Sundance

Thursday Jan 15th

1st day in Park City, Sundance

today was a day where the stars aligned. Even people were surviving plane crashes. This news made yesterday feel very special. I arrived in Utah around 2 in the afternoon mountain time after barely making the connecting flight from Colorado. In order to get to Salt Lake we flew over the Colorado Rockies and this was a beautiful site. At times it felt like we were flying between mountains as the altitude is so high. When we landed we were informed that our bags were ‘delayed’ so we had to request that they be brought to us and dropped off later in the night. Next we took a shuttle to our chalet in ‘Park City’. Park City is about an hour out of Salt Lake. It looks like an upscaled version of Mount Tremblant village. Chair lifts run right into town. Year round the locals wait for this festival and when it hits town everything is about the festival. Prices are raised and every store, restaurant and bar has Sundance Film festival specials. Our chalet is home to 12 people, all of who worked on the film or are drinking buddies of ours. We have a hot tub, a theatre screening room, a ping pong table and a large hill for tobaganing. The one thing that has been most unsuspected is the altitude sickness. I have been short of breath and woozy since we landed. My brother Dillon, Jay and I went into Park City to a bar and had dinner and drinks. You have to become a member at each bar you go to and this entails a 5 dollar membership price and plus 2 dollar cover. Beer has a 3.2% alcohol content and State rules insist that all shots (we immediately got tequila shots) only be filled half way up the glass. Something to the effect of the amount of ounces they’re allowed to serve at once. We headed home after 6 beers and a conversation with some USC students who were in town to watch. On the way home we took a karaoke taxi which was amazing. There was a whole sound system and microphone in the van. Jay, the musical boy wonder, belted out a rendition of ‘The Cars’ ‘Just what I needed” and added a Dracula laugh to it. Then the hot tub, then couldn’t breath because of the altitude so hit the sack.


Had a dream in which I was up on stage, in Park City Utah, with Cold Play. All eyes were on me and when it came to my turn to sing I was distracted. My ear was being talked off by someone (can’t rememeber who) while the crowd was waiting, in frustration for me to sing. In the dream I didn’t have the balls to stop the yaking stranger to tell them it was my time to sing. I never sang and the crowd eventually booed me off stage.

Friday

It just hit me how amazing this experience is. We have a film in the biggest film festival in the world. Mickey Rorke and Bret Easton Ellis (guy who wrote American Psycho) collaborated on a film and it is premiering here. The tag line is ‘sex,drugs and new wave’. That sounds like the dream movie to me, and it is playing in the same festival as my film. I have seen some celebs already. The guy from ‘Brick’ and ‘3rd Rock from the Sun’. I did an interview for the National Post in a backstage room and we were surrounded by directors, producers and actors. I am granted back stage access everywhere which also means free soft drinks and snacks at all festival designated stops. Tonight is the first screening of ‘Captain Coulier’. My altitude sickness is even worse today, and I am about to lie down before I get dressed up for the biggest night of my life, thus far on planet earth. Surprisingly there are a lot of brazillian people living in Park City, which I see as a good sign seeing as I have always wanted to visit Brazil. I also have a liking for Brazilian women.
Interesting tid bit: Park city designates itself the ‘Amsterdam’ of Utah. A truly hippy/left wing village surrounded by conservatism.