Waiting to get in to the Hungry Moose on Main St.
(courtesy Cheezorg)
“Trouble the Water”
PARK CITY, UTAH — As anyone who has ever studied Eddie Murphy’s entourage knows, show business can be a family affair. What’s fun about Sundance is that half the films are documentaries, and filmmakers often include their friends and loved ones in them, so it’s not unusual at all to be walking through a hotel lobby here and see an ordinary-looking person in a chair — not talking on a cell phone but just looking around or reading a magazine — and then realize you just saw them in a movie.
I like to go up and introduce myself to them. For many relatives of aspiring documentary makers, Sundance is a huge emotional reward. The budding artist has often sponged off of them for years while subjecting them to periodic on-camera grillings. Now complete strangers are coming up and saying how much they enjoyed “their” film. It may not be in cash, but it’s payback all the same.
On Monday I spotted the mother of Christopher Bell, whose sensational film about steroids, success and Americanism, “Bigger, Stronger, Faster,” is a contender for top awards at Sundance. Christopher grew up in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., and his parents still live there. Mrs. Bell gets a lot of screen time in the documentary, which uses her family as a case study in the country’s ambivalent relationship toward performance-enhancing drugs.
Mrs. Bell was happy to make my acquaintance, but she said, “Oh, it’s too bad my husband isn’t here so you could meet him, too.” Two hours later, as I’m walking through the same lobby, she calls out to me — and there is Mr. Bell.
Do I tell them I’m with the press? Well, it’s only fair. Besides, I find that saying “Kansas City Star” is an ice-breaker, as it invariably leads to a discussion of someone or something connected to our part of the flyover. Sure enough, Mr. Bell told me their daughter-in-law was a graduate of KU and a huge Jayhawks fan.
**
Here’s the power of Google for you: An old college friend was searching for news about Sundance, which he was attending with a buddy, when he saw my byline.
When the three of us got together late on Sunday, I asked Tim what he and Joel had watched, and they said they had gone to a comic documentary called “A Complete History of My Sexual Failures,” in which British filmmaker Chris Wiatt goes back to ask his old girlfriends why they had found him inadequate.
They loved the film, but they warned me to watch out for a scene in which Wiatt analyzes the body part that keeps getting him into trouble. The scene was hilarious, they said, but ...
“I would never have imagined that the first frontal nudity I’d see at Sundance would be male,” said Joel.
Actually, I’d have been surprised if it wasn’t.
**
As I mentioned in an earlier column, I spend a lot of time on Park City buses. They’re free, they run continuously during Sundance and if you don’t know which one to take, a volunteer is usually standing by at a bus stop to help you out. (Travel tip: Do not, unless absolutely necessary, take taxis in Park City during Sundance. Many drivers come from out-of-town to earn money driving other out-of-towners around. I had a cabbie pull up next to me on Monday and ask for directions to a restaurant.)
I’m finding Park City’s bus drivers to be especially entertaining this year. One had ‘90s house music pulsing from the PA speakers; from the street it sounded like a huge party was going on. A cheerful female driver called out stops, like that automated voice on the MAX line, and stopped the bus briefly to let passengers ooh and ahh at the 20-foot icicles hanging off one of the buildings on her route.
My favorite, though, was an older guy who often commented on his fellow drivers, as if talking to himself, except that he had this big, comical-sounding voice that could not be ignored by the bemused filmgoers he was carting around.
At one intersection, a Lexus SUV in the middle lane decided to make a left, effectively cutting off our wide-turning bus. “Hey!” the driver said. Then, a few moments later: “You .... son of a ...” The next word didn’t come out — it exploded out of his mouth.
What could we do? We laughed. A few of us even clapped.
***
It’s been a few days since I provided an update about my housemates, who all responded to the same Craigslist ad taken out by Nancy. Most of the ones I’ve written about are gone now, their beds taken by incoming filmgoers attending both Sundance and the smaller Slamdance.
For instance, Jack the New York composer has left, but Jouri, the New York director, has arrived — and treated us all to the world living-room premiere of his new film, just accepted by the Tribeca film festival. (He said he missed the deadline for Sundance.)
Josh, another New Yorker who worked on a documentary in competition here, is as much into nonfiction films as I am, and our talks have descended into the kind of geekish analysis usually reserved for fantasy baseball forums.
And then there’s Nadia, a cinematographer who worked on one of the best films I’ve seen here, “Trouble the Water,” which follows the odyssey of three people from New Orleans’ Lower Ninth Ward as they flee Hurricane Katrina’s wrath. Nadia had to miss the movie’s premiere because she was in a Salt Lake City hospital with Kimberly Rivers Roberts, one of the three principals in the film. In what could only be described as poetic timing, Roberts — whose camcorder footage was so compelling that the producers credited her as a director of photography — gave birth to a baby just as her embryonic movie was coming into the world.
I’m told there was some concern whether Kim should even have been flying while nine months’ pregnant. But if you got pulled into a long-gestating film project that got accepted by Sundance, would you stay home?
