The thing no one talks about is how Sundance is a means by which nerds completely overrun a jock town. Everything about Park City is designed for outdoorsy types: people who hurl themselves down mountains for sport and wear “gear†and actually enjoy the fact that it’s eight degrees Fahrenheit. But for a precious shred of time every year, the place becomes inundated with indoor kids who just want to gush and debate over things like director panels, acquisitions, and what exactly that final scene meant, anyway. It’s a refreshing upending of the world order that I wish was an exportable model: Start hosting film festivals in NFL stadiums and Olympic Villages. Give the school gym to the AV kids. Let the locker rooms turn themselves over to geeky-sweet film buffs and all of their chatter.
The best of the geeky-sweet film buffs at Sundance are the volunteers, who can be found at every venue and bus shelter in crossing-guard neon, not to be confused with snowboarder neon, happily braving the cold and distracting people waiting in lines with conversation. I walked by one the other day who was standing outside of a parking lot just dancing and waving to whoever drove by. “I want your vibe!,†someone said to him from out of a car window.
“I want it too! Fake it ’til you make it!†He said back.
Judy Bloom
I devote more time on Saturday to major screenings, beginning with a documentary a world away from the Brett Kavanaugh film: It’s Judy Blume Forever, a loving, and frankly overdue, portrait of the author of Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret and Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing. The crowd outside of the Park Avenue Theatre seems even larger and more excited than the one for Justice the night before. “People must really like this Judy Blume person,†a volunteer says to me. “I wonder if she’s related to C.C. Bloom.†I try to imagine the sort of person who doesn’t know who Judy Blume is but who can reference Bette Midler’s character in Beaches by name before I realize he’s probably joking.
There is a strong and delightful middle-aged feminine energy in the theater. The women behind me sing along to every song on the venue’s playlist. “Closer to Fine†comes on, and as the sounds of Amy Ray and Emily Saliers fill the room, one woman raves about the Indigo Girls documentary playing at Sundance, It’s Only Life After All. “My cousin is Emily’s ex-girlfriend and best friend but I couldn’t get tickets,†says the other.
The movie itself is colorful, sensitive, and funny, mostly because 84-year-old Blume is all of those things. It also unexpectedly has a clip of the “Beach House†episode of Girls, which all movies at Sundance should be contractually mandated to include as it’s the apex of cinema. I basically cry from start to finish because I’m nostalgic and sleep-deprived. Afterward, Blume joins the audience on Zoom for a Q&A, talking about the latest push of conservative Christian censorship efforts in schools and libraries, our Utahan surroundings not lost on her. She also says it’s “so weird to see yourself and your life. It’s like looking at someone else, or else you can never look. I watch and think, Who is that woman? She needs a good haircut.†As we pour out of the theater after, a film bro behind me tells his friend, “I said I was gonna try to get through this against my will, and I fuckin’ loved it.†A woman in Lululemon says to her friends, “Judy and her husband both looked very fit!â€
Bad Behaviors
Theaters in Park City are more spread out than I was expecting, with some taking half an hour to get to, and that’s assuming the buses are running on time. Luckily, all my screenings for the day are on the north end, where there’s a grocery store. I buy grocery-store sushi that says “God Loves You†on the packaging and remember how our shuttle driver the night before was blasting Christian radio. Sundance isn’t just an indoor-kid takeover of a sporty destination; it’s a progressive Hollywood pop-up in a Mormon state, with land acknowledgements and queer filmmaker initiatives and little Judy Blume buttons that say I READ BANNED BOOKS.
At the next screening, I sit next to someone who works in the marketing department for Sundance and was a volunteer for five years before that. He complains that he couldn’t get into the White Claw activation and I tell him about the police shutdowns. “So it’s a Utah thing,†he says. “Have you been to the Egyptian yet? There’s a bar in there, and you can take your drink to your seat, but not if the film has nudity in it.†He says that he gets a little ashamed of his state’s politics, and that he thinks of moving to L.A.
The screening is for Bad Behaviour, the debut film from Alice Englert, who is soft-spoken and has one of those Australian actor accents that sounds lost between hemispheres. The festival programmer introduces her by listing her acting and short-film credits, and never once mentions that her mother is Jane Campion (who makes a winky cameo in the film as a doctor).
I find the movie darkly funny for its first half-hour before it spins out into something that loses me, but the audience seems to be laughing and engaged, and Jennifer Connelly and Ben Whishaw are both fantastic in their roles. I chose this screening mostly because Dasha Nekrasova plays an influencer in the film, and I have a sick fascination with the Red Scare girls despite having never heard an episode.
That’s James Cameron!
I go to the Bad Behaviour premiere party with some colleagues, but only after Meredith Marks and her husband, Seth, come to the Vulture Spot to try La Mer hand creams. There’s a tension in the air because it’s only two days until we’re graced with the presence of Lisa Barlow, and we’ve chosen our sides in that battle. My friends and I feel like hot shit at the premiere party until we discover there’s an even more exclusive premiere party in a roped-off area within the premiere party. That’s where the actors are.
Which is fine by us, because a DJ is playing the loudest set I’ve heard so far at the festival, and we want to dance. The only people dancing are women north of 45, whipping their hair back and forth and herking and jerking and shimmying their hips and … a couple more hours in … grinding. Between Judy Blume and this, I learn that yes, while volunteers are the lifeblood of the festival, middle-aged women are its beating heart. The DJ plays a mashup of “Gimme Gimme Gimme†and “Gimme More†and Fleetwood Mac dance mixes and everyone’s happy. These ladies have more stamina than I do so I sneak into the VIP where no one is dancing but where Ben Whishaw is looking very much like a Bushwick gay and Dasha is off in a corner smiling and laughing with some guys. The back room is a Narnia portal to New York.
Back on the dance floor, someone keeps pointing at a tall man with white hair and saying, “That’s James Cameron! That’s James Cameron!†It’s definitely not James Cameron.
Two Evans Hansen
Outside on Main Street it’s night, and every building has a line outside of it. I go to the Meredith Marks party in her store, where the coat check is just to put your own coat on the rack next to the ones she has on sale for thousands of dollars, and where Cosmos are being served out of Meredith Marks–branded cups. The little swag bags have stickers that say “By a Thread with Meredith and Seth Marks.†I ask someone working the event if it’s a podcast, and she says it’s not yet, but they’re planning on releasing it soon. I get good goss that there was a karaoke party being held for Ben Platt and Noah Galvin’s movie, Theater Camp, and that a couple of prominent queer comedians couldn’t even get into it. When you wait outside for two Evans Hansen who won’t let you in? Honey, that’s the literal definition of tap-tap-tapping on the glass, waving through a window.
I hop from Meredith Marks to a party being held by a slightly less luxury brand: Gucci. Gucci is celebrating the documentary Invisible Beauty, and if the last party was cheap gay, this one is giving expensive lesbian. It’s intimate and subdued with dark lighting and fashionable people, and Dakota Johnson is holding court in the back near the bar. I wanted to check to see whether or not there was a lime in her drink before remembering I had to get across town to the premiere of Cat Person, the film adaptation of the viral short story starring Nicholas Braun.
So Mother
After my car crawls down Main Street for five minutes and doesn’t even make it one short block, I figure the movie is a bust, so I link up with Vulture social-media genius Wolfgang Ruth and we venture out to the world-premiere midnight screening of Brandon Cronenberg’s Infinity Pool. Wolfgang is a horror buff while I get very easily spooked, but midnight horror movies are a rich tradition at the festival, launching movies like The Blair Witch Project, The Babadook, and Hereditary. On the red carpet, everyone has time for one question with Mia Goth, so Wolfgang asks, “What scream queens have been your inspiration?†She gives him a blank stare, whispers something to her handler, and straight up walks away. We’re shook, but it’s fine, because then someone hands Alexander Skarsgård a leather belt to wear like a dog collar and leash and he puts it on and walks into the movie. It’s a gift from the Greek gods of horny.
“Is there any booze here?†I hear him ask someone on his team as we’re walking in. There isn’t. I think I see him roll his eyes a bit.
The movie itself is creepy and kinky and fun, but it’s late so we both sleep through most of the seven-minute Technicolor orgy scene. At 2:15 a.m., Wolfgang and I are ragged as we leave the theater through a side door. “I hate to say it,†I say, “and she is my enemy now, but Mia Goth was unfortunately very mother in that.â€
“So mother,†sighs Wolfgang.
Tomorrow: Panels, Gen-Z, and #MeJew
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