar tactics here. Unfortunately, Park City bouncers and hosts are unaccustomed to the practice of bribing and I got nowhere. Our other friends also got nowhere. However, because of the weird bar setup, we were able to cozy up to two people who were retrieving their coats from the coat check and we asked, and got, their VIP necklaces! This enabled us to waltz on in and see the Counting Crows (our other friends ended up being able to bribe their way in at $70/person):

Counting Crows

Of course, Harry O’s is a complete b-list party scene. There were no famous people just a bunch of wannabe’s like ourselves. Next year, we’ll need to figure out how to get plugged into the a-list scene.

After Harry O’s shutdown we called our driver and had him pick us all up in the van:

Off to the next party

And we headed off to our friend’s condo for more partying (last call at 1am sucks!).

Sunday was more skiing and then back to Seattle.

So would I go back? Would I recommend it? Any advice? Yes, I definitely recommend it and would go back. Next time I’d go for the first half of the festival (opening weekend) instead of the last half (closing weekend). I’d also ensure I had tickets ahead of time because the waitlist situation sucks. You have to wait at least an hour (some people would wait two or three) and even then our success rate was only 50%. I’d also adjust my expectations about random celeb sightings (though maybe there were more at the beginning of the festival), and Park City is no Vegas in terms of partying (unless you can get into those a-list parties with Paris). I’d also check out the skiing at Park City and Deer Valley.

This entry was posted in Parties, Photos, Travel. Bookmark the permalink.

One Response to More Sundance

  1. Pingback: Alex Black @ Work

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *