PARK CITY, Utah— Sundance is where I get lost. On my first trip to Park City I didn't know anything or anyone, and I got a bunk in a room of four women by emailing an acquaintance of an acquaintance and blurting out, “I really don't care who I sleep with, as long as they don't mind my boyfriend saying I snore.”
That was 16 years ago and I have visceral memories of circling the city on a ferry at 2am hoping to recognize my stop. There was also one afternoon when I took a shortcut through some trees and got stuck in snow up to my shins. (It was also when I learned that cheap boots dissolve under pressure.) But just as clearly, I remember getting lost in the movies of that year: groundbreaking films by the Safdie brothers, Luca Guadanigno and Taika Waititi, plus Jennifer Lawrence's breakout performance in “Winter's Bone.”
It took me a while to get the hang of Park City, learn theater locations, and make friends, one of whom broke his arm and laptop skating on a patch of ice, while another gave me the furry red gloves I've been wearing here for a decade. And I've spent the last two Sundances preparing to let this city go when the festival moves to Boulder, Colorado, in 2027. (At my second screening this year, I even lost the right mitten.) The Egyptian Theater on Main Street isn't showing any new films this year because the festival is already closing branch by branch, but it's where a colleague dragged a dozen critics to the not-so-complete fourth screening of “Hereditary,” insisting that we had to see it, and he, of all people, put Ari Aster on the map. (He's also my editor now. Hi, Josh Rothkopf!)
God, I'm going to miss this place. For God's sake, let's go with independent provocateur Gregg Araki's conception of him: Robert Redford, a titan who plotted an independent film festival out of his head like he was Zeus and died in September.
“How did you come up with that concept?” Araki asked onstage at what he considered his 11th Sundance premiere. “Thank you, Robert Redford. You are a god to me, you are immortal.” The twenty-something fan sitting next to me felt the same way about Araki, yelling at his favorite filmmaker so much that he apologized.
Cooper Hoffman and Olivia Wilde in the movie “I Want Your Sex.”
(Lacey Terrell/Sundance Institute)
Araki is here with the bold and eye-catching erotic comedy “I Want Your Sex,” starring Olivia Wilde as a modern bondage-loving, anti-woke performer named Erika, whose latest effort to shock is a giant vagina made of bubblegum. “Art needs attention,” he insists. So does Erika, ordering her new, much younger assistant, Elliot (Cooper Hoffman), to go to bed, go to a public bathroom, and change into a set of frilly pink lingerie.
Erika's work is not very good. But Wilde is fantastic. His haughty lines and imperious bone structure cut through the screen like a knife. (And you should see the outfits clients Arianne Phillips and Monica Chamberlain put on her.) A murder mystery is introduced into the script that is too crazy to be taken seriously. But as Erika's mealy-mouthed lover, Hoffman is ordered around and humiliated and, above all, enjoys his perverted misadventure. Me too.
To be fair, art needs attention. Everyone at Sundance comes here not just to get lost laughing while Hoffman gets beat up, but to find the next Araki, Aster or Safdie and, if you're a distributor, get them at a good price. It takes money to release an independent film to the masses and one of the biggest obstacles today is that no one seems to have enough to market a niche sensation to an overwhelmed and distracted audience.
“It's time for a change,” my rideshare driver said as we weaved through traffic, explaining why she was running for state Senate. He couldn't understand why Utah hadn't fought harder to keep Sundance in town, feeling like it had been a fiscal boon. I responded that I had heard rumors that Park City estimated that they made more money catering to stylish skiers than, say, movie critics.
My Sundance has never been glamorous. I rarely have time to go to a party and when I do, I'm standing on a wet rug in my socks waiting to eat a spoonful of chili. The only exception was the year I was on the jury for a short film that included actor Keegan-Michael Key, who I ran into on Friday morning doing interviews for Casper Kelly's colorful and quirky midnight movie, “Buddy,” which is like a very special episode of “Barney.” Key plays a giant orange unicorn who hosts a children's television show and forces children to hug him or die. It's a bit weak compared to Kelly's other incredibly strange projects (“Too Many Cooks,” “Adult Swim Yule Log”) that always add another destabilizing twist. But you sense subterranean levels of weirdness that hint that he already has ideas for a sequel.
Sundance is where hungry artists level up. Just nine years ago, documentary prankster John Wilson was here sleeping on a couch and filming a snarky short called “Escape From Park City” about his discomfort with stargazing and small talk. That trip tipped a domino that indirectly led to his brilliant HBO television series, “How to With John Wilson,” and now he is back to release his first feature film, “The History of Concrete.” (He said no one from the festival had yet mentioned that short to his face.)
Essentially one long episode of his show, “The History of Concrete” follows Wilson's zigzagging curiosity about what's right beneath our feet, from an analysis of gum patterns on the sidewalk to a pilgrimage to the shortest street in America. Despite the ubiquity of concrete, you discover that it has not been around for a long time, and yet, to our peril, it is already crumbling around us.
Along the way, Wilson participates in Zoom meetings, unsuccessfully presents this metadoc to financiers, and, out of sardonic desperation, studies how to write a hit Hallmark movie. The general idea is that our civic and artistic infrastructure is crumbling. A genius like his is the weeds that sneak through the cracks.
Charli XCX in the movie “The Moment”.
(Sundance Institute)
Many of this year's films confront the relationship between cash and creativity, such as video director Aidan Zamiri's strobing and deliberately suffocating “The Moment,” which I will review in its entirety when it is released next week. Partying British pop star Charli XCX plays an unflattering version of herself struggling to fend off a phalanx of producers, managers and record executives. Structurally, it is a mockumentary. Tonally, it's a horror film about the death of an artist's soul. Alexander Skarsgård is especially funny as a New Age concert documentary director who sucks up to the corporate overlords while breaking Charli's spirit a little more in each scene. It's like Jigsaw with a manbun: a villain who preaches self-empowerment while tearing her to pieces.
In real life, Charli seems certain that her summer as a brat is over. She moved to winter Park City and starred in two other films at the festival, including Araki's “I Want Your Sex.” But now that season is changing too. “This movie is about the end of an era, and this is the end of an era,” he said, gesturing toward Eccles' audience.
“The Moment” harmonizes well with Joanna Natasegara’s “The Disciple,” which delves into the fraught backstory of Wu-Tang Clan’s controversial seventh album, “Once Upon a Time in Shaolin.” Only one copy exists, which was auctioned in 2015 to future hedge fund founder and pharmaceutical executive Martin Shkreli, who said he paid $2 million for it so he could impress his other rich friends. RZA and Wu affiliate Cilvaringz wanted to increase the value of the art by treating a rap album like the Mona Lisa. Instead, the Internet accused them of selling out to the devil.
Natasegara's archival images are amazing. I watched an entire documentary on the night of the album listening party seen in the film, where RZA's mentor, a real Shaolin monk, wowed attendees by lifting his leg over his head. “What flexibility,” jokes one of the revelers. The documentary fails to mention that in October 2016, Shkreli tweeted that he would leak the album if Donald Trump were elected president (he didn't), but it does explain how a few months later, Shkreli was sentenced to seven years in prison for securities fraud. The government confiscated the Wu-Tang record and sold it to an NFT group for double the money.
The new owners of the album threw us a listening party the day after the Sundance premiere. With our cell phones locked in security bags, we gathered around two expensive, strange-looking ATM-like speakers to listen to about 20 minutes of music. The album started with a calm wind and then turned into a tornado of thunder and sirens, swordplay and gunshots over big horns and a funky soul beat. I especially liked the title track, which seemed like the soundtrack of a hero strutting into battle before frantically spiraling into a spiral of violins. Somewhere there, Cher was singing (we were told), although I didn't recognize her distinctive howl.
Most of us stood very still, as if afraid that if we swayed too much we would put the music out of our heads. But the people in the back of the room had heard the album before and continued talking loudly, treating the party like a party. Sacrilegious, yes. But also an act of recovery of an art that only wants to be enjoyed.
People were still partying, but I needed to look for the lost and found station, which had thoughtfully posted a photo of my mitten online. Ironically, I couldn't find the office (no one, not even the information desk, knew where it was), but they very kindly brought me my mitten. Thank God, it was too early to say goodbye. I'm not ready to end my own winter era in Park City just yet.
