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When did those Sundance-is-losing-its-soul pieces first start to happen? The mid '90s? A bit later? When did the Sundance-has-been-totally- corrupted-vulgarized-and-putrified stories start happening? Around 2000 or '01? Question is, as far as Sundance tear-down articles go, where does this John Anderson 1.19 Guardian piece fit in?

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Posted by Jeffrey Wells on January 18, 2007 at 10:50 PM

comment #1

Chris Molanphy says ...

The 'Spitfire Grill' madness happened at Sundance '96. So I would trace the beginning of the lost-its-soul stories to that moment.

Posted by Chris Molanphy at January 19, 2007 5:24 AM

comment #2

Rich S. says ...

South Park aired an episode on August 19, 1998 called Chef's Salty Chocolate Balls which begins with Redford moving Sundance from Park City. Here's the dialog from the first scene:

[A small Western town. Bustling sounds are heard as the camera slowly pans down. A crowd streams by in the background behind a sports car and limo, and front and center are Robert Redford and a woman]
Robert Redford: Why do we hold the Sundance Film Festival here, Phyllis? It's so painfully crowded.

Phyllis: Because. People from L.A. love to come to a quaint little mountain town for a few days, and this gives them an excuse.

Robert Redford: No, this used to be a quaint little mountain town. Now look at it. Sushi restaurants, upscale clothes stores, $25 parking, Liam NeesonÃ¢â‚¬Â¦ I tell you, Phyllis, I think we've tapped this town's resource out. We must move this festival to another small mountain town and begin again.

Phyllis: That's not a bad idea. But where?

So the soul of the festival has been gone at least since then.

Posted by Rich S. at January 19, 2007 6:19 AM

comment #3

nemo says ...

For a couple of years around 1990 I lived in Santa Fe, New Mexico. At the time I kept meeting people who would say, Santa Fe is OK, but they've mostly ruined it. You should have been here 15 years ago. It was great back in the early 70s, but now it's lost its soul.

I visited Santa Fe this past year, and found that I myself had turned into one of those people. Santa Fe is OK, I heard myself say, but they've ruined it. You should have been here 15 years ago. It was really great back in 1990.

Same thing with New York City. I first started to spend a lot of time there in the late 70s, during the punk rock era. Even then I kept meeting people who said New York ain't what it used to be. You should have been here 15 years ago in the early 60s, during the early Dylan era.

The last few times I visited NYC I was the same way. New York is OK, but they've ruined it. It's too clean, they closed CBGBs, they cleaned up Times Square, the taxi drivers are too polite. You should have been here back in the day, back when New York was dirty, dangerous, and thrilling, back in the punk rock and French Connection days.

Posted by nemo at January 19, 2007 7:06 AM

comment #4

Bilge says ...

They've been saying that about New York since the late 1600s. Remember when they chopped down Peter Stuyvesant's pear tree in 1867? Hasn't been the same since then...

Posted by Bilge at January 19, 2007 8:04 AM

comment #5

corey3rd says ...

Sundance jumped the shark when it ran a Mariah Carey movie.

Deep down Sundance has always been a bit of an elitest joke. How can you celebrate Indie films in Park City? The cost of getting your crew out and shacked up is more than your film's budget.

Posted by corey3rd at January 19, 2007 8:38 AM

comment #6

dobbsy says ...

It started the day someone decided to create the "indie" religion. Who cares how a movie gets financed? Only those who then want to capitalize on some kind of illusory notion of "purity" and "artistic soul" and others forms of pretentious claptrap that diguise the fact that everyone's on the make just like the folks who are selling shingles and siding.

Even Altman told the Indie Spirit crowd one year, "Admit it! You all want to work at the Studios!"

Problem Two: Sundance Hype is just "America First" with torn designer jeans and a backward baseball cap to make it look palatable, but it's still "America First." Same as it is in the Bush White House.

The press wouldn't dare spend the time or energy (or risk losing readers) by celebrating all the international filmmakers who ARE ALL "INDIES" but lack the public relations machine built around this nonsense.

So marginal talents are overblown into "the latest thing" and it all must be important because ALL THE HOLLYWOOD AGENTS are there. Right.

Yes, some terrific films emerge and that's laudable and wonderful and deserving of about 22% of the attendant b.s.

What is missing in all this "American indie" hysteria is some sense of perspective, some sense of proportion and also some sense that the indie religion is just another plot by lifestyle salesmen and has nothing to do with quality filmmaking.

That by the way, happens at movie studios (yes, it's heresy, but true) and in every struggling filmmaking community from Jerusalem to Jakarta who have the misfortune of not making films in English and not having passes to ski with Bob.

SO: It's not the Sundance Festival that has a problem, it's the glut of overblown hype and the foolishness of those who contribute to and/or buy same hype by the bushel.

Ask yourself this: How many films from around the world last year were better than LMS and never got a U.S. release? Do you know the number? Their titles? Their filmmakers?

I'll be quiet now.

Posted by dobbsy at January 19, 2007 9:02 AM

comment #7

Craig Kennedy says ...

It's true Dobbsy that "Indie" is practically a brand just like Starbucks or Levis and it's no guarantee of quality, but riddle me this: If you could pick a random handful of movies to see, would you rather pick them from a typical Sundance line-up or from the Now Playing list at your local Mega-Cine-Entertaino-Plex?

I'd rather have the former. The less interference from a studio, the greater the chance the film will defy the conventions of genre required by the need for a mass audience. You're more likely to find films that fill weird and intresting niches; films that don't follow the rules; films that take chances.

The sad thing is that even with smaller films, the perception of success is dictated by how much money the film ends up making. Rather than looking for something new and interesting, the tendency is to look for the next Little Miss Sunshine.

Apparently Sundance had already been labeled a bust before it even got started because it didn't appear there was a break-out hit.

Posted by Craig Kennedy at January 19, 2007 9:24 AM

comment #8

T. S. Idiot says ...

In case you haven't seen it, one J. Wells makes a special guest appearance on the video portion of http://carpetbagger.blogs.nytimes.com. Looks like he will use his spare Sundance time to audition for the lead in Grumpier than Thou: The Don Imus Story.

Posted by T. S. Idiot at January 19, 2007 9:40 AM

comment #9

dobbsy says ...

CJ: Actually, the theaters in my town are playing Iwo Jima/Flags, Apocalypto, Little Children, Notes, Volver, Pan's, Venus, Lives of Others, Departed; love 'em all!

The least interesting film from awards season is LMS: the one from Sundance!

But we violently agree. I love all the edgy, daring films from Sundance, at least the ones that are WATCHABLE.

The job of smart filmlovers like Mr. Wells is to NOT buy into the hype and to also do the hard work of finding/celebrating the films that aren't supported by free buffet tables in the media circus of this lifestyle con game that has become Sundance coverage.

Ain't against Sundance. I love it! Just wish the media could show some enterprise and integrity and keep it in perspective and rachet down a little bit of the overkill coverage of Bob's Ski Party Weekend (without James Brown and the Bobby Fuller Four) and rachet up all coverage of the "what we're missing from around the world, ie that which doesn't have the mark of CAAin on its forehead."

Posted by dobbsy at January 19, 2007 9:52 AM

comment #10

le corbeau says ...

When did Blood Simple win, '85 or something? I have to think some people thought it was all over then, when a genre film won instead of an earnest drama about the menstrual cramps of an Iowa farmgirl in 1911 (The Monthly Visitor, with Samantha Mathis, Jason Gedrick and Rip Torn, directed by Marisa Silver).

Posted by le corbeau at January 19, 2007 10:41 AM

comment #11

Craig Kennedy says ...

Mgmax, didn't Samantha Mathis play a deaf girl in that one?

Posted by Craig Kennedy at January 19, 2007 10:52 AM

comment #12

dobbsy says ...

mgmax: you are my new hero. too effin' funny.

Posted by dobbsy at January 19, 2007 11:38 AM

comment #13

dangovich says ...

My biggest concern is that Sundance has sold its soul to the devil that is celebrity culture. How long before Britney Spears' directorial debut shows up at the festival?

This affinity for projects with names could be a ntural reaction to the growing number of submissions the festival attracts every year. More submissions means more dreck, especially with digital technology making feature budgets cheaper than ever. In such an environment, bewildered programmers naturally may end up clinging to projects with names.

But still, I wonder how many films we'll see at Sundance from first-time feature directors with casts of unknowns?

It seems like the number is dropping. But this is purely an anecdoctal observation. Someday I may get off my lazy ass and investigate this issue.

Posted by dangovich at January 19, 2007 11:39 AM

comment #14

Terry McCarty says ...

Here's something interesting from Scott Foundas'
article in LA WEEKLY this week about Sundance:
[John Pierson] also has tough words for industry
reporters who conflate box-office success with
artistic merit and for what he sees as a herd
mentality among some more serious-minded critics.
"If you look at Sundance last year," he points
out, the narrative competition had a larger number of tougher films by lesser-known filmmakers than in quite a while, and they had a hard time getting attention. That's not Sundance's fault. It's the media's fault for turning Sundance into a situation where 92.3 percent of all the coverage winds up being about LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE. My big issue across the board with nonstudio filmmaking has been: Why can't people make up their own minds? Why does there tend to be a bandwagon effect with critics and the media? Why have distributors decided that they can't even deal with films that don't get selected for Sundance in the first place? Again, that's not Sundance's fault: The power that has been accrued to the festival has been ceded, not grabbed."

Posted by Terry McCarty at January 19, 2007 12:40 PM

comment #15

dobbsy says ...

Here's Defamer's take on Sundance:

"Robert Redford "came out swinging" at Sundance's opening press conference, taking shots at the Bush administration and decrying those who would use his swag-suite-riddled festival as a film buyer's market instead of a pure time for appreciating independent moviemaking, then jetted off to shoot his Tom Cruise movie."

Yep, the guy who runs the most important indie fest in the world can't be bothered to make an indie film and in fact hasn't bothered in the entire history of his saintly indie religious gathering in the mountains of Utah.

You do the math. Even argen can figure this one out.

Posted by dobbsy at January 19, 2007 12:42 PM

comment #16

Argen says ...

What was that, dobbs? (I leave off the "y" so I don't feel like I'm talking to an aborted Sesame Street character.)

I figured you'd be too busy wiping the blood of that six-year-old off your cock to take a shot at people. Guess I was wrong. Oh, well.

Posted by Argen at January 19, 2007 1:50 PM

comment #17

Terry McCarty says ...

Re Dobbsy's comment
THE CLEARING, released through Fox Searchlight, counts, of sorts, as Redford's recent venture into "indiedom"--albeit studio-boutique indiedom.

Posted by Terry McCarty at January 19, 2007 2:01 PM

comment #18

dobbsy says ...

Argen: I'm not the only one here frightened of you. More posts like your last one and you may find a serious response that has nothing to do with debating movies and it will have nothing to do with me either.

Posted by dobbsy at January 19, 2007 9:46 PM

comment #19