Factoids
627 scheduled screenings and events this year at Sundance. Note to self: Train for marathon before attending next year.
Forget the paparazzi, the stalkers and even Robert Redford: Nobody sees more celebrities during Sundance than Jeff Vespa. As a lead photographer for WireImage, the official photo agency of the Sundance Film Festival, Vespa shoots hundreds of festival actors and filmmakers from a makeshift studio on Park City's Main Street. - Salt Lake Trib
One of the more exotic premieres at this year’s Sundance Film Festival is “Invisible Threads.” It’s not a movie, but a virtual sweat shop that exists only on Second Life, the online virtual world, yet produces real life, custom-ordered, personalized blue jeans. - NYT
Rocket Science, a hit at last year’s Sundance Film Festival and the story of a high school debate team, had a limited theatrical release in 2007. It is being released on DVD by HBO Home Video on January 29th.
According to the festival, 2,051 dramatic films and 1,573 documentaries were submitted, of which 121 features – 58 by first-time directors – made the cut.
Sean Combs said his favorite line as Walter Younger Jr. in A Raisin in the Sun is: "Don't my wife deserve to wear no pearls?" - USAToday
There are a record seven films from the Middle East at Sundance this year (2008), many of them focusing on the fringes of society there rather than the war in Iraq.
Here’s the great thing about Sundance: There are screenings at 8:30 in the morning! A movie lover’s dream! Here’s the horrible thing about Sundance: There are screenings at 8:30 in the morning! A human being’s nightmare. - Josh Horowitz of MTV
Sundance Institute has a 4-year-old screenwriting lab in Jordan.
About 4,000 3-D-ready digital cinema screens are expected to be ready in North America by May 2009 for the growing number of digital 3-D features. - HollywoodReporter
William H. Macy, the Oscar-nominated actor, co-wrote and personally raised the money to make the Sundance Film Festival selection “The Deal”, after everyone else in town turned him down.
While many film festivals have midnight sections that screen outré and impolite genre films, there is something about Sundance's "Park City at Midnight" that defies expectations. Frequently brimming with frenzied horror, outrageous mayhem and dark comedy, the section has consistently featured some the most commercially successful films to emerge from Sundance. Films that have previously screened in the midnight section at Sundance include breakout hits "The Blair Witch Project" (1999), "Super Troopers" (2001) and "Saw" (2004). LATimes.com
Noting that the crowd of festivalgoers won over by their film includes few of their core head-banger constituency, Reiner said that Sundance was a strange place for the band to play, "but we'll do anything. We have done weddings, bar mitzvahs, anything. We can play here too." LATimes
Kirsten Dunst came to Sundance this year not as an actress premiering a movie, but as a first time director showing off her short Welcome.
U2 3D, produced by 3ality Digital and directed by Catherine Owens and Mark Pellington, was edited by Olivier Wicki of Bluerock New York.
It has been a brutal year at the boxoffice for indie distributors and studio specialty divisions. Business is down 11.9% from 2006. Most divisions have enjoyed only one so-so hit for every three or four movies released, among the most disappointing ratios since the specialty units were created in the 1990s to bridge the indie and studio worlds. - HollywoodReporter.com
More than 15 entries at this year's festival have characters contemplating, attempting or actually killing themselves.
"Sleep Dealer" is a big film - a reported 450 visual effects shots led by visual effects supervisor Mark Russell. Cinematographer Lisa Rinzler uses color to full effect and animation and digital effects play a big part in the film but its standout features remain its bare bones effects of old cables and dusty computer equipment. - indieWIRE
Hottie Eliza Dushku, whose “Bottle Shock” is premiering, paid a visit to the MySpace Cafe to create a profile and then found dozens of fake ones that already existed.
'If the documentaries at this year's Sundance Film Festival reflect the current state of the world, then the world is in trouble.' - Salt Lake Trib
The setting for In Bruges: Had McDonagh not himself visited Bruges some four years ago, we might well have been treated to a film set in Croydon or Coventry. - FilmStew.com
An animated short playing at Sundance includes a scene of Mitt Romney, naked except for a Mormon Temple replica he's holding around him like a fig leaf. (That should play well in Utah.) - Aaron Barnhart
You can find a public restroom in the Transit Center. Seems to be the only one in Park City.
“Wherever we gotta go, we gotta plant a flag like Stratego.”
- A great line from: Because Washington Is Hollywood for Ugly People, 2007
52,000 people are expected to attend Sundance 2008.
This year, 45 of the 83 short films in the 2008 Sundance Film Festival are available at for viewing and/or download at iTunes, Netflix, and Xbox.com.
According to locals, a "Good Snow" is about one foot of accumulation.
Sundance will be streaming FREE Festival shorts online at sundance.org/festival. Just in case you get too cold out there!
Focus Features decided to do something different with their first movie of 2008 (In Bruges), holding it until the opening night of the Sundance Film Festival before screening it for critics—ANY critics.
- comingsoon.net
Avid Technology, Inc. (NASDAQ:AVID) today announced that a wide variety of independent filmmakers used Avid® products to create films selected for this year’s Sundance Film Festival, which will take place in Park City, Utah from January 17 – 27. Avid will also host a series of stage presentations in the New Frontier on Main Street – with special guests including famed Director/Producer Doug Liman (The Bourne Ultimatum, Mr. and Mrs. Smith, Swingers) and Editor Kevin Tent (Sideways), amongst others.
- digital content producer
Pretty Bird features a real-life rocket-pack flight. "We found a guy who flies them," the actor says. "But it's incredibly dangerous."
- USAtoday
[Lets Make a Deal]...fewer than 20 of the 121 feature films set to screen have U.S. distribution. Based on data provided by the Sundance Film Festival's Industry Office and a number of sales companies who are heading to the event this week, about 100 new feature films are arriving at the festival with available U.S. rights.
- indieWIRE
"Sundance is weird," Britney Spears infamously quipped five years ago in Park City, quoted by the New York Post's Page Six. "The movies are weird - you actually have to think about them when you watch them."
- indieWIRE
Among this year's Sundance films, 53 are from first-time directors.
- Park City Record
from Deborah Netburn, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer, http://www.calendarlive.com/movies/cl-et-web-sundancefacts16jan16,0,7880610.story?coll=cl-movies
1. Before being called the Sundance Festival, Utah's annual film festival was called the Utah/US Film Festival--and was held in Salt Lake City.
2. Robert Redford is not the founder! The Utah/US Film Festival was founded in 1978 by Sterling van Wegener, a Brigham Young University film school grad, and John Earle, the Utah state film commissioner. Redford, who was then married to van Wegener's cousin, agreed to be the festival board's first chairman.
3. You didn't always get to ski. In 1981, the festival moved from Salt Lake City to the ski resort town of Park City.
4. Reportedly, Sydney Pollack (a member of the festival's board) suggested moving the festival to the winter months so that it would be during the ski season. "Hollywood would beat down the door to attend," he promised.
5. The Sundance Institute (created by Redford in 1981) took over running the Utah film festival in 1985 because the event needed year-round support (and fundraising!).
6. The festival has had several names over the years. It was called the United States Film Festival from 1985-1989, the Sundance United States Film Festival in 1990 and eventually became the Sundance Film Festival in 1991.
7. The Coen brothers' debut film, "Blood Simple," was the first film to win the Grand Jury Award for dramatic film after the Sundance Institute took over in 1985.
8. In 1988, Steven Soderbergh volunteered as a driver, ferrying festival-goers around the city. The following year his debut film, "sex, lies and videotape," won the Audience Award.
9. Some of the famous films of the late 1980s that screened at Sundance included "Hannah and Her Sisters," "Heathers" and John Waters' "Hairspray."
10. Sundance hosted Michael Moore's debut documentary in 1989--"Roger and Me."
11. John Turturro was the first actor to receive the Tribute to Independent Vision Award in 1992.
12. Director Robert Rodriguez's film "El Mariachi"--made for only $7,000--won the Audience Award in 1993.
13. By 1994, Sundance was getting so flooded with submissions (by independent filmmakers and those with studio backing) that Slamdance, a second independent film festival, was started.
14. By 1997, the residents of Park City were seeing an estimated $20 million direct investment in their town each year thanks to the festival.
15. A midnight screening of "The Blair Witch Project" in 1999 sparked a nationwide obsession with the film, making it the most successful independent release of all time.
16. It will take 1,500 volunteers to keep the 2008 festival running smoothly.
17. For the first time, Sundance this year will hand out awards to international filmmakers in directing, screenwriting and cinematography in both dramatic and documentary categories.
18. Also this year, the festival eliminated the $5 fee to register for a time slot to buy festival passes and ticket packages. This resulted in a flood of applications, and more than 4,000 were rejected without receiving any time slot at all.
19. In 1985, 10 films received awards at the Sundance Film Festival. By 2007, 28 films were recognized (including those that receive honorable mention).
20. More than 20,000 people attend Sundance each year.
21. Quentin Tarantino's debut film, "Reservoir Dogs," premiered at Sundance in 1992. The film had been produced with formal guidance from the Sundance Institute.
22. The festival is wisely held during the third week of January--a typical dead time in the ski-resort town.
23. In 2008, the festival received more than 8,000 submissions--the most ever.