Sundance hits, and hype

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on January 20, 2009 at 1:56 PM, updated January 20, 2009 at 2:40 PM

I didn't go to Sundance this year. But it felt like I did.

I sat at home and went to other screenings in New York and still got the same flu I always get in Park City, and used to blame on the festival's long workdays and drafty condos.

And while I missed all those festival screenings, I still got the same dizzy sense of dislocation I do every year -- of slightly giddy, overpraising audiences and slightly desperate, overspending studios.

The fest still has 5 days to go and there are already some films getting major praise.

"An Education," a coming-of-age-the-hard-way story, has been saluted over at Hollywood Elsewhere (and called, with breathless hyperbole, a possibility for "canonical immortality," over at Defamer).

Other movies getting critical hosannas and audience ovations include the burnt-out cop drama "Brooklyn's Finest," family weepie "The Greatest" and Jim Carrey's oddball gay romance, "I Love You Phillip Morris."

But are they really as good as reviewers and fans are saying they are?

I haven't seen any of them yet myself, and I trust some of what I'm hearing. But I can't help but remain a little skeptical of any raves coming out of Sundance - strictly because, well, they're coming out of Sundance.

Any festival can be overpowering, but Sundance - which, even for people with tickets or press passes, requires endless bus shuttles and long waits in frigid outdoor lines - seems designed to destroy. The years I went I suspected it wasn't run by Robert Redford, but by Dolph Lundgren, back in his "Rocky IV" days - "I vill break you."

And so, I think, anyone who survives everything Sundance has to throw at them, tends to overcompensate. Suddenly that perfectly decent movie they waited in line for is, by the final fadeout, a masterpiece. That gritty little indie that, in some nice New York screening room, would look like just any other gritty little indie, begins to gleam like a hidden gem.

Because it has to. Because, if it doesn't - well then why have I been putting up with this all week?

Ewan McGregor and Jim Carrey pitch woo in "I Love You Philip Morris"

I've seen some wonderful films at Sundance over the years, and many of them were films that I loved just as much when I saw them again, six months later. The gruesome documentary "Capturing the Friedmans," say. "American Splendor." "The Squid and the Whale." All held up to repeated viewings.

But there were too many other times when I felt the warm glow fading as soon as I hit the cold air outside the Egyptian Theater.

Studio executives are even more vulnerable to Sundance mania. Anne Thompson has a good column this week over at Variety where she revisits some of last year's big "buys" at the festival - "Hamlet 2," "Choke," "Henry Poole Is Here" and "American Teen," all touted as breakthrough hits.

Not one of them made money. In fact, not one of them even made back most of what the studios had paid for it.

Box office, of course, isn't the best barometer of success. The comic "Hamlet 2" was, at times, very funny and I was a huge fan of the documentary "American Teen." That neither pulled in big audiences is no reflection of the work. "Hamlet 2" had an offbeat title and a star (Steve Coogan) that most Americans didn't know; the target audience of "American Teen" was already getting its dose of reality-TV at home, for free. Both were iffy propositions, commercially.

So why didn't studio suits see those risks at Sundance, even as they ponied up money those films couldn't hope but earn back?

I think it's because there's something in the air there, frankly (or the lack of it - it's a pretty high-altitude town) that clouds people's judgement. It's hard enough seeing a film under those low-sleep, high-stress circumstances as a fan or a critic and deciding whether or not you like it; seeing it as a studio acquisitions person and then deciding whether or not a lot of other people will like it is even more daunting.

And then add to that fact the pressure of knowing that half-a-dozen other people are making the same decision right then, too - and you begin to understand why those checkbooks come out so quickly, and why those checks get written for so much. Because having too much confidence in a film, and then being disappointed - well that's regrettable, but excusable (The stars didn't promote it/The counter-programming was too tough/The ad campaign was all wrong).

But not seeing the potential profit to a cheap little movie - and then having another studio grab it? That's a fire-able offense.

So I missed Sundance this year, and I'm looking forward to seeing some of its big-buzz pictures a few months down the line. But I'm going to appreciate seeing them without my head lost in the Utah clouds. And I'm going to continue to take everything I read about them with more than a few grains of salt.