Alright, Sunday night

was a busy one. After the Gen Art Interview, we hit up the Fuji party at this colossal, ultra-swanky lodge outside of Park City. There's so much money at Sundance it's a bit staggering. 'Seems every industry has it's hands in the cookie jar....I dunno how much money Fuji threw at this party, but it was probably on par with the GDP of a small Central American country, complete with four open bars, an oxygen bar, massage room, photo booth with costumes (in case you'd like a picture of yourself dressed as a Viking before the oxygen wares off) and pole dancers.

I think around midnight a few drunk cinematographers commandeered the portable stripper-poles and showed off their moves until one of them tipped over the whole contraption and nearly took out the DJ booth.

Around midnight I snuck out to have a drink with a few agents I had met earlier --- except I was up against some problems. One, I had no ride. Two, I had an address, but no earthly clue how to get there. And it was freezing. Then I met a few programmers at the coat-check who up and offered me a ride --- perfect. Except when I piled into the back of their SUV the windshield was completely frozen over.

One of them said, Oh I got it! and proceeded to pour the contents of her water bottle all over the windshield --- which immediately hardened and multiplied our problem as you can imagine. I ran off and found some ski bum smoking a blunt and listening to Huey Lewis in his AstroVan and borrowed his scraper for a minute....and success! Minutes later I was pouring myself a drink at this insane cabin/mansion and thinking, It's gonna be a hard fall back to reality when I get back to East LA.

A long cab ride back to our cabin that night.....

The next day. Monday. I was starting to feel the burn. Sundance is intense, and I think at this point I had slept maybe three hours a night for the past four nights....I could feel my brain falling apart.

So I struggled to stay awake as Daniel and I attended a panel with the cast / crew of Blue Valentine, including director Derek Cianfrance, Ryan Gosling, and Michelle Williams. Really, really cool and informative --- it took Cianfrance twelve years to get the movie made. Endurance.

After that, a quick meeting with a really cool manager (actually the gentleman who signed Dustin Cretton last year, the kid who won the shorts competition with the amazing SHORT TERM 12), then off to meet a rep from Fox Digital, the branded content arm of Fox. AKA the part of Fox that makes webisodes and those funky long-form commercials you see on the internet. What exciting stuff. This industry is so new it seems nobody knows how to use it --- you can do anything. I'm in.

Yesterday, Tuesday, after a blitz of meetings I hopped a bus to Park City High School to teach a filmmaking class as part of "Filmmakers in the Classroom." Amazing! These kids have the life! They were really positive and had a million questions --- and the whole time I'm thinking, What I would have given to have grown up at the foot of a ski resort.

Then it was off to the Shorts Reception --- the culmination of the shorts program. Somebody had the ingenious idea to have the party at a bowling alley, so I ended up bowling with Patrik Eklund (hilarious Swedish director of INSTEAD OF ABRACADABRA) and good ol' Martin Stitt.

Alas, the prize went to DRUNK HISTORY, which I've heard is pretty funny.

TOMORROW, it's ski time.

Where was I

Ah yes, Saturday. 'Rode back into Park City with Drake and poked around Main St. until I found the Filmmakers Lodge, where I took advantage of the free wifi and fired off some emails. Emails, emails. Man, my phone is such a piece. It's an old school flip-brick that's becoming the bane of my existence....and emails bounce back and forth like currency in this place. I need gmail piped into my retina.

Then Danny and I swung by the festival headquarters and boarded a van bound for our satellite screening in Salt Lake City. I talked with Pablo --- Spanish director of MY INVISIBLE FRIEND and a very recognizable force at the festival in his Wayne's World hat --- about his fascination with all things American, namely supermarkets and large tubs of ice cream.

"I see they have such big tubs. And Americans eat the whole tub...then buy another tub."
"Well, we eat a little, then put the tub in a freezer. Then eat more later. We buy in bulk."
"Must be big freezers."

I was about to counter his judgement when I remembered my parents live alone and have like, three maxed-out freezers.

Anyay, the screening in SLC was a bit awkward at best, the audience being a bit more conservative, but it was still nice to see it with a more mainstream crowd.

Next morning, another screening at 9:00 am. This one was GREAT --- I guess only hardcore indy fans come out at 9:00 am anyway. Someone asked me a question and I responded "God bless you for asking me a quesion," then immediately forgot the question and had to ask again.

After that we were insanely late to this interview at the Gen Art Lounge, a little temporary set up where Gen Art is conducting live interviews to be streamed over the web. I saw AFI pal Sylvia Gallini on the way over. AFI. We're taking this place over, I tell you.

The interview was pretty fun --- Oh man, I should find the link! Except at the end we played a trivia game and missed some really basic question about geometry. You can't take me anywhere.

Agh, I gotta go again. I have a meeting with Indieflix, who may purchase our film for distribution on iTunes. Perhaps I'm jinxing myself by even mentioning it here. Wish me luck!

I have a lot of cathing up

to do, eh? I have about ten minutes here, so apologies for the grammatical and spelling nastiness --- SO....

Friday we swung into the Library Center Theater around 5:00 to catch the premiere of our shorts program here at Sundance. By "shorts program" I mean a cluster of like, five or six short movies.

I was filled with a lot of feelings --- anxiety, fear, the whole range --- but mostly excitement, as we bypassed a giant line in front of the theater and were corralled into a green room upstairs, complete with fashionable couches and refreshments. Pretty soon my phone rang and a gentleman claiming to be James Franco's agent politely asked for a ticket to our screening. Franco directed a really captivating movie in our program titled HERBERT WHITE. I mentioned Sundance has a surreal factor, right? I found the guy's assistant freezing outside and delivered said ticket.....

.....moments later I was seated in a theater of 700 (wait....700? 700, freindo) and looking back upon the faces in the theater as our movie started up. The nice thing about a half-tanked audience half the size of a rodeo is that they'll laugh up a storm, I discovered. An amazing reception! Ours was the first in the program and I was soooo grateful to get it out of the way early.

Holly Hannah. There are some heavy hitters at this festival. The other shorts were RIDICULOUS. There's one from Spain titled MY INVISIBLE FRIEND that knocked it off the charts. We all got up for a Q + A, and between telling a bit about my life to 700 random people and then passing the mic down to James Franco, I was starting to get dizzy.

That night, saw DOUCHEBAG (nice title, eh?), directed by my AFI pal Drake Doremus. Drake is two years younger than myself and has already directed three features. Enough to make a man squint with jealousy. He also has great shoes. The film, by the way, is geniunely really funny, and is a testament to how good a movie one can produce with only an effective idea and an HD cam. And a funny guy with a beard.

Next morning (Saturday, yesterday), woke up bright and early for the director's brunch. This is a legendary sojourn up to the Sundance Resort, AKA Redford's private compound, where the directors ride a bus together and hang out straight up summer camp style. The drive was incredible --- and then I shook hands with Redford and Bill Gates. And Parker Posey (Ok I almost met Parker Posey). As all the directors sat around and ate delicious food, Mr. Redford took the podium and did this like, 45-minute sound-off on his entire career....'had the whole place laughing and looking around at each other in quiet disbelief. This just keeps getting more ridiculous.

OK, I'll have to pick this up later tonight or tomorrow. This has been such a dense experience it's tough to keep up!

Here

....and here we are. I'm sitting in a cabin in Halladay, UT, recovering from a long night. A lot to cover:

Yesterday I left LA at 7:00 am after three hours of rocky sleep (up until the wee hours burning DVDs and doing laundry) and arrived in breathtaking Salt Lake City around 10. What an ungodly looking place in the winter.

Met up with Daniel Koobir (editor) Christine No (producer) and Todd banhazl (cinematographer) after using the airport wifi to fire off some emails for a few hours. We threw our bags and boxes of promotional items together and realized (uh oh), how will these things possible fit in one car? I ran off to retrieve the rental and we hot-boxed our modest little Chevy Malibu until elbows and legs were spilling out of windows and drove off to our cabin....

....which, we discovered, was pretty close. It's a one bedroom which will play host to six - seven smelly filmmakers over the course of the next ten days. Intimate may be the right word.

We threw down our bags and drove the 30 mins to Park City --- and what a madhouse. It feels a little like Woodstock but with rich people.

We found headquarters and meandered around aimlessly until we found the filmmakers sign-in, where we were bombarded with attention and received those prized laminated passes which they placed around our necks like leighs in Hawaii. Mine says John Patton Ford - Sundance director. A surreal moment.

After meeting a zillion people in a zeitgeist of hospitality (did I mention these people are really, really friendly?) we covered headquarters in PATROL promotional fliers and marched off to meet some friends for a drink. Apparently a combination of shuttle buses and trolleys run the gamut in Park City, and we found ourselves navigating a web of bus roots until we arrived at Main St. --- the main drag. By this time snow was showering down and I was beginning to be grateful for those thermals I had on. We stopped in at a pub and --- aha --- found our AFI people, Martin Stitt and his crew. Martin was a classmate of mine who also got into the festival.

A few drinks later the Irishman in me began to get a little frustrated. Drinking alcohol in Utah is like drinking Kool-Aid. It makes you pee, that's about it.

An hour later Todd and myself were off to see RESTREPO, an opening night documentary about a group of soldiers defending an isolated base in the Korengal Valley, Afghanistan. We piled into the theater and sat with the largest crowd on record to see a doc at Sundance...head programmer John Cooper introduced the film, and then bam, it starts....and thus begins the most unapologetic and ruthless two hours in recent memory. An amazing and really, really scary movie, mostly shot on handheld video cameras and showing what the American media never shows....I shouldn't spoil it anymore. All six hundred people left the theater in complete silence after the credits.

The exciting part is, none of these movies have sold to distributors. So we're literally watching something that just rolled off an editor's computer and onto a big screen for the first time. You can feel a real air of anticipation in the audience --- it's just unreal.

After that, we hit up the opening night party (by this time I was sleep-walking, which turned into sleep-dancing) and back to our cabin around 2:00 am. I had been up for twenty-two hours. This is real.

3 Days left until Sundance

Alright cowboys. I'm heading to the Sundance Film Festival in three days with my AFI thesis movie, PATROL (check it out, www.patrolmovie.com).

I've created this blog so my family and friends can enjoy the sure-to-be ridiculous, debaucherous, embarrassing, and perhaps compelling details about the festival. But after Sundance I'll continue to post entries.

3 days left. In the next three days, I must finish the first act of a script which I'm writing on assignment, make business cards, finish my personal website, print 50 DVDs, label them, write 75629 emails, and find a warm coat.

Anybody got a coat?