Day 7: My Festival Experience
Intestine-hungry Nazi zombies, blood-thirsty Christmas trees, a gold-standard grilled pickle-and-cheese sandwich, and Bukowski…together at last!
It’s 5 a.m., and I’m lying in the dark, trying to figure out how I could possibly be awake. I’m wandering around downstairs, in search of yogurt, when I hear it again: the culprit of my untimely wakeup. Piping in through the shared condo walls are the tinny ragtime strains of a MIDI version of Scott Joplin’s The Entertainer. Why? Who? I occupy myself with some in-bed typing for a couple hours, then drift back to sleep, ultimately managing to cobble together a legitimate night’s sleep.
If the Boot Fits
And back to Main Street for some more hot man-on-the-street action. Today Daily Insider staff photographer, Calvin Knight, and I are asking the people of Park City, “Aside from walking, what are those boots made for?” By definition, the question comes with the “must actually be wearing boots” constraint, which limits our candidate pool. Also very few men on the street are actually wearing boots today, what with the balmy weather, so our ongoing effort to maintain a balance of the sexes is tough-going.
After walking up, down, and all around, we finally manage to capture a suitably shod sampling of ladies and gentlemen, including Ashley Springer, actor in Dare (and dancer in Honey!), who I notice is carrying a book by Bukowski. I tease that this kind of reading is usually reserved only for persons of a tender, angry age, and he totally agrees but confides that he felt compelled to buy the book after spotting it in a Cincinnati airport bookstore. Apparently the store is run by a cadre of young bookies, who have dedicated an entire section to the Barfly favorite, along with Hammett, and Macdonald, and other hardboiled tuffs. I love the idea of some jetlagged businessman wandering into the store, looking for the latest Grisham grist, but finding only cult classics from 30, 40, 50 years ago. “That alone is worth a trip to Cincinnati!” I say. Springer agrees, saying the airport bookstore is one of the “best possible things” that the Ohio city has to offer. I also get to meet the Director of Photography for Short Term 12, a film by Hawaiian director Destin Daniel Cretton, which was just awarded this year’s Best Short, and which we recently profiled in a video on this very website. The video is called “Maui Wowie” (Guess which pun-loving Insider staffer came up with that headline? Me.), and I can’t stop watching it – Destin is so squeezably awesome, I just want to take him home with me. We could play Ping Pong together! And sit around, eating pound cake!
With Street Talk under our belt, we unbutton our top buttons and hit the Main Street Deli for a gigantic lunch. I order a grilled cheese-and-pickles sandwich, and it is possibly the greatest sandwich I have ever had the pleasure of inserting into my sandwich flap. I’m swooning just thinking about it.
Cold Blood
At 8:50 p.m., Insider layout artist Jen, photo editor Brandon, and I get word that there are three waitlist tickets for Dead Snow with our name on them, provided we get ourselves all the way out to the Redstone Cinemas (a 15 minute drive) by 9 p.m. Impossible clock math aside, we decide to make a break for it. After a quick Benny Hill montage of throwing on our coats, leaping into the car, leaping out of the car (misplaced cellphone), leaping back into the car, and then driving off in the exact wrong direction, we finally squeak ourselves into the middle of the line, with Brandon retracting the line-waiting rope for Jen and myself so we don’t have to limbo under. Jen: “Chivalry is undead!” Evany: Explodes in punbelievable happiness.
Inside the theatre, we meet up with Shawn, Duane, and Cheryl, the entire Insider distribution and production crew and our ticket-getting heroes. The lights go down, and director Tommy Wirkola stands up to introduce the feature. “We used 450 litres of fake blood making this movie,” he says (Euro-spelling of “liter” in honor of the film’s Norwegian roots). “I hope that’s enough for you.”
But first, we’re treated to the ho-ho-ho-filled Treevenge, a literally eye-popping short about a gory uprising of Christmas trees. Babies are crushed, men are raped, lovers are trepanned. Happy holidays!
The “dead of winter” theme continues with Dead Snow, wherein eight Norwegian medical students are in turn gutted, debrained, and drawn-and-quartered by a cadre of evil Nazi zombies. I spend a full 8% of the movie with my eyes and ears plugged. “What just happened?” I whisper to Shawn. “He cut off his own arm,” Shawn whispers back, “with a chainsaw.”
After the show, a sampling of cast and crew join the director at the mic, and it’s an unexpected jolt to see people walking and talking after just moments before seeing their intestines getting snagged on a tree.
In the Q&A, we gain new insights into the sex scene, which takes place in an outhouse (possibly the lowest on the lists of sexy locations, right down there with “sandpaper factory” or “vomitorium”). The scene, which was a first for both the actor and actress (both the sex part and the outhouse part), worried the actor, who was concerned that he might find it all bit too…stirring. The actress quelled his concerns, though, by saying that she’d be offended if he didn’t rise to the occasion. We also learn that Nazi zombie films are an anomaly in Norway, with most other films being “period pieces,” films that, as one of the actors hastens to clarify, have nothing to do with womanly cycles.
After getting dropped off back at the condo, I experience a bit of a fight-or-flight panic in my 30-foot journey from driveway to front door. The scene (lone girl + snow-coated chalet + recently viewed zombie movie) being far too ripe for an ironic ending. But I make it inside without any zombies playing jump rope with my intestines, crawl into bed, and sleep the sleep of the dead.
Tomorrow’s to-dos: Barking Water!
MY FESTIVAL EXPERIENCE
Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3 | Day 4 | Day 5 | Day 6 | Day 7 | Day 8 | Day 9 | Day 10
