NRO Weekend, February 3-4, 2001
Four Daze at Sundance
Movie-hopping, party-hopping, and some unexpected conservative chatter.

By Suzanne D’Mello, a writer living in Los Angeles

Thursday, January 25, 2001

t's been seven years since I was last in Park City, Utah, for the Sundance Film Festival. After all this time I find the town unrecognizable. Like Santa Fe or Jackson Hole or other glitterati watering holes of the West, this once rugged silver-mining town has been thoroughly colonized by Hollywood, and, at least for the duration of the festival, sightings of natives are rare.

We — I am accompanying my husband who is attending the festival for business reasons — arrive on a snowy Thursday evening and find that Main Street looks like a cross between the Sunset Strip and Melrose Ave. on a Friday night. The number of people wearing coats of leather, shearling, chenille, and shag — most of it black — is staggering. Prada and Hugo Boss adorn every chic and chiseled body. Feather boas, sleek knee-high boots, and the latest '70s fashions are everywhere. Spacious, airy restaurants offer California cuisine, and the sushi in the Japanese restaurants rivals that of West L.A.

Ever since Steven Soderbergh put this festival on the map with his Sex, Lies, and Videotape, this town high up in the Wasatch Mountains of Utah has become a Mecca for independent filmmakers. Along with producers, distributors, agents, publicists, and attorneys, they come to Sundance to make deals and to party. Partying definitely seems to be the order of the day; if one is not at a movie, then one is at a party, preferably a hot party.

We hook up with some friends and make it to three parties the night we arrive. The first one is called "10 Directors to Watch." There are security checkpoints on the roads outside the mansion where the party is being held — not for purposes of stopping terrorists, but to weed out something far more scary for this crowd: the uncool nerds, losers, and yahoos bent on crashing.

Our next shindig is at a luxurious ski lodge higher up in the mountains. With the wind chill, it must be between 5- and 10-degrees Fahrenheit up here. A lone woman, who seems to have been teleported straight from the Sunset Strip, stands at the entrance to the lodge, wearing a tank top and a patent leather skirt so tight it looks sprayed on. "Theez partee eez boreeng," she screeches into her cell phone, oblivious to the cold and the crisp, still beauty of the night. Moving inside, one sees what she means. The rooms are as big as barns, there is no loud music blaring from speakers, and uncool, elderly actors like Martin Landau and his wife are sitting around.

We are eager to be off, especially since one of our friends, a college buddy who's now a pediatrician/producer, has tickets to the "hottest" party of the night. It is being thrown by the producers of a film called Hedwig and the Angry Inch. It's been pegged as a "very cool" film, if not "the coolest film" of the festival, by all the friends, acquaintances, and strangers we meet. We convoy back to town and get in line in front of a nightclub. The security guard tells us that the party starts in forty minutes, at 11 p.m., but since we have been told that it is both the "hottest" and the "coolest" party that evening, we wait.

When we finally are allowed in, we tumble down some stairs into what looks like the bowels of the earth, and shoot into a room that has black walls, black ceilings, and black floors. It looks like a less-skanky version of the Whiskey nightclub on the Sunset Strip; it's a claustrophobic fire-trap. Blondie, the Clash, and other '80s bands are being played at deafening levels, and the crush is so great that we have to scream our small talk when we bump into people we know. We spot a friend. He is a with a woman with the kind of very pretty, vapid face that generally signals a Wannabee Actress. Her head whips around toward my husband when she finds out that he is a director. Even in the darkness, I can see the calculation come across this pretty face.

She leans in close to my husband and rubs her chest against him. He backs away a few imperceptible inches. She moves forward a few imperceptible inches, until she's leaning her whole body against him again. Hollywood is such a tough place for men, I think — there's so much temptation. I grab my husband's hand. "Shall we go down there," I scream politely to our group, pointing to the floor below. We say goodbye to our friend and the actress, who smiles sweetly at me as we leave. I smile sweetly back.

Friday, January 26, 2001

fter several more receptions, movies and parties, we bump into an acquaintance of my husband's on the sidewalk. He has lime green stickers pasted every which way on his clothes. They read "TROMADANCE." My husband introduces him as Lloyd Kaufman, the owner of Troma Entertainment, which has produced such films as Tromeo and Juliet and Surf Nazis Must Die. He is in town sponsoring the Tromadance Festival, which is one of the many satellite festivals that have grown in the shadow of Sundance; some others are Slamdance, Slamdunk, and LapDance.

Kaufman used to sponsor the Slamdance festival, but now, he says, the participants have become "as exclusive and snooty as the Sundance people." So, he's started his own smaller, egalitarian festival. He thrusts a brochure at me and I leaf through it. The mission statement says the Tromadance Festival is "an opportunity for everyone who's ever picked up a camera to have their work seen without the compromises required by elitist cartel interference." The film offerings in this festival — "by the people, for the people, of the people" — include A Primer For Dental Extraction. The description of the film is, like Kaufman, unaffected and to the point: "The protagonist aggressively cleans her teeth and chain-smokes. Pursued by the camera, she assaults it repeatedly. Very artsy." Then there is a film called Puking Zombies 13: Beach Blanket Bloodbath, which is described as "Puking zombies. I think the name says it all."

Kaufman and his wife have an angry tale to tell. My husband says I'm reporting on the scene for National Review Online. Kaufman becomes very animated when he hears this. "Yeah, that crowd will be interested in this," he says. "Tell them that two of my staff people got arrested here on the street handing out leaflets for our film screenings. Their First Amendment rights were violated. They have a right to free speech. They were just standing on a public sidewalk when the cops arrested them and they've been in jail for two days." Apparently the Sundance Film Festival organizers have arranged for a city ordinance that gives them exclusive rights to distribute leaflets on city sidewalks during the festival; all others are considered trespassers for the duration.

It turns out Kaufman went to Yale, and was in the same class as George W. Since there are a few Yalies in our crowd, we ask him which college he was in and whether he knew George W. Bush. "No, I only knew the failures," Kaufman says, matter-of-factly. I turn around to his wife who has been standing supportively beside him. "And what do you do, Patricia," I ask. "I'm the New York State film commissioner," she says, "I have my own operation here." We quietly wander off to another party.

Saturday, January 27, 2001

t the ungodly hour of 8:30 a.m, we are sitting in a movie theater watching Hedwig and the Angry Inch, a musical about a transexual looking for love. In the first half hour there are titles in hallucinogenic colors and shapes; there is simulated anal sex, there is simulated fellatio, and there are naked bottoms of strange men. This is more than I can handle without my morning cup of coffee. But I wake up somewhat when the first wonderful song begins. It sounds a lot like the David Bowie/Iggy Pop glam-rock of the '70s.

The movie turns out to be wickedly funny, with an engaging central character in Hedwig, though it has all the usual liberal gay-man's slams against obnoxious, overpowering mothers, sex-crazed, perverted military men, and Christianity. John Cameron Mitchell, the director, actor, and writer who adapted the film from his off-Broadway play, goes on to win the directing award at the festival.

At the next screening, Southern Comfort, about a real-life woman-to-man transexual dying of ovarian cancer, we bump into Roger Ebert. He and my husband know each other and we sit with him. "I think your wife should sit next to me since I'm so fat, " he says charmingly. I oblige. He chats with my husband for a bit, then turns to me. "So, what do you do?" he asks. "I'm a writer," I mumble. "I'm covering the festival for National Review Online." Ebert's eyebrows go up. After a pause he says, "I like that magazine." Now my eyebrows go up. "Do you read Jonah Goldberg?" I ask, thinking surely everybody reads Jonah Goldberg. "I like that they're for legalizing drugs," he says. My eyebrows go up again. "I don't think they're libertarians," I say.

He chats with my husband for a little bit, then turns to me again. "So, are you a conservative?" he asks. "Yes," I say. My husband tells him I'm shy about saying I'm a conservative, since people in Hollywood don't like conservatives. Ebert looks at me. "I like conservatives," he says, "I just don't like Republicans." Since he has been very gracious and friendly, I don't tell him I'm a Republican.

"I'd like to take your picture," he says all of a sudden. "May I?" Ebert says he's been taking pictures at the festival for his Sundance album. My husband and I huddle together as he goes down heavily on one knee, but his camera batteries aren't working. He stands up. He shakes the batteries, then gets down on his knee again. He does this three times, bobbing up and down like a cork. He asks around if people have batteries. He shakes his camera and adjusts his batteries again and goes down on his knee once more. He seems determined to document this rare sighting of a conservative in the hitherto liberal habitat.

Sunday, January 28, 2001

n the flight back to L.A., I'm sitting separately from my husband. The man next to me turns out to be Henry Bean, the writer and director of The Believer which won Sundance's Grand Jury prize for best dramatic film. Bean's film is based on a real-life character, a self-hating Jewish man who became a Nazi and joined a fascist gang. It is one of the few films in the festival I regret not having been able to see. "So what do you do?" he asks. "I'm a writer," I mumble. "What do you write?" he asks. "I'm writing about the festival for National Review Online," I say. Bean's eyebrows go up. We proceed into a discussion about art and literature, where we agree on many things. When we come to politics, however, the gulf between us is enormous. I find myself defending George W. Bush and John Ashcroft for the umpteenth time since arriving at the festival.

Bean was also at Yale, a year ahead of George W. I ask if he knew Lloyd Kaufman. No, he didn't, he says. One of the producers of The Believer comes over to talk to Bean, who introduces me. "She's from the National Review," he says. The producer's eyebrows go up. "But she's very nuanced," Bean adds, "a perfect traveling companion." This is a very gracious thing for him to say considering we have been arguing heatedly. The producer grins at me. "Tell her what you said in your speech at the film's premiere," he says to Bean, and walks back to his seat.

Bean explains that he said the right wing had stolen the election for George Bush, and that he thought this signified the rise of fascism in the country. I point out that Bush won fair and square; he played by the rules and observed all the laws. But we can't agree on Bush, or the election, or our politics in general, and we go back to talking about literature. As we get off the plane, he shakes hands with genuine good will. Mr. Bean asks for the website address for NRO, and tells me he'll look up my review. I tell him I will see his film. I watch him walk off, and feel saddened and puzzled that a man as engaging, intelligent, and highly literate as he could dislike George W. Bush so much.

As we head home in the brilliant L.A. sunshine, I think about the last few days and calculate that it will take me maybe three or four months of solitude — conversations with my husband, mother, and cats notwithstanding — to recover from all of this.