Sundancin'
I have to admit, when you live in Park City, and you know the Sundance Film Festival is about to embark on town, there is a tad of trepidation - mostly about traffic and parking and getting around. And your cell phone reading "circuits busy" because there are so many more talkers in town. And about seeing all of those people in black with silly shoes on slipping around our snowy sidewalks. (Because it ALWAYS seems to snow during Sundance).
But. The minute I picked up my press credential and film catalog, I got excited and totally into the swing of a wonderful week of CREATIVITY abounding. The catalog itself is a treat. It's like when you used to get a course syllabus at school at the very start of the semester - it listed the great books you were going to get to read - the projects to come - all on fresh-ink-smelling, clean pages full of possibility. Except this time, there's actually NO HOMEWORK! Just a week of sinking yourself into a theater seat and worlds you aren't a part of - or had never even considered - for two hours at a time … a luxurious step back from your day-to-day existence into the arena of the imagination. Just perusing through the catalog (kudos to whomever at Sundance produces that thing - it's a massive work of art in itself) inspires your mind with possibilities.
I started with a REALLY fun one Saturday night. "The September Issue," about the September 2007 issue of Vogue being put out (their largest issue to date). Now. Being a magazine editor. I eat this stuff up. Being someone who grew up near the pulse of New York City, I eat this stuff up. Having sinfully loved the candy-like-gossipy novel, "The Devil Wears Prada" and loving the resulting chick flick that came of it, I EAT THIS STUFF UP. I got to see the REAL Anna Wintour (Vogue's legendary editor) and she is just as scary - if not more so - just as control freakish, beautiful, cold, sophisticated and bitchy as I'd ever read about. Ooooooo. When that woman looks straight into the camera, it sends chills down your spine. Brrrrrrrr! This film was a documentary - a real behind the scenes look at what happens in the hallowed halls of Vogue's New York offices, and of course you get to follow their staffers through London and Paris for the couture shows and oh, it's just so DELICIOUS! I loved every minute of it. I've fallen under Sundance's hypnotic spell. I'm off and running. More soon.
What I Left Out: I heard rumor that Anna Wintour was in town for Sundance, but didn't go to the premiere of her own documentary - instead she went and saw something else at the Eccles Center. Apparently she lived up to form, complaining about the lighting in the hallways at the high school and demanding that she be given a theater seat with empty spaces all around her so that she could have her privacy. Go, Anna.
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Kristen Gould Case is editor of Park City Magazine and a freelance writer who publishes nationally. Weaned on the blue ice slopes of New England, she moved to Park City 23 years ago and hasn't looked back.
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