THE Sundance Film Festival has at least one thing in common with Dublin - mobile phones. They're everywhere; just ask Tim Robbins.
The actor/director who was in Park City Utah, to receive the Piper Heidsieck Tribute to Independent Vision, regaled the news media with his anecdote about a skier he had spotted the previous day answering his mobile phone while on the slopes.
That skier was most likely from Los Angeles, as that city's film industry personnel seem to move en masse to Park City for the duration of the US's most prestigious festival for films made outside the Hollywood mainstream. The phones are so popular that one cinema has a sign asking festivalgoers to turn them off during the show.
In addition to film makers, producers and distributors, Sundance also attracts its fair share of big stars. Robert Redford, whose Sundance Institute (located near Park City) started the festival in 1985, has many friends within the industry. Sally Field, Glenn Close, Billy Crystal and Tim Roth were among the notables spotted during the festival. Roth has been coming to Sundance since his trip to promote Quentin Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs. The British actor was here to publicise the movie Gridlocked in which his co star is the controversial rapper Tupac Shakur, who was shot dead in Las Vegas last year.
The main purpose behind the 11 day festival, which ends tomorrow, is to celebrate independent film by providing film makers with a platform which they might otherwise not get. The festival also gives them a chance to meet other film makers and secure distribution deals for their pictures. Tarantino got his first big break at Sundance, as did Edward Burns, director of The Brothers McMullen. As Roth puts it: "It has become a place for studios to hunt down the new film makers and try and corrupt them." But, he adds, "they use each other".
In recent years the festival has been criticised for showing too many commercial movies, so this year organisers bent over backwards to restore the true, independent spirit of the event. As Redford said on the opening night, "this festival is for the artist". So much so, in fact, that there has been little buzz this year about what's hot and what's not. Don't ask Redford. During his press conference last weekend, he told reporters that he "hates that word [buzz]".
However, among the most talked about movies this year are Gridlocked and Fast, Cheap & Out of Control, the latter by Errol Morris in which four characters talk about human enterprise and the essence of life. Another hot ticket is Prefontaine, a biopic on one of the legends of track and field, Steve Prefontaine, by the makers of the basketball documentary Hoop Dreams.
THERE'S an Irish interest at this year's festival, too. The sci fi movie Space Truckers, starring Dennis Hopper and filmed in Ireland, is on the programme, as is Dubliner Trish McAdam's feature debut Snakes and Ladders. The film, whose cast includes Rosaleen Linehan and standup comic Sean Hughes, got an appreciative reception on its first of three showings at Sundance. The movie centres on two female flatmates in Dublin who eke out a living in the performance arts.
McAdam says she was "pretty blown out" for her film to be chosen for Sundance. "All of these festivals are mad," she says, "but I actually find this quite accessible. You meet other filmmakers which is actually really important to me." She explains that her colleagues can provide advice on what it's like to deal with particular film companies. Snakes and Ladders is due to play in Ireland in March, although negotiations are still underway. McAdam has just completed a documentary series on women in Ireland since 1922, which will be shown on RTE at Easter.
Another film maker to get a welcome reception for his film was John O'Hagan.
Wonderland is about America's first planned suburb, Levittown, New York, built in 1947. It is an affectionate, endearing and clever look at the history of the town and includes interviews with numerous residents. O'Hagan had already received an offer for distribution by the third day of the festival.
"It's difficult for documentaries to get any kind of theatrical distribution," he said, adding "I think this is kind of a unique subject and an entertaining film."
One distributor with plenty of experience of wheeling and dealing at Sundance is Miramax Films. A mobile phone would have been handy in dealing with the company's publicity unit while trying to arrange interviews with Pete Postlethwaite (In the Name of the Father), Stephen Tompkinson (Ballykissangel) and Tara Fitzgerald (A Man of No Importance). The three star in the festival opener, Brassed Off which has already played in Ireland. The story concerns a Yorkshire mining pit facing closure and the attempts by the miners to make it to the Royal Albert Hall for a national brass band contest.
An interview request required repeated phone calls to Miramax's New York office, despite the fact that there were press representatives in Park City. No immediate reply ensued but as luck would have it, Postlethwaite was to be found in the festival hospitality suite, a stop for reporters working on their stories.
The actor seemed more than happy to meet someone from a country he has an obvious love for and suggested a few drinks were in order. Tompkinson and his Ballykissangel co star and partner Dervla Kirwan, who was with Tompkinson on holiday, soon joined the barside chat (see panel).
Shortly after, while taking a photo of the three stars of Brassed Off, a request for them to pretend to throw snowballs was met by an incredulous look from Postlethwaite and a mini volley of snowballs.
That white stuff is what attracts many industry people to Sundance and may be one reason why Tim Robbins has been coming to the festival since 1987, although his passion for movies made outside the mainstream is obvious. The actor and his partner Susan Sarandon are known as much for their liberal politics and activism as for their films.
In response to one reporter's question, Robbins said that this "has everything to do with my parents, the Catholic school I went to and boy scouts. When you're a boy scout and you see an old woman on the street and she needs your help, you're supposed to help her and not look the other way. I've got to say that a lot of that Oscar thing [where he and Sarandon made a political statement during an Oscar show] had to do with being a boy scout ... a misguided boy scout perhaps."
These days, he said that he and Sarandon try not to work during the school year so as they can be around for their children. He recently turned down "a lot of money" to work in a foreign country because the movie's shooting schedule didn't facilitate this.
Asked if he had ever been offered a film in Ireland he replied "no", adding "I'd love to do a film in Ireland. I love Ireland. I travelled in Ireland before I was well known, to tell you the truth - with a back pack." It was unclear whether he had a mobile phone at the time.