I’ve been looking around for the right Sundance Film Festival rental over the past week or so. I tried the Star Hotel, of course, but they wouldn’t even return my call. I mean, that cowboy hat/residual scent riff I ran last year almost certainly broadened awareness of that humble establishment among hundreds if not thousands of film industry people, and they can’t be polite when I call about a room?

Anyway, I’ve been calling around and checking Craig’s List and the prices I’m hearing and reading about are very pre-Great Recession. Park City condo and home owners, in short, are being their usual grubby-mitt selves and in denial of the economic climate all over this country right now. They don’t seem to understand what’s going on in the independent film business these days. It’s been cratering for several months and is but a fraction of what it was last year at this time. Last year it was a pumpkin; right now it’s a walnut. And yet everyone in Park City is charging the usual double-or-even-triple gouge rates.

Attending Sundance is tax deductible and all, but you’d think that some renters would be saying to themselves, “Well, I guess things aren’t as flush this year as they have been in years past” and adjust their rents accordingly. But nope.