My 2011 Film Festival “Week 2” kicked off with Lou Reed’s 28-minute short, “Red Shirley,” a documentary interview which followed his cousin Shirley’s now 100-year-long life story from her Polish homeland to New York City. In its own fashion, Lou and Shirley’s film, with its quite idiosyncratic personality, supplied a lingering ambiance for the equally-esoteric festival week that followed.
At what has become one of my favorite annual off-screen events at Sundance, the ASCAP Filmmakers & Composers Breakfast, I was once again provided an opportunity to hone my chatting, if not networking, skills with some most interesting festivarians, including my table mate, the eclectic local impresario Teri Orr.
Although Teri and I are longtime friends and both write weekly columns for The Park Record, we actually seldom get the opportunity to sit across the table and wax philosophic, as it were. Catching up on her TED adventures and Dave Eggers’ stop-in at the “Mega Genius Supply Store and IQ HQ” in Swede Alley went down quite well with one of those spicy tomato-juice concoctions.
Further on down the road, as the blues lyric says, I moseyed into the Sundance Channel HQ for a gratis “cup of joe” of the designer persuasion and, solely through happenstance, found myself sharing couch space with one Gunnard Duboze, music composer for “Connected: An Autobiography about Love, Death and Technology,” which screened in the U.S. Documentary Competition.
Now, Gunnard is one cool cat. Certainly the most interesting film-production acquaintance I made during this year’s festival, Gunnard, it turns out, hangs his beret in the Outer-Richmond neighborhood of San Francisco, just around the corner from “Tommy’s,” my north-of-the-border tequila Mecca of choice.
With the agave sacrament as a jumping-off point, we soon found ourselves dishing on all sorts of topics from sports to literature to favorite cocktails and ethnic foods before winding up with film composition. Utilizing an almost Pollock drip-style technique, he splattered the conversational canvas as only a truly engaged artist can when asked by a dilettante to dissect his craft.
As with many a rhapsodic discourse, ours would end too soon. Gunnard, you see, was in dire need of an ingestible substance with the innate ability of keeping him awake until he got back to the condo. Pointing him toward the “cup of Joe” dispensary, off I headed across the street to join the line for the Music Café.
Under the heading of “don’t you just love it when a plan comes together,” I immediately acquired fellow music-and-film obsessive Tom Heffron in my crosshairs. It’s not unlike when you see Mike or Barb Hill enter a dining establishment: You know, without a doubt, that the food will not disappoint!
It’s the same with Tom. When you see him at or near the front of any line, just jump in somewhere. If you have even the remotest cultural sensibility, change your plans, whatever they are, and get in line. This is not news, of course, to the local arts community. Word has it that, if, for whatever reason, Tom stops while walking down the street, a line begins forming behind him.
But the other obvious upside to standing in line with Tom is that, by employing the ol’ shuck-and-jive, he has a manner of causing time to pass more quickly. Sooo, before we knew it, we found ourselves inside the Music Café waiting for “The Low Anthem” (whom I knew I’d dig, cuz Tom told me so).
Other signs of impending virtuosity quickly became manifest with Chris Mautz and Darin Piccoli, proprietors of The Stateroom music venue in Salt Lake, showing up at a table on one side and Brian Richards of Mountain Town Music on the other. They must have heard that Tom was there.
I only wish he would have been behind me in the waiting line for “Magic Trip” at the Egyptian. That way the hall monitors might have not cut the line off at my kneecaps, sending me and my # 31 wait-list voucher to round up a sympathetic barkeep. Maybe I can sell it on eBay.
Well, it’s another “wrap” for one of my favorite events of the year. The hangover is already in play. Visions of eleven spectacular films plus four trips up the North Fork to Sundance Resort with its exquisitely intimate Screening Room and ever-so-cozy Owl Bar continue to dance in my head. Along, of course, with a comely volunteer or two.
Jay Meehan is a culture junkie and an observer, participant, and chronicler of the Park City and Wasatch County social scenes for the past 40 years.