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Sundance: It's a Wrap

Regrets He Has a Few

By: - Feb 02, 2011

Sundance Sundance. Sundance Sundance

Tuesday, January 25

We leave the village for Salt Lake City where will stay what at first seems like two nights and then becomes only one as my host realizes that three of our flights are really for the next morning, while the fourth is for Thursday.  We arrive in Salt Lake in time to see one of the New Frontier’s entries of this year’s festival called Jess + Moss which is a different kind of film characterized by extreme close-ups and a kind of obtusely unwoven cinematic constructed story line about two orphaned people, one a child and one a teenager. Thery try to understand the world through an abandoned, ramshackle house filled with curios from previous occupants.

It looks beautiful shot on a great deal of old film stock, rendering a wide variety of experimental looks to the children’s world view.  Bit by bit the unfolding story reveals who these two people are and suggests why they are so estranged from anything resembling a world that we might recognize.  They are trapped in childhood and a discrete sense of loss as orphans. They have all of the emotional and psychological baggage that entails. It makes for a long journey that takes a great deal of patience. Only someone with a tolerance for experimental timelines can appreciate it.  Expired film stock, while visually interesting, does not hold one’s attention beyond the surface image making to challenging to sustain an audience through a feature.

Tired, both visually and overwhelmed by all we have taken in over the last days, we go out in search of food in Downtown Salt Lake, ultimately splitting up; me and Andrew and his Ugandan American friend, Sentie and my artist friend and Andrew’s mother.  We find a wonderful chiarrusco  (Argentinian barbeque ) place and they went to a small Italian restaurant.  

Again satisfied, and completely in a state of sensory overload, we head to bed in our hotel with plans to meet first thing in the morning for our trip home to Boston.  

Wednesday January 26
 
It is my birthday.  And while I did not anticipate spending it traveling from about 6:30am WST to 10:30 EST it is with good company.  My only regrets with Sundance this year, besides its abbreviation, was my inability to reconnect with Robert Redford to see if I could further interest him in my film. I would still like to interview him about my grandmother and his memory of her environmental activism with the National Resource Defense Council. I hope to discuss memories of his own father’s work with Standard Oil who had sponsored the Flaherty film Louisiana Story that I revisit in detail in my film.  I had also planned to meet with Bob Balaban, whose film The Convincer ( with Greg Kinnear and Alan Arkin) I had wanted to see in Park City.  I had spoken to Balaban about the possibility of him becoming my Executive Producer as both of us traveled the previous week, he to his weekend home and me to a funders meeting in Providence, Rhode Island.  

He cut short my pitch saying: “ I get it.  It is a great idea  and it is clear to me you are the real deal….”  I was  heartened, especially after pursuing him for about six months.  The stars seemed to be aligning, and momentum of forward progress within my sights.  I knew he was to be there only for the screening and then was to return to New York where he had been busily directing episodes of “Nurse Jackie” for Showtime.  In the back of my mind, I knew that being in Salt Lake, while the screening for The Convincer was in Park City, was going to be too difficult to make work.  

Resigned that I had missed that opportunity, we head out early to the airport.  As I am pushing Andrew in his wheelchair towards our gate, we meet two people who we had flown out with and had the opportunity to meet again at Sundance Village.  We stopped mid terminal to chat.  Of course at that moment, I spied Bob Balaban, and invited him over to say how much I really liked our conversation and look forward to the next step.  I do trust my instincts. Mostly like  films that do get produced, and  ones that make it to Sundance, it is up to a simple nose-to-the-grindstone belief in oneself. It demands a well-defined mission, team and undying tenacity.

The plane lands, and Andrew and his mother are met by his father and sister. “I love your family,” I tell the father as we load Andrew into the car and place his wheelchair in the back of his car.  A few days prior, the three of us were in The Foundry Grill at Sundance, discussing his film, Suburban Kings about gangs in the suburbs.  By the end of the conversation, Andrew’s head was spinning with ideas and new incentives to make his film better.  He was charged.  And so was I.

We all pledge to see each other soon online in a video conference.  I move to the bus area, which, due to yet another snow storm, has delayed another aspect of this seemingly endless trip.  It does eventually arrive. I climb in and begin to write my impressions of another year at Sundance.

And even though it is my third year on Oil In The Family, it is only by a day-to-day perseverance that the baby steps toward realization occur.  Eventually I will get there. I know it.  “It is a process,” is still my mantra.  


Jon Goldman is a producer, director, writer, editor and visual artist living in Woods Hole, Massachusetts on Cape Cod where he helps program the Woods Hole Film Festival.
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