Day 10: My Festival Experience
As the Festival draws to a close, let us pause first for a quick hat montage, and a miniaturized feast, and 80s R&B sensation Rockwell.
I’m awake, and it’s … 10 a.m.? I don’t know. Where am I? What day is it? All I know for sure is that Utah has the strangest television offerings I’ve ever encountered. Apparently they have a channel here that plays nothing but Golden Girls and Fresh Prince of Bel Air?
If the Glove Fits
First order of the day: an interview and photo opportunity with the button-cute Maggie Willis, Information Booth Coordinator and overseer of all things lost and found at the Festival. Maggie tells tales of misplaced dental retainers, tweezers, and even a mohawked Pomeranian, but she’s also seen left-hand gloves and right-hand gloves, lost at different times and different venues, ultimately reunited in the bins at the Festival offices. I love that – like a knitware love story.
When we’re done, Maggie lets me try on all the scarves, along with a tower of hats, and Daily Insider photographer Calvin and I head out into the slush for a zany photo shoot, Blossom-style. Just because!
Small Pleasures
All too soon, it’s time for the end-of-Festival awards ceremony. As designated Twitterer for the event, it’s my job to thumb-type non-stop for a full two hours, a feat I am well prepared for thanks to an emergency thumb massage from Insider online producer Joe Beyer. The lights go down, emcee Jane Lynch (Spring Breakdown, 40 Year Old Virgin) takes the podium, and the games begin.
My favorite quotes of the night, in order:
- Charlyne Yi (Paper Heart) confessing, “I feel sick, and sweaty and I smell bad.”
- Push director Lee Daniels describing his star Gabourey Sidibe as “my beautiful chocolate drop.”
- Humpday director/screenwriter Lynn Shelton: “I am so high on Dayquil right now.”
But the very best part of the night? The miniaturized hamburgers! And miniaturized candy apples! And miniaturized ice cream cones! I’ll have three of everything, please.
The End
After we return from the award ceremonies, we pack up our desks head down to the Filmmaker Lounge for one last hurrah. Tonight the usually sleepy bar is a who’s who of all the filmmakers I’ve seen and admired over the past ten days. As we head up the stairs, Lee Daniels is standing there in line right in front of us, and Insider managing editor Bridgette Bates happily informs him that he’ll be on the cover of tomorrow’s paper. Charlyne Yi is standing in the doorway as we’re coming in, and lay a “hi” and some “congratulations” on her. Inside, Insider editorial director Jessica Buzzard pulls me over to meet Barking Water director Sterlin Harjo (who apparently was moved by the Twitter I sent about the film), who is very nice. Also there: Joshua Leonard from Humpday, Gabourey Sidibe, Best Short winner Destin Daniel Cretton (Destin’s a nice name! Do you think he’d be okay if I named my baby after him, you know, if the baby turns out to have boy parts?), plus a whole squash of other people, dancing and drinking with great enthusiasm. We dance to New Order and Janet Jackson, I sip a coke, and suddenly it’s 2 in the morning. Slowly we organize ourselves to head for home, and outside, the town is clean and newly dusted with a fine new coat of snow.
About a week before the Festival began, I interviewed Sam Rockwell for a piece that lives on these very pages. And now, here in the celebratory, beer-soaked, post-Festival office in which I find myself typing these…very…words, Rockwell’s “I Always Feel Like (Somebody’s Watching Me)” is blasting loud and proud. Ten long, non-stop, event-packed days, bookended by Rockwells. I’m not quite sure what it means, this full circle beginning with lizard-lidded indie Rockwell and ending with 80s R&B sensation Rockwell (so named because he felt he “rocked well”), but I’ll take it.
And now, to Oakland! My boyfriend, Marco, just texted me that in my absence he burnt a pan, broke the olive oil, and is considering shaving off all his hair, so I think it’s high time that I head myself home. My plan once I touch down? Pat my man and animals, reintroduce greenery to my diet, and fold into bed no later than 8 p.m. each night, yay!
Good night, Sundance Film Festival 2009. Let not the bedbugs bite.
MY FESTIVAL EXPERIENCE
Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3 | Day 4 | Day 5 | Day 6 | Day 7 | Day 8 | Day 9 | Day 10
