How Sundance sold its soul

On a bracing, brilliantly clear day in Park City, Utah, last week—the sort of day when simply stepping outside into the mountain air sets the tear ducts working in a primitive and automatic rejection of the preposterous cold—two expensively dressed middle-aged women were struggling their way uphill on Main Street, the city's central corridor lined with tourist shops and faux-western storefronts. They stopped short on the crowded sidewalk in exasperation, their lungs gulping against the rarefied atmosphere.

"Maybe we should cross the street and start walking back down," said the taller of the two, in a genteel Southern accent.

"Oh no," said the other. "You can't see people's faces." Owing to the angle of the sun, it seemed, only an uphill trajectory would guarantee well-lit views of their fellow pedestrians. So they marched onward.

Sundance is not for the benefit of audiences but of fat-pocketed distributors—many of them divisions of the Hollywood studios that Sundance poses in opposition toThe advantageous light was required for purposes of identification: The pair was on a gawking circuit of Park City, which was alive with celebrity during the 2007 Sundance Film Festival, and, like birders on the trail of a long-billed Murrelet, they were not prepared to let a Jeremy Sisto or a Sienna Miller anonymously scamper by in shadow. And they were not alone. Aside from the more than 1,100 credentialed members of the press who descended on Park City over the previous ten days to document the comings and goings of the glitterati during the festival, which concluded on Sunday, it seemed that virtually everybody in Park City who was not a bona fide celebrity was primarily engaged in the art of locating bona fide celebrities, eyeballing them, and calling independent witnesses on their cell phones to commemorate said eyeballing. Of course, it wasn't a banner year for high wattage stars in Park City—no Brad Pitt, no Tom Cruise, no Julia Roberts—so some poor saps had to settle for an Ian Ziering sighting or two. One cab driver—a Middle Eastern fellow named Omar who comes in from Salt Lake City every year to charge Hollywood-types $15 for three-quarters of a mile rides—was reduced to boasting that the previous evening he had driven The Ten director and "Stella" alum David Wain in that very cab! ("He's Jewish, right?" Omar said, to my bewilderment. "I think he's a Jew.")

The relative quality of available celebrity notwithstanding, the organizers of Sundance were on a relentless campaign this year to promote the notion that the festival is about art and cinema, and that the attendant clusterfuck of swag lounges and Hummer limos and party girls dressed up like Eskimo hookers are contrary to its principles. The Sundance Institute executive director Ken Brecher, in a welcome letter printed in the festival's 296-page guide (fat with ads from American Express and Delta), pledged his allegiance to "Robert Redford's commitment to authentic artistry" and "the transformative power of storytelling." The oft-repeated motto was "Focus on Film," and it was intended to gently remind the festivalgoers who focused too much on getting laid or being seen that Papa Redford was watching, and that he was prepared to turn this festival around and go straight back home if everyone didn't pipe down and take in a Dutch documentary about three Chechnyan friends—and don't you dare skip out on the Native Forum reception at the Legacy Lodge, either.