(Click through to see what Kevin Smith likes to eat. Picture by Dave Chen from /Film)
RECAPS AND EXCLUSIVE REPORTAGE FROM PARK CITY, UTAH!
THE STANDING IN LINE HERE IS INCREDIBLE! Truly, you haven’t lived until you’ve experienced the line standing here. The lines in Utah are so much cleaner, crisper, more refreshing than you’ll find in the city. They move with a humbler, more hardworking (yet relaxed) vibe than you find in our go-go, dog-eat-dog city lines. Everyone should try to make it out to Utah to stand in line once or twice a year, just to stay grounded. If you’ve been on the fence about it, take it from me: do it. You’ll be glad you did, I promise.
In the past few days, I’ve seen a few movies, drank too much, and hung out with a who’s who of stars from the movie blogosphere. Past Frotcast guest Laremy of Film.com cornered me in the bar at the Yarrow hotel late one night, downing scotch after scotch and regaling me with stories of the many women he’d bedded and the countless men to whom he’d delivered severe beatings for “maddogging me in the line at the Quizno’s.”
Later that night, I ran into awkward Josh Horowitz from MTV Movies Blog outside James Franco’s party at the Playboy Lounge, which neither of us could get into. I knew if MTV’s cuddliest video blogger couldn’t get in, I had no shot. What happened inside? Did Miranda July and Emily Deschanel go butt to butt during a private screening of Dicknose in Paris? I can’t confirm, but I’d say it’s pretty likely.
After that, Josh kept trying to convince me to help him light a drifter on fire. When I wouldn’t, he just walked away, fiddling with his butterfly knife and huffing spray paint from a paper bag. Don’t let the sweaters fool you, that motherf*cker’s crazy.
Back at the condo, where TBD’s Ryan Kearney graciously allowed me to stay for free in exchange for not telling anyone it was him who bought the bad coke Chris Walken’s beagle OD’d on at Billy Zane’s crawfish boil last year, I got to see the kind of gift bags they give to real reporters, courtesy of a fellow condo guest who was in town to cover Sundance for the Wall Street Journal. (“The Journal,” she calls it, always with the same inflection and air quotes). She even let me snap a couple pictures of her gold watch and Marc Jacobs sunglasses before ordering me back to my dogloo behind the hotwater heater.
“Lower” press like bloggers and community rag types also received a gift package, a handsome hefty sack filled with novelty t-shirts, dandruff shampoo, and beard de-louser. Helpful, thoughtful stuff, all. At one point, in the press lounge, Dave Chen from Slashfilm and the dude from GordonandtheWhale.com almost got into a fistfight over whether Trent Reznor’s Social Network score was overrated or not, until Drew McWeeney rolled in from Kevin Smith’s Red State Meet n’ Tweet and told them both to shut up. That guy seems to command a lot of respect around here. I think it’s the pinkie rings.
MORE EXCLUSIVES, GOSS, AND TEASERS FOR UPCOMING COVERAGE
Tonight, Dustin Rowles from Pajiba is taking me to a screening of the new neo post-contrarianist mockumentary down at the Ted McGinley memorial cinema hut. They apparently shot the whole thing guerilla style on an old iPhone, and a few people told me it was life-changing, but I couldn’t tell if they were being ironic or not. After that, the ex-lead singer from Candlebox is doing this sort of spoken-word thing down at Adrien Grenier’s sauna, where I hear they’re giving away BPA-free oxygen masks and baby onesies that say “cocktease.” I’m pretty sure they only invited the Candlebox dude so they could make fun of him and he has no idea and is so totally earnest about the whole thing that it should be a lot of fun.
Anyway, right now I’m down at the new pop-up, artisanal fair-trade cupcake shop on Main Street (cupcakes are totally lame, but I come for the free WiFi), where Chloe Sevigny’s doing this sort of free-form, choreo slam-poem about menstruation, of which the climax is her castrating a boar (hello, Wesleyan Drama Club much?). Despite the fact that it’s not very good (not to mention totally derivative), people are starting to shh me. I thought the keyboard on my new Macbook Triple Plus Ocelot laptop was supposed to be foam-cushioned, but with my sausage fingers, I guess it doesn’t matter. Oooh, sorry to spoil your precious boar castration poem with my terrible keyboard clicks, you pretentious A-holes. Guess I’ll have to wrap this up.
Stay tuned for more Festival coverage, though it’ll probably be totally lame. Last year was way better.
-Vince