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January 1, 2003

..Gary Dretzka
..Noah Forrest
..Leonard Klady
..R.J. Matson
..David Poland
..Douglas Pratt
..Ray Pride
..Michael Wilmington

Hope springs eternal, even in the dead of winter … especially in Hollywood, where winter is best observed from the slopes of some far-away mountain.

One sure sign of this chronic form of optimism arrived in Sunday’s Los Angeles Times, with the paper’s Sneaks 2004 section. The other reminder comes daily, in the form of dispatches from Sundance.

Although the Times’ regularly scheduled Sneaks sections can easily be dismissed as cheap and easy ways to apologize in advance to studio advertisers for all the negative reviews to come, there is something charmingly Pollyanna-ish about the coverage. Apart from engendering tens of thousands of dollars worth of free advance publicity for big-budget projects still being shaped – Harry Potter, Alfie, Alexander, Troy -- the stories serve as absolution for the studios’ past sins.

No one wants movies to be wonderful more than the editors, critics and feature writers who labor in the media, myself included ... if only because good movies are more fun to watch and discuss than badly made and mediocre pictures. (Turkeys, of course, are in a class by themselves, as they inspire healthy expenditures of shared vitriol.) Then, too, a rising tide of a box-office business lifts all commercial vessels in the vicinity, including newspaper advertising departments, studio marketers and happy customers.

Coverage of Sundance pretty much follows the same pattern.

Aside from being paid to party in the company of Harvey Weinstein and Robert Redford, the nation’s entertainment press braves the elements – such as they are – each January to convince themselves and their readers that not everything being released in the coming year will be garbage. Most of the movies shown at this and other festivals (even the most deserving titles) will fail to find distributors, and the ones that do likely will be released in the fall. Still, the media enjoy a good snowball fight as much as anyone else, and their exuberance has helped turn a once-pleasant gathering of the indie tribe into an intellectual gangbang.

Again, no reporter arrives in Park City hoping to see anything less than the best our independent filmmakers and documentarians have to offer. While some journalists put on their designer parkas to cover the business transactions and cocktail parties, most come to see the movies, for free.

Funny thing is, though, the rarefied air of Park City often has a weird sort of effect on reporters watching those movies. Stripped of all real-world context, too many of the films are accorded a significance that doesn’t translate when the reels roll down the mountain. It’s called the Sundance Syndrome. Seen weeks or months later, at sea level, a lot of the hyped pictures don’t look as hot … especially those that go for millions of dollars to Miramax, only to be placed on a shelf in SoHo for the next two or three years.

Documentaries tend to fend better, if only because there are few financial expectations going into the festival and, later, general release.

Nonetheless, “serious” editors working at “major” publications prefer to have a legitimate excuse to publish the photos and drop the names of celebrities, and latter-day Sundance certainly fills that bill. Plus, it keeps their ace critics happy in the dry period before Valentine’s Day.

No harm, no foul … just another prime example of the symbiosis that exists between the media and the industry. Although, Sundance and Sneaks exist on a higher plane than the well-oiled press-junket machinery, Hollywood Foreign Press Association and celebrity-obsessed magazine world, we all share the same air. Otherwise, why would any one of us treat the Golden Globes and Oscars as anything more than the popularity contests they are, created and promoted to sell Hollywood to the world?

Meanwhile, the results of voting by various critics' groups each year tends to be used as filler. And, don’t get me started on Cannes.

- by Gary Dretzka

January 20, 2004