The Sundance Film Festival begins on Thursday, Jan. 19 in Park City, but by the time you read this you already will have noticed that the town is in the midst of the big buildup and anticipation — of an inundation of Hollywood and scene types who come with apparently high self-esteem, as well as assorted celebrities.
Still, there are many who have not been here long enough to remember what an in-person Sundance is like, after the festival took the last two years off from an in-person rendezvous, owing to the pandemic. Here are some things it probably will be:
Sundance can be messy and inconvenient with parking and traffic challenges galore — but it can also be a lot of fun. This is also our time in the spotlight.
Sundance can be a huge benefit to Park City, an annual infusion of cash that helps keep our local economy humming.
Sundance can try a Parkite’s patience, it’s true — but it’s only 11 days long. The visitors will go back from whence they came soon, leaving us inundated with skiers, our other visitors, who are at least more comprehensible.
In the meantime, it’s worth remembering that no matter how entitled our visitors may seem it’s nothing we can correct or should try to fix. Being rude back diminishes us. For the rest of the year, we have Park City and they do not, and that’s enough.
Sundance is the most important independent film festival in the U.S. Promoting independent film is a net-plus for our culture and our well-being. There probably always will be the studio blockbusters, but a sophisticated person cannot live on Star Wars alone, even if lightsabers never go out of fashion. Sundance often promotes the kinds of films that can challenge us, and move us, whether to change or feel more deeply. It brings us closer to art. And it keeps linking Park City with all that cultural goodness.
Filmmakers such as Quentin Tarantino, Paul Thomas Anderson and Jim Jarmusch got their first big breaks at Sundance. The magic of the festival and the place will surely continue, and by virtue of being a Parkite, you’ll be in on the ground floor of it. Try to savor that excitement when you’re not stuck in festival traffic (and even when you are).
There are plenty of places in the U.S. that have no bragging rights or have the wrong kind of infamy. You’re not in one of them.
Sundance is a media extravaganza in which most of us are, at best, stand-ins. Through the frustrations, if they come, try to remember that too much attention is probably better than none. And that the people in black do eventually go back to California. Also remember that they’ve had a tough time this winter with all that rain, which merely falls here as beneficial snow.
We’ve heard that, owing to storm-induced power outages, there are even some people on the coast who live in mansions and could not get out because their electric gates wouldn’t open. Dig deep and muster some sympathy for them when they get here.
Perhaps the festival can help propel them to a sound-up, sunset ending.