Park City, Utah -- Host to Skiing and Film Fests

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Parent Category: Film Festivals

Category: Previews

Published on Monday, 21 December 2009 01:57

Written by Eric Lurio

Park City, Utah, is a ski resort, and for most of the year, it’s a sleepy imitation of Aspen, Colorado -- rich in wonderful scenery, decent slopes and trendy, almost kitschy knickknack shops. But if you’re not into skiing, it’s nothing special.

Yet, for more than one week of the year -- nearly 12 days -- it becomes the movie capital of North America. Basically half or so of Hollywood’s movers and shakers--not to mention zillions of indie filmmakers, distributors, journalists, poseurs, hangers-on and assorted fans and buffs -- descend upon this little town for the annual film festival called Sundance.

And at that time, Park City not only hosts this ultra-prestigious Film Festival but also the more recently respectable Slamdance counter-festival.

Back in the day, there were dozens of other film festivals that week, but they have been driven out over the years.

So aside from the snow and freezing temperatures, Park City becomes a cinephile’s wet dream during last week or so of January. But it wasn’t always so...

The Utah/United States Film Festival was a creation of the Utah Film Commission, and began its illustrious career in 1978. It was a complete flop. The repertoire was primarily, as former festival program director Lory Smith puts in his book Party in a Box, "...to show old movies and have famous people talk about them." To be frank, nobody outside of Utah really wanted to go all the way to Salt Lake City -- where a sort-of prohibition was still in effect -- just to see that. However, the six independent films shown got relatively large audiences.

The first Utah/US Film festival wound up $40,000 in the hole.

The next year was even worse, although Robert Redford, the famous movie star and Utah resident, was able to get some major Hollywood muscle to show up at the fest. While it did far better than the first one, it was still a financial disaster.

Something had to be done. Film vet Sydney Pollack -- who won an Oscar® for directing Tootsie -- whom Redford had recruited for the U/USFF board of directors, made an entirely unserious suggestion: "You ought to move the festival to Park City and set it in the wintertime." It would be, he said, "... the only film festival in the world held in a ski resort during ski season, and Hollywood would beat down the door to attend."

The board decided to give this silly idea a try. The 1980 festival was cancelled and in 1981 it was pushed up four months and moved to Park City.

The rest is history.

In 1979, Redford and many of the U/UFF staff got together to form what would become the Sundance Institute -- named after his most famous role. “imagine,” he’s reported to have said, “If I’d gotten the part of Butch Cassidy."

Redford’s institute was a major player in the programming for the U/UFF, and they and Utah began to squabble. So in 1985, the commission basically forced the ownership of the U/USFF on Redford and his institute. And it got bigger.

The focus on oldies was dropped, (although retrospectives continue to this day) video and shorts competitions added and some of the winners, like Steven Soderbergh’s 1989 Sex, Lies and Videotape became commercial hits as well.

The festival was making money, and the Institute had an event to plan around and give structure to many of the organization’s  other projects. The transition was complete in 1991, when the U/USFF changed its name to The Sundance Film Festival.

The number of independent films went from six in 1978 to almost a hundred in 1990, the last year under it’s original name. It’s grown exponentially pretty much ever since.

Getting stuff into Sundance got harder and harder as the festival got bigger. In 1994, after would-be auteurs Shane Kuhn, Dan Mirvish and Jon Fitzgerald all had their films rejected, they decided to have their own counter-festival, called Slamdance, at the same time in Salt Lake City in revenge. On the second day of the first festival, to get publicity and just tick Redford off, they moved to Park City.

They were wildly successful on both counts, and have remained there ever since. This of course inspired others.

The Slumdance Experience (Park City officials refused to let them call themselves a festival) was the biggest counter-counter festival, and was nearly as big as Slamdance in ‘97. It was canceled 2007. Not only did it suffer from a dearth of submissions but no one would let the guys who ran the darn thing have any space. Allegedly, they had trashed their last venue.

Among the many counter counter-festivals that have either bitten the dust or were exiled are:

Slamdunk was totally digital and was last here in 2007.

No Dance, sponsored by Oscar-winner Forest Whitaker, lasted at least six years before folding sometime in ‘03.

Undance was in a hotel room, and disappeared without a trace.

Tromadance was basically a publicity stunt for Troma films, but they gave up in December 2009.

X-Dance, which showed extreme sports films, was exiled to Salt Lake City in 2008.

the Park City Film Music Festival was postponed until April.

Schmoozedance, with its focus on Jewish films, was thrown out in 2008 when Sundance grabbed its venue for the following year despite having it run the week before Sundance even opened.

ROADance was a free outdoor film festival of silent films projected from a truck, and it vanished without notice.

And there was Sleazedance, which showed porn out of a minivan and was chased out of town ages ago.
 
As to the fate of all this year’s counter-counter festivals, there’s really no information at this moment. Over the past 10 years, Park City has been successful in getting all of them to flee, mostly due to usurious rents.

All we know for certain is that with the exception of Slamdance, Sundance has finally killed of the competition.

Slamdance will remain. It will once again take up residence in Treasure Mountain Lodge (on Main Street) in the center of town for a 10-day party. This year, it has 20 feature films in competition this year and 100 over all. It’s very informal and if one can’t get into a Sundance screening this is a great place to hang out.

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