"1996 was the one of the years I had a big time at Sundance, because I had three films in the Festival [Girls Town, I Shot Andy Warhol, and Cold Fever]. And that was the year when a film sold the most that it ever sold for, that was the first year where we had announcements of turn off your cell phones ‘cause they were still kind of new. So that was a kind of a turning point that year.

It was intense being at Sundance. And before we got there was intense too. And one of the other things I think about when I think Sundance is [Sundance Film Festival Director] Geoffrey Gilmore because if you’re close with the director, and I usually am, it’s always that we’re waiting to hear what Geoffrey has to say. We’re waiting. And finally Geoffrey says it’s, ‘It’s looking good, it’s looking good, you’re in.’ So then we’re off!

And then when I got there and that year I had three films, it was intense. I mean there’s no other way to say it. It’s just there’s a lot of stuff going on….it became a little bit of a job to be there as opposed to just a participant. I didn’t get to see a lot of films. But I have to say that year I was there I did feel like I was there with a lot of like-minded people. And it was most of my friends – we all had our films and there was still an element of celebration even though we were also realizing that it wasn’t just about celebrating our films, that there was this marketplace now that we had to consider.

And that was a shift. As I say, that year was a big turning point because before that there was an innocence I felt, an innocence. We weren’t thinking about what was going happen to the films after we finished making them."

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