John Anderson - Sundancing: Hanging Out And Listening In At Americas Most Important Film Festival

Actually, while many of the noncompetitive features being premiered had already been sold going into Sundance, only a handful of competing fiction and documentary films had distributors prior to the festival.

La Ciudad won the Taos Talking Picture Festivals Land Grant Award, and Riker indeed was a recipient of five acres of land.

S UNDANCING . Copyright 2000 by David Morgan. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data:

Anderson, John, 1955 March 10

Sundancing : hanging out and listening in at Americas most important film festival / John Anderson.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

1. Sundance Film Festival. 2. Motion picturesInterviews. I. Title.

PN1993.4.A55 2000

791.4375dc21

99-039934

ISBN 0-380-80480-8

EPub Edition March 2013 ISBN 9780062287472

First Spike Printing: January 2000

SPIKE TRADEMARK REG. U.S. PAT. OFF. AND IN OTHER COUNTRIES, MARCA REGISTRADA, HECHO EN U.S.A.

OPM 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

For their invaluable help in the creation of this book, I would like to thank, first, the three talented filmmakers who form its spine: Doug Block, who shared his veterans wisdom about the Sundance experience and the noble resignation of that happily crazy species, the documentarian; Gavin OConnor, whose awe and energy were so refreshing and captured so much of what the festival means to young directors; and David Riker, whose very personal brand of intellectual and social commitment often gets lost in the fevered race for Hollywood.

To Jennifer Stott of Fine Line Features and its president, Mark Ordesky, both of whom contributed a relatively enormous amount of time mid-festival. To Bingham Ray and Amy Taubin for their enlightening and caustic insights into the Sundance mythos. To the filmmakers included hereparticularly Errol Morris, Mike Figgis and Eric Mendelsohnfor sharing their bemusement about the whole thing. And to the various publicists, such as Laura Kim, Liz Berger and Mark Pogachefsky, who often seem to be running the whole show and probably do.

Thanks also to Geoff Gilmore, the longtime programming director of Sundance, who may not be an integral part of this book per se, but who over the years has been a font of information about the festival, as well as a tireless promoter of its mission and (most important) its filmmakers.

J OHN A NDERSON

Summer 1999

(in alphabetical order)