Life Between Films

Day 1 [Jan 20]: I’m finally down in Park City again! After a drive into downtown, I reached the heart of it all. I love this cute little town. Most of the day I spent chilling on Main Street, specifically in the Sundance Channel HQ, Co-Op, and HP cafe/lounge. The cool thing about hanging out is getting the free stuff. The sponsors of Sundance are everywhere and since this is not my first time, I know where to go to get the swag - in lounges people keep coming up to me
with trays of free snacks, the signature free festival water bottle (Sundance is green, folks), giveaways in the Co-Op, and people handing out free products on the streets. The best thing though is celeb spotting and I had some good ones. Now that I think about it, all of my really Main street sightings have been around the same place - at the corner of Heber and Main where the Entertainment Weekly Photo Studio sits.  My first was being surprised by James Marsden walking towards me on the empty sidewalk (I think he was trying to find the studio). It shocked me firstly because I didn’t expect him to just be in front of me when I looked up from the phone and secondly because he is so much hotter in person. He stopped behind me so I got to snap a picture. I also ran into Anthony Mackie as I crossed the streetby the EW studio later that day and again around the same area later that evening. I do have a sort of connection to him as he is a friend of a friend. I’ll leave it at that ::smile::  I tried to see my first movie for this year’s festival through the waitlist, Celeste and Jesse Forever (starring Rashida Jones and Andy Samberg; about a a married couple in their early 30s who has been together since high school and decide to break up since they have not experience dating but try and remain friends) but unfortunately not a single person from the waitlist got in. That’s the risk you take when you don’t have a ticket, especially when it was the premiere of a movie. Better luck tomorrow, hopefully.

Day 2 [Jan 21]: My friend Lindy and I headed back to Park City to waitlist the film The End of Love (directed by/starring Mark Webber and his son Issac, with cameos from Jason Ritter and Michael Cera; a story of a young father who is still coming to grips with the dead of the mother of his 2 year old son and struggling with taken care of him and himself) at the PC Library Center Theater. What I love about Sundance is that you get to meet such great friendly people. The common questions are always “where are you from?”, “what films have you seen?”, “what do you want to see?”. We chatted with some cool girls in line about our plans for the next few days.  We ended up getting in to see the film, which was touching and funny. Most of the cast was there to do a Q&A after which was as always fun to hear to director talk about their motivation and process for making the film and the actors share stories of shooting and the comraderie between them. Jason Ritter and Michael Cera was both really cute and funny (but what is that on your face Michael?!?!) Leaving the theater was also celebrity-filled. I spotted singer Jason Mraz who I know had a concert the night before at Bing Bar (one year I will get in!) and at one point I found myself sandwiched between Angela Kinsey from “The Office” and Donald Faison from “Scrubs”. Only at Sundance, people. We had some small adventures with trying to get the car out of being buried in snow which involved me pushing it that I won’t bore you with. Two days down, two to go.