THE SUNDANCE SURVIVORS

The London Daily Telegraph Saturday Magazine.

Chris Campion hitches a ride.
[Photographs by Raechel M. Running]

Thursday 21 January
We reach Park City, Utah, at midnight. First impressions are of a picturesque moonlit winter wonderland set high in Wassach Mountains above Salt Lake City. It's like a snapshot of small-town America. We have driven more than 2,500 miles in four days to get here, our journey only marred by a near-death experience in the Rockies - when a Mack truck almost bumped us off an icy mountain road - and the mysterious loss of one of production coordinator Anna Barranca's mountain boots. Eight members of the King's Mob are slumming it for 10 days in a condominium ghetto, in a one-bedroom apartment in the middle of a huge construction site three miles from town.

The group includes Matt Pizzolo and Katie Nisa, the writer/ director/ producer team on Threat, six other members of the Mob, plus a producer from New York One cable news station.

Friday 22
We take a quick tour of Park City to orientate ourselves. It used to be a simple mining town; now, famous for its ski slopes, it's known as "the Switzerland of America." In 1981 the US Film Festival, formerly based in Salt Lake City, moved operations here, and four years later Robert Redford's Sundance Institute took over management of the festival, renaming it in honor of its new patron's best-known role.

What looked quaint at night is positively surreal by day. All the buildings are constructed with faux frontier-like facades that make it feel like a location right out of Chaplin's Gold Rush. And for 10 days in January each year, Park City is flooded with prospectors mining for cinematic gold. More than likely, these transient types are well-groomed but smelling of cheap cologne, dressed head to toe in black, eyes hidden behind mirror shades and talking loudly into mobile phones. Almost every exchange with them begins with the same innocent-sounding question: "Are you here with a movie?"

Sundance screens just under 100 short and feature films, for which it receives around 2,500 applicants. Slamdance, a five-year-old rival festival, scoops up a small percentage of the overspill, screening another 60 films. That leaves around 2,340 disgruntled filmmakers (and their entourages) to wander around Park City trying to sell their wares. Some of these consider Sundance's selection process a "crapshoot," and attach themselves to one of Park City's alternative festivals. Robert Redford has described them as parasites on the true spirit of Sundance. There's been Slamdunk, Slumdance, Lapdance, Undance, Souldance, Son of Sam Dance, Tapdance, No Dance, and Skindance, each with a unique selling point.

Last year's Son of Sam Dance was basically a projector on wheels that screened films on any available outside surface. Souldance caters specifically for women and minority filmmakers. Slumdance sneaked into vacant buildings and basements. Last year, Slamdunk was held in the local Elks Lodge and scored much-needed PR points for screening Nick Broomfield's documentary Kurt and Courtney (banned from the main festival by Courtney Love's threat of legal action). This year they have taken over a huge bar on Main Street called Harry O's. Skindance, the most renegade of the lot, is reputedly a porn festival that travels around Park City in a limegreen VW van and stops for anyone who flags it down.

Sundance itself reeks of Hollywood. The publicity frenzy is focused on a handful of premieres all featuring big-name stars - among them Glenn Close, Alec Baldwin, Ben Affleck, Rosie Perez and Rosanna Arquette - who jet in to Park City only to attend the screenings and private parties. Despite what anyone tells you, parties, not movies, are the lifeblood of the film festival. It's there that you will move and schmooze your way to the top. But only if you possess the correct laminate pass to slip by the doormen. The King's Mob have neither stars nor passes to present.

The benefits of Sundance to local residents are debatable. "We look forward to learning the latest eyewear trends," says Keith Aran, editor of Salt Lake City's free newspaper, the E.A.R., who says festival-goers (or "the people in black," as they are called by the locals) are "the most demanding, arrogant, and by far the most frugal visitors to Park City." He claims the greatest amount of fun to be had during the festival is picking up gossip about bidding wars, with companies going fist to fist to acquire a handful of "hot" movies. This year the money is on Happy Texas, a film about two bank robbers on the run who hide out in small-town America posing as a gay couple. It was acquired for anything between $2 million and $12 million, depending on whom you ask: the company that bought it or the one that lost out.

Saturday 23
Wake up to find Robert Altman's face glaring from the front page of the Park Record. His new film, Cookie's Fortune, opened the festival last night at a star-studded gala in Salt Lake City. Introducing the film, Robert Redford is quoted as saying that there is no greater example to be held up as "a definition of independent film than Robert Altman." The Mob obviously don't agree. Someone has drawn devil horns atop Altman's head and scrawled an alternative headline across the newspaper: "King's Mob Take Over Park City."

Raechel Running rounds the Mob up for The Telegraph Magazine photo session. We congregate outside the Egyptian, a grandiose-looking cinema on Main Street that doubles as a Sundance screening venue. As Raechel snaps away, people stop and stare. Some assume that they have stumbled on a photo call for a new movie and start to take our pictures. We've been here less than three days and already people are mistaking us for the cast of Scream.

After the shoot, the Mob split to explore the town. David R. Fisher and Anna head for a shoe store so that Anna can replace her lost boots. David becomes convinced that the store will be the perfect venue to screen Threat. The store manager seems to like the idea, and suggests we call the owners on Monday.

Sunday 24
Matt attempts to contact Slamdunk's organiser, Justin Henry, to find out if he will screen Threat. He dials the Slamdunk number. By sheer chance, Howie, an old school friend of Matt's sister, picks up the phone. "Are you here with a movie?" Howie asks.

"Yes," says Matt enthusiastically.

"Bring it down to the house tonight. We're having a party and there's a video projector in the basement."

We roll up Mob-deep to the house around midnight. It's a vast five-story chalet set on the mountainside, with a spectacular view and a fridge full of beer. Matt hands Howie the Threat tape.

"How long is the movie?" asks Howie suspiciously.

"It's a feature," says Matt.

"That may be a problem - we're only screening shorts tonight."

We sit politely in the screening room, watching short films while silently draining the fridge of beer. The only film screened to get Mob approval is Red Light August. Its self-effacing director, Jeff Gomez, formerly wrote comic books and scripted video games, but gave it all up to make an intensely personal film about obsessive-compulsive disorder, which has afflicted him since childhood. Jeff is celebrating tonight. He was signed up earlier today by Hollywood super-agent Mike Ovitz.

Monday 25
We wait for the phone call that will make or break the trip. David, the Mob's official fixer, tries to call the owners of the shoe store but keeps getting voicemail. As far as everyone is concerned, it's now the shoe store or nothing. It seems too late to find another venue. As a last-ditch option, Matt and Katie suggest we advertise private screenings in the condo, since everyone seems to be turning their living space into screening rooms.

David calls one last time and hits paydirt. He slickly convinces the owner to screen Threat in his store and refuses to let him a get word in until he agrees to let us use it after-hours for two nights. Finally, we're on the festival map.

Mob Stance is born, a one-film festival devoted to Threat. Now we just have to spread the word all over town to convince the paying public to see it.

Tuesday 26
The Mob are coming apart at the seams. Tomorrow we start screening the movie at JMR Chalk Garden, the shoe store on Main Street, and nothing is ready. Half the Mob have driven to Salt Lake City to design flyers and stickers. The other half, including myself, are stuck in the condo trying to tidy up our personal hell; piles of dirty clothes, bedding and rubbish have taken over the apartment. We go out to the laundry room and come back only to find that the rest of the Mob have returned from Salt Lake City and left for a party, leaving us stranded.

On their return, a huge argument ensues, resulting in a pointless group discussion over ethics that runs late into the night and resolves little at all. The problem with a mob is that without direction it can turn into a chaotic babbling of conflicting voices. But with a purpose instilled, it's an unstoppable force. An uneasy truce is called and aims are restated so we can get on with the business at hand.

Wednesday 27
The premiere screening of Threat is at 10pm. It's midday and we have nothing to screen it on and nothing for people to sit on. The van is dispatched to pick up garden chairs from a warehouse in Salt Lake City and televisions from Wal-Mart. The shop has a no-questions-asked, 30-day return policy so we can buy two state of the art televisions and return them before we leave. Genius.

David secures a slot for tomorrow's breakfast show at the Park City TV station so we can publicise screenings. The King's Mob art department - Ben Knight, Noah Brown and Valerie Hallier - make banners to display outside the shoe store by cutting Threat and King's Mob stencils out of grocery boxes and spray-painting them on to shower curtains. It's a bit Blue Peter, but it does the trick.

Half an hour before showtime, with the ink still drying on the last banner, the van is packed and ready to go. We race up Main Street to find a nervous Katie holding a parking space for us opposite the store. David is rampaging up and down Main Street screaming "COME SEE THREAT!" in a booming baritone that scares the drunken revelers stumbling out of parties. Forty or so people can't refuse his nebulous offer to see "the only the truly independent film in Park City" and Threat plays to a full house. As the credits roll, it gets a standing ovation.

We pack up the van and head back to the condo, bedding down around four.

Thursday 28
We are woken at 7am to go to Channel 45 above a bank on Main Street. The studio is no bigger than a broom closet and decorated with chintzy winter- themed home furnishings and famed photos of frolicking polar bears. A fake French window at the back of the set seems to look out on to a mountain. Our five-minute slot is wedged between an item on a film about a female stalker and the Athlete of the Week. The show's presenter is unfeasibly perky even as five moody half-asleep mobsters file on to the set behind her.

In the afternoon, David, Noah, and Valerie hand out Threat flyers in the Eccles Theater at the Park City High School before a screening of the teen flick, Jawbreaker. A Sundance volunteer points officiously at a sign saying "No Smoking. No Rollerblading. No Radios" and says there is no soliciting allowed on school premises either.

It's war on the street of Park City. All the big movies at Sundance have been shown and now there's even greater competition for the limited advertising space on the official hoardings between smaller movies. Overnight city officials have torn down virtually every poster in town, forcing everybody to start their promotions from scratch. Luckily someone in the Mob had the foresight to get Threat posters displayed in store windows up and down Main Street.

The posters advertising Lapdance went up today, boasting go-go dancers and porno movie premieres. Two of the people behind it are South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone, who have good reason to smirk. Their live action features, Cannibal: The Musical and Orgazmo, were rejected by Sundance. But Orgazmo, which improbably features a Utah Mormon preacher moving to LA and becoming a porno star, has since become a popular midnight movie at Salt Lake City's Tower Theater, which just happens to be Sundance's main screening venue.

Apparently, there are so many mobile phones in Park City that the cellular phone system has reached meltdown. I imagine a phalanx of publicists, agents and distributors thrown into a mass confusion of missed meetings.

Tonight, the Threat screenings draw two more sell-out crowds, among them Jeff Gomez and his wife, Chrysoula, who rave about the film. Two people leave midway through, asking Katie if the movie has been sold yet (apparently a common ploy among distributors). One girl stumbles out and throws up at Katie's feet, a more convincing response.

Friday 29
The festival is winding down and industry folk are fleeing back to LA. The Mobsters can barely move. Exhaustion has caught up with everyone.

I follow Matt and Katie around town. After handing out a meagre number of press packs and trawling the corridors of every major hotel in Park City, they give up and jump into an empty pool to cool off.

Saturday 30
All that's left to do is return the televisions to Wal-Mart. I admire the guns and weaponry displayed unattended at the end of the store next to the children's toy department and note that Wal-Mart operates a taxidermy service.

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