Ramos Sundance 2006

2006-01-31T14:29:00.000-08:00

Snow-capped Finale

The 2006 Sundance Film Festival comes to an official close at Saturday evening’s awards ceremonies and heavy snowfall brings the event a dramatic boost. Held at the Park City Racquet Club, home to many screenings for the films in dramatic competition, the large gymnasium is off the normal fest paths and crowds pack bus shuttles in order to get to the show on time. The usual comments about daring filmmakers willing to question the country we live in, enthusiastic audiences and hardworking volunteers are interspersed among the awards announcements. 2006 made history when both the dramatic and documentary entries won Dramatic Grand Jury Prizes and Audience Awards.
Christopher Quinn’s God Grew Tired of Us, about three Sudanese refugees making new lives in America, won over the hearts of both the Sundance jury and audiences. Quinceañera, a heartfelt and often comic tale set in Los Angeles’ Echo Park Neighborhood, looks at a Latino family celebrating the 15th birthday of their daughter Magdelena (Emily Rios).
“It’s been 12 years since I was with a film at Sundance and it sure is nice to be back,” says Quinceañera co-director Richard Glatzer, who takes to the stage with his partner and co-director Wash Westmoreland, to accept the first of Quinceañera’s two festival prizes.
Other awards standout include the documentaries Iraq in Fragments, director James Longley’s powerful portrait of the lives of ordinary Baghdad citizens, TV Junkie, co-directors Michael Cain and Matt Radecki’s story about TV reporter Rick Kirkham’s struggle with drug addiction and first-time filmmaker Dito Montiel’s autobiographical drama A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints, about his life growing up in Queens, New York.
Of course, winning a festival award increases the chances of a film being sold and making it into theaters.
“I’m told it changes everything,” admits Iraq in Fragments director Longley, moments after the ceremony. “One would hope that’s true.”
Still standing on-stage, eight miles high from the one-two sweep of Quinceañera, Glatzer and Westmoreland are willing to dream big.
“We want this film to go wide,” Westmoreland says, standing close to his partner. “We want to market this to the Latino communities, the gay communities, everyone. What’s happening in Echo Park is happening in many urban neighborhoods across America.”

2006-01-28T10:49:00.000-08:00

The Sundance Hill

Point “A” on the Sundance map has to be the two-story white tent known as The Village At The Lift. It’s at the base of Park City's Main Street, adjacent to the town ski lift. But the big, big tent's prominence is due to the fact that its various sponsors, Philips, W Hotels and Heineken, have made their spaces ground zero for celebrity interviews throughout the week. The tent's second floor is where Jennifer Aniston sits down for interviews. Actress Ashley Judd scouts out a quiet corner of the bottom restaurant. I help Judd remove the Asian-influenced blinds from the window facing our table. She wants to see the mountain scenery, even though her publicity work is keeping her indoors. Meanwhile Paris Hilton flits about, loading up on the sponsors' various freebies and causing gridlock wherever she goes. Hilton, the most sought-after woman at Sundance, is not even in a festival film and arguably never will be.
Point “B” is located at the opposite end of Main Street, a steep climb up crowded sidewalks to the corporate interview room called the VW Lounge.
A black VW SUV sits outside the storefront's front door. This is where upcoming actresses like Dreamland's Agnes Bruckner; veteran filmmakers like Haskell Wexler, in town to promote his documentary Who Needs Sleep?; and celebrity musician-turned-actor Justin Timberlake pay respect to the room's sponsor and sign their names in white paint across the SUV's hood.
The VW lounge is a shotgun space decorated in faux Asian mats and couches on its front end and ski lodge-inspired decorations at its rear. There are as many as four films being promoted at one time in the narrow space, which is arguably the most chaotic spot at Sundance.
Some climbs up and down Main Street fall under the eat-as-you-walk category. Others involve the necessary nicotine jolt. When the security guards outside the doors begin to greet you by name, you know that you've spent too much time in the interview rooms. The chance to see a movie is a chance to sit down and relax. Better yet, you don't have to hike up a hill to get to a screening venue.

2006-01-26T19:43:00.000-08:00

Men Out of Time: Sam Shepard and Wim Wenders

“A woman came up to me after last night’s screening,” Sam Shepard says, before sitting down next to his friend and collaborator, veteran filmmaker Wim Wenders. “She asked me, ‘Have you and Wim Wenders ever worked before?’ She was nice, but I couldn’t believe it. I told her, well, we made this film some time ago called Paris, Texas. She hadn’t heard of it.”
Shepard’s surprise and frustration comes from the reality that someone who spends time, energy and money to come to the Sundance Film Festival, see their new film Don’t Come Knocking and would still be oblivious to the fact that he and Wenders worked on one of the landmark films of independent American cinema. One would think that Sundance would be the one place where everyone would know Paris, Texas. But reality is less kind.
“It took Wim and I over three years to get this film made,” Shepard says, speaking on the second floor of the corporate-sponsored white tent knows as The Village at the Lift. “We were dealing with financiers who never heard of Paris, Texas. People don’t remember anything from last week more or less years ago.”
Shepard is both screenwriter and star of Don’t Come Knocking, playing an aging cowboy movie actor who leaves a film shoot abruptly in order to return home and find some sanity in his life. As a result he reunites with the son he never knew.
In terms of visual beauty, deliberate storytelling and a melancholy spirit, Don’t Come Knocking is trademark Wenders. He’s been a filmmaker long enough to remember a time when his films came to U.S. theaters with great anticipation. He also realizes that an auteur like himself fights to find audiences today. Still, the German filmmaker takes it all in stride.
“It all comes in cycles,” he says before leaving. “There are always ups and downs.”
The three young leads of Don’t Come Knocking — Sarah Polley, Gabriel Mann and Fairuza Balk, who sit down and take Wenders and Shepard’s seat — are less diplomatic.
“I don’t have any respect for someone in the film industry that hasn’t heard of Win Wenders,” says Mann, who plays the cowboy star’s forgotten son. “You know, if a manager or an advisor told me it was a bad career decision to work in a Win Wenders film I would fire them in an instant. Working with Wim Wenders is why I became an actor.”

Don’t Come Knocking makes its U.S. premiere at the Sundance Film Festival and is released in theaters later this year via Sony Pictures Classics

2006-01-25T12:51:00.000-08:00

Beasties Boys: Licensed to Film

Fifty-one concertgoers became one-night filmmakers on Oct. 9, 2004. The Beastie Boys — Adam “MCA” Yauch, Mike “Mike D” Diamond and Adam “Ad-Rock” Horowitz played a sold-out Madison Square Garden show where Yauch handed out 50 handheld video cameras to lucky concertgoers. Their task was to film the show of a lifetime.
“I saw footage from another concert that a fan shot on his mobile phone and I remember thinking it was cool,” Yauch says, sharing a hotel-room couch with his band mates.
Yauch edited the hundreds of hours of fan footage into Awesome; I Fuckin’ Shot That!, a kaleidoscope of rocketing images that matches the chest-pounding beat of the Beasties music.
Mention a master world filmmaker or new editing software and most Sundance filmmakers will launch into a long discussion. They love film history and new technology. They are proud film geeks.
Yauch is a different filmmaking animal. Awesome is an incredible concert film tied to this digital revolution, much how Gimme Shelter and Woodstock were connected to their age. But Yauch is ill equipped to talk about past doc filmmakers like the Mayles Brothers or the digital impact on film. He just follows his instincts.
“But we did give him the nickname whiz,” Horowitz belts. “He was always the one learning the new gadgets.”
Styrofoam containers containing their lunch lie unopened on a nearby table. The Beasties leave Park City, Utah, after our interview and there’s been little time to eat.
They worked their film hard over their four Sundance days. A large audience packed an afternoon Jan. 21 screening, the first time a public crowd watched the film and the response was wildly enthusiastic. They perform a late-night concert at a ski lodge-turned-nightclub. The Beasties answer questions with intentional irreverence at an afternoon press conference early in the festival. The crowd gathers at a large tent set up at the base of the Park City Mountain Resort. The punk snowboarders zipping by don’t realize what they’re missing. There are music gods within their midst. They are also New Model Filmmakers; successful musicians who have combined street smarts and technology into something radical.
Awesome: I Fuckin’ Shot That! is a concert documentary like no other and it took someone who doesn’t fit into the classic moviemaker box to make it happen.

2006-01-25T09:28:00.000-08:00

The Big, Big Tent

The largest Sundance crowds — a mix of press, publicists and public — gather a mile away from the closest screening venue. This might sound like a strange thing to say at a film festival but movies matter less at the massive two-story white tent known as The Village At The Lift. Companies like Philips, W Hotels and Heineken are there to promote new goods, pass out freebies to filmmakers and actors and provide areas for press interviews and photo ops. A picture of actress pals Catherine Keener and Jennifer Aniston holding up some shiny new electronic gadget, something that looks like a toaster but has nothing to do with toast, gives companies like Philips perfect advertising. Like the actors, these companies also have something to promote.
Paris Hilton is in town just to be seen and there are signs in nearby shop windows protesting her do-nothing appearance. But the biggest mobs accompany Jennifer Aniston, who sits down with Keener to promote their film, Friends With Money.
Sitting on sofas on the tent’s second floor, Keener and Aniston laugh and tease each other with tales of past pranks. One involves Keener popping a restaurant saltshaker into Aniston’s purse without telling her. Imagine the headlines: “Jennifer Aniston Caught Stealing!”
“I called the restaurant up,” Aniston makes a point to say. “I worked as a waitress and I know what happens when something is taken from your station. So I called and explained that a friend played a joke on me and I didn’t know it was in my purse.”
Asked if she felt uncomfortable returning the saltshaker, it was Aniston’s turn to laugh.
“Oh, I didn’t return it,” she laughs. “I liked it. I just sent them money to pay for it.”

2006-01-21T17:01:00.000-08:00

The Shoes Make the Man: Chiwetel Ejiofor and His ‘Kinky’ Role

The TV crews might rotate from one cable TV outlet to another but everyone asks Kinky Boots star Chiwetel Ejiofor the same thing: “What was it like to wear women’s heels?”
Sitting alone in an empty room that’s scheduled to become a disco later in the evening, Ejiofor releases a hearty laugh when asked about the constant “shoe” questions.
For one thing, footwear is key to the plot of his Sundance film Kinky Boots. Director Julian Jarrold tells the tale of nice guy Charlie Price (Joel Edgeton), who inherits his father’s failing Northampton, England shoe factory. Charlie’s inspiration for saving the family business comes in Lola (Ejiofor), a burly London drag queen. Lola needs heels that can support a man’s weight and Charlie commits to changing the factory lineup in order to capitalize on the transvestite market. Lessons in tolerance are an unexpected bonus.
Besides, Ejiofor admits, balancing himself on heels was the most challenging part of playing Lola.
“It was hard,” he says with a wide grin. “It was really hard. But I thought I looked good.”
British audiences know Ejiofor — he goes by the nickname Chiwe, pronounced “Chewy” — for his role on the TV lawyer show Trust and The Canterbury Tales. His stage performance in Joe Penhall’s Blue/Orange earned nominations for the Olivier and London Evening Standard awards. He’s a nominee for the BAFTA Rising Star Award. Ejiofor, a London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art alum, has already gained a lifetime’s worth of acclaim by age 29.
U.S. audiences might not know Ejiofor’s name or how to pronounce it but they recognize his face thanks to roles in the John Singleton crime drama Four Brothers, the sci-fi action movie Serenity and Spike Lee’s She Hate Me. His 2004 role opposite Audrey Tatou in Dirty Pretty Things remains a personal high. Ejiofor played Okwe, a Nigerian illegal immigrant, a doctor who works two black market jobs as a hotel clerk and a cab driver in order to make a living. Ejiofor’s parents escaped political war in Nigeria to start a better life in England. The need for political asylum is part of his family history.
So Ejiofor is a true citizen of the world, an internationalist actor. He was born in East London and the English capital remains his home. He’s a staple on the London stage but makes time to work in American films like the Woody Allen comedy Melinda and Melinda. His career is as rich and diverse as his family history. The constant is his instinct for choosing the right films.
“You gain a qualified instinct from experience,” he says. “You learn from past decisions. You believe in the projects because you believe in yourself.”
As far as his internationalist label goes, Ejiofor can now add Sundance to his list of experiences. Chances are he’ll be back.

Kinky Boots makes its U.S. premiere at the 2006 Sundance Film Festival and comes to American theaters this spring.

2006-01-20T10:07:00.000-08:00

Friends With Money and The Big Blur

The inevitable dizziness of movie screenings and interviews often hits by the third day of Sundance, a humbling moment when someone asks your favorite film of the day and your mind remains blank. Mountain air is one excuse. Sleep deprivation, the subject of three festival films this year, is another. But the undeniable truth is that film festivals tend to blend together. It’s not a criticism per se. Sundance goals of recognizing challenging work and showcasing better-known actors stretching themselves in more independent fare are constants.
The big blur hit early this year, on Sundance night one, just minutes before the first night film. While discussing the poor track record of opening night Sundance films, the name of last year’s premiere remained a mystery. Recollection of Sundance past and present comes later, between screenings and interviews, without warning.
Filmmaker Nicole Holofcener launched her career with the relationship comedy Walking and Talking at Sundance 1996. She’s this year’s prodigal daughter, an independent filmmaker who has carved a successful niche (female ensemble stories) and has returned with another opening night film.
Friends With Money is a breezy and likable tale about a group of Los Angeles women whose friendships survive despite the fact they’re at different happiness levels in their lives. Catherine Keener, who’s something of a Holofcener regular, enjoys the film’s best lines as the unhappy side of a husband-and-wife screenwriting team. The always-engaging Frances McDormand is less successful as a 43-year-old clothes designer having difficulty facing middle age. McDormand portrays anger well, but her sass and bitterness feels misguided except for a blow-up scene at an Old Navy store.
The normally reliable Joan Cusack is dramatic wallpaper as the wealthiest of the group. She’s pure backdrop, a letdown considering her talents.
The most famous face in the Friends With Money ensemble, the key reason for its opening-night slot, belongs to Jennifer Aniston. As Olivia, the lone gal-pal without money, Aniston shows an easygoing charm and an ability to generate laughs effortlessly. Olivia is a woman content to clean houses for a living and spend what little money she has on pot. Her friends are perplexed but she’s happy with her slacker situation.
Olivia is at a crossroads, but then so are her friends. She’s the only one admitting to it.
Aniston, who’s been to Sundance before with the comedy The Good Girl, is a gifted comedienne who also happens to be pretty. Friends With Money capitalizes on those attributes and it’s hard to complain with that combination.
For once, Sundance’s opening night is an enjoyable experience. As far as last year’s film, I’ve just remembered it: Don Roos’ Los Angeles ensemble drama Happy Endings. Both Friends With Money and Happy Endings share a common backdrop but Holofcener enjoys better success. Her film is the one I’ll remember.

2006-01-19T12:22:00.000-08:00

Cincinnati in the Sundance Lights

“You’ll see lots of Cincinnati,” Steven Bognar points out, just as the DVD copy of his emotional documentary A Lion In The House slides into my laptop.
Bognar is right. Queen City streets and neighborhoods fill every scene of the film, which premiers Jan. 21 at the Sundance Film Festival before a nationwide PBS broadcast later in June. With his partner and co-director Julia Reichert alongside, Bognar spent years inside and around Cincinnati Children’s Hospital. The result is an epic journey and a rare opportunity for Cincinnati to be in the Sundance spotlight.
A Lion In The House tells the story of five children — Tim, Justin, Jenny, Alex and Al — and their families during their time on Children’s Hospital cancer ward. The families represent the diverse population that comes to the hospital. They are black and white, affluent and poor. But a single issue connects all the families despite their differences. When should a parent and child say no to additional treatment and face death?
A Lion In The House is a sprawling movie, close to four hours in length. Sundance is its natural home. In fact, the film is one of only 16 American documentary films competing for a Jury Prize, proof of how far Bognar and Reichert have already come with the film.
Just back from promoting the film at the TV Critics Convention in Pasadena, Calif., Bognar and Reichert recount frequently-asked questions over a much-needed breakfast break at a Bond Hill diner. They’re feeling good about the film but the final verdict awaits at Sundance.
“The families are coming for the Friday night premiere,” Bognar says, before he and Reichert leave for the drive home to Yellow Springs, Ohio. “Children’s Hospital doctors and staff are coming. All the editors who helped us on the film are coming. It’s going to be great. We’re going to bring them in front of the audience and they’re going to see the film on a big screen and with an audience for the first time.”
Tips provided by Bognar and Reichert to their Lion stars include carrying food in one’s pockets, dressing in layers and drinking plenty of water. What hasn’t been emphasized is the dizzy feeling of walking into an auditorium and being the focus of hundreds of strangers.
Chances for a Jury Prize or whether the majority of festival press will dedicate four hours to a single film are anyone’s guess. What’s certain is the Lion In The House families and filmmakers are about to finish their journey together with a climax worthy of their time, energy and hearts.

The 2006 Sundance Film Festival begins Jan. 19 with the premiere of the Nicole Holofcener ensemble film Friends With Money. The festival goes into full swing Friday, Jan. 20. A Lion In The House premieres at 2 p.m. in the Prospector Square Theatre.