Since 2010, Hollywood Elsewhere has been attending the Telluride Film Festival Patron’s Brunch. It’s been a great pleasure to munch and hobknob with actors, filmmakers, fellow press folk, etc. Delightful. But this year’s brunch (Friday, 8.30, 10 am) is a different bird. Some press folk are being disinvited or elbowed aside or what-have-you, and I’ve just learned I’m on this list.

Hey…no sweat. Water off a duck’s ass. It’s all about the movies, bruh. Maybe I’ll be re-invited next year. It’s all a dance.

Posted this morning at 8 am:  Well adjusted and professional adults who know next to nothing about the ins and outs of a certain situation don’t jump to conclusions.

The patrons (flush folk who pay $3500 a pass) have been increasingly riled about the brunch being over-crowded with too many aggressively chatty press people (who pay $780 for a basic “festival pass”) and their tendency to  dominate opportunities for face-time with brunching celebs. I’ve been hearing about such complaints for a few years.

Apparently push has come to shove over this issue, and as we speak the festival is extra concerned about alienating or angering the swells. 

I know Telluride honcho Julie Huntsinger well enough to know it’s not some “we kinda don’t like you as much today as we did five or ten years ago” deal.

A sizable group of press has never attended the patron’s brunch in years past. It’s never been a “come one, come all” situation.  This year Julie has been lamentably pressured into expanding the roster of non-invited press…that’s all.

Will THR profile assassin Rebecca Keegan be cordially told “sorry, not this year”?  Will any reps from the Penske mafia (Deadline’s Pete Hammond, Michael Fleming, IndieWire’s Anne Thompson, THR’s Scott Feinberg) receive this message from Telluride management?  Of course not. They’re too politically powerful, too well-armed.

I haven’t seen a list of the people who’ve been zotzed, but I’m presuming they’re among the smaller, more independent fish in the pond.  I’ve attended the brunch for  14 years straight (since 2010) but not this time.

I’m not passing along loose talk about anyone else who may have been handed a proverbial “black spot” (Robert Louis Stevenson’s “Treasure Island”) or who have otherwise been elbowed aside.