Park City, Utah: Kurt Cobain and Canadian director Bruce Sweeney are rarely folded into the same sentence.
But at Sundance, where the fabulous, the freaks and the filmmakers runneth over, a parade of perfect teeth and footwear wholly inappropriate for three feet of Utah snow, unusual synergies manifest themselves.
At Playback press time it is day four of the 10-day Sundance Film Festival and Stephen Hegyes, executive producer on Sweeney’s (Live Bait) new feature Dirty, is standing in the lobby of the Yarrow Resort Hotel and Conference Centre, excited in an understated kind of way.
It seems the Sundance executive committee has just decided Dirty, Sweeney’s new tale of oppression, angst and perversion, will replace the screenings of Nick Broomfield’s docudrama Kurt and Courtney, which was pulled from the fest apparently for music rights’ reasons, although conspiracy theories are everywhere.
Dirty, one of two Canadian features in the American festival along with Thom Fitzgerald’s The Hanging Garden, had its world premiere to a sold-out theater earlier in the week. The stark, unsentimental portrayal of four self-destructing East Vancouver urbanites, was introduced at the premiere as part of the ‘new wave’ of Canadian independent filmmaking.
Sweeney, waiting in the lobby before q&a on the film’s second screening, says audience response has been solid and that opening night was engaging.
‘The first night the film has a public life… it’s an intensity never found again. The feeling in the room was good. Audience members are responding to the film, which is what you want, that emotional attachment.’
Behaviour Communications has Canadian distribution rights for Dirty, and although no u.s. distributor was in place mid-fest, the fish are biting and the buzz, in tandem with the Cobain decision, is inspiring, says Hegyes.
‘The independent label is starting to become a marketing tag and sometimes represents films with big budgets and a distribution deal. When it happens to a classic independent, it’s that much better.’
Sundance – the Robert Redford-inspired two weeks in January when 13,000 studio and independent film types descend on the 10,000 population of Park City – is a u.s.-centric film festival with a small but tangible Canadian representation.
Attendees run the gamut from Telefilm Canada and National Film Board representatives; Piers Handling, executive director of Cinematheque Canada; Viacom chair Helga Stephenson; Cineplex Odeon Films senior vp Bryan Gliserman and Alliance Releasing’s Andras Hamori to Canadian short filmmakers including first-time director Daniel Hawkes, screenwriter Thom Ernst and producer Alan Collins accompanying their $20,000 black-and-white short, Rosa’s Time.
In the talent ranks, (although the film qualifies as a u.s. entry) Jerry and Tom is Saul Rubinek’s directorial debut. It is doped by Paul Sarossy, production designed by former commercial director David Hackel and counts Maury Chaykin among a principal cast which includes Joe Mantegna, Sam Rockwell, Charles Durning, Ted Danson and William H. Macy.
A black comedy about part-time salesmen, part-time hit men, Jerry and Tom had Lions Gate Films (cfp) behind it coming into the fest. By Monday, it was one of two, along with Next Stop, Wonderland, to land major distribution deals with Miramax Films early in the fortnight. Deals aren’t usually inked until the second half of the fest when the executive level of the major studios shows up to case the scouts’ recommendations.
Post Sundance, Sweeney will return to Vancouver to workshop his next project The Last Wedding, a story of three disintegrating relationships.
Hegyes will executive produce Mina Shum’s next feature Fry Girl.
Hawkes will work to leverage his Sundance status into a feature, Too Quiet Blue, based on ‘war and ghost stories my mother told me.’
Rosa’s Time, made with the support of the Ontario Arts Council and the nfb with a prebuy to tvontario, stars Gary Farmer and details the encounter of a young girl and her single mother with a salesman, which changes their lives.
The short was made with gratis contributions of equipment and gratis dop talent from Derek Van Lint (Aliens). Hawkes is talking to Sundance Channel for u.s. broadcast distribution.
The festival wrapped Jan. 25