Robert Downey Jr. Told Everyone at Sundance About Christopher Nolan’s Bathroom Breaks

Photo: Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty Images

Like a mid-tier Judd Apatow movie, this year’s edition of the Sundance Film Festival is all about turning 40. Sundance is not just the only American festival of the Big Five (with Venice, Cannes, Berlin, and Toronto), but it’s also the only millennial of the group, and as the baby sister (Sundance is a she, like a boat or a woman), it’s a huge deal that she’s entering a fifth decade. Big anniversaries ending in zeroes are perfect opportunities for organizations like the Sundance Institute to cement their legacies, and ceremonial commemoration was in full swing at the festival’s opening-night gala on Thursday.

There’s something inherently more casual about Sundance than its European siblings: Festivalgoers bump into celebrities on Main Street, where big studio and brand spaces are snuggled up against ski lifts and panels are held in inherently unserious spaces like the “Shutterstock Chalet� and “Stanley Creators Lounge� (as in, the viral cups). As New York social-media editor Zach Schiffman put it, “Everything is like a joke from The Other Two.� So the gala probably has the most pomp and circumstance of any event at the festival, a sort of condensed awards show, with a mix of emerging and A-list honorees. This year’s edition took place at a Yellowstone-core ranch, right down to the security guards in cowboy hats stationed at every door. The attendees were a mix of producers, trustee-members, and wealthy patrons of a certain age with taut faces that suggest they asked their plastic surgeons to give them “the full Biden.� An older woman wearing Van Cleef told me she had just had her first celebrity sighting — �the actor who plays The Good Doctor� — and pointed toward Jesse Eisenberg.

Eisenberg presented Kristen Stewart with the Visionary Award, making for a little Adventureland reunion, and in her acceptance speech, Stewart reminisced about first coming to the festival 20 years prior. “I got my first pair of UGG boots, and I actually got to be where the cool kids are.� Jodie Foster then presented the Vanguard Award to Eternal Memory director Maite Alberdi, making for an unofficial Panic Room reunion. All of this built up to Robert Downey Jr. presenting the Trailblazer Award to Christopher Nolan, who got his start at Sundance with Memento. Both of their speeches had Oppenheimer-level run times, with RDJ working the crowd and essentially doing a stand-up routine, in which he said Nolan’s “spirit animal� is “the timberwolf� and confirmed Cillian Murphy’s account of the restrictive bathroom-break policies on Nolan’s sets: “11 a.m. and 6 p.m. sharp. Diuretics are his kryptonite.� I shudder at the thought of Josh Peck getting a UTI.

At over 11 minutes, Nolan’s acceptance speech felt like an indie-film-themed trial run for acceptance speeches to come in the next few months. “Was I ever an independent filmmaker? For reasons I’ll explain, I realize I’ve never been an independent filmmaker, because I don’t think anyone can be. I think painters are independent. I think poets can be independent. As filmmakers, we’re so dependent on other people. We’re so dependent on not just who we make the films with, the people who help us with the craft, but this world of distribution, this world of getting the film out to an audience.� An elderly man sitting at my table nodded off partway through the speech, before waking up, applying eyedrops, and complaining a bit too loud about how yada yada it was.

At Sundance, there is no playoff music.

Other Day One Observations:

➵ A man who finances films as a hobby introduced his girlfriend to me as “my hot piece of ass� and proceeded to complain about how “the real independent voices are on the right.�

âžµ A Sundance fave whose name I shall not reveal refused to speak to Vulture on the red carpet.

âžµ The one time of year and setting in which it would be appropriate for Darren Aronofsky to wear a scarf, he did not wear a scarf. He did paint his nails for the gala, though!

➵ Real Housewives of Salt Lake City sightings: 0, but the fest is young …