it's been awhile.. so i don't even know where to start. i'm also trying to figure out to do this collapse thing.. like where it says "first day at sundance" and you click on it and it expands the entry to show everything.. but i think since this i blogger i can't really control things like that. so everyone will just have to bear with the super long post. or just avoid it like the plague.
i think my audioblog this is pretty rad. i actually re-recorded it like 3 times because the first time i got cut off (yea shut up.. ha ha ha) and the second time it was stupid and the third time was the final one.. and the movie was starting so i just posted it.
so.. here is sundance in a nutshell.
5 days, 10 movies, 3 parties, and 1 giftbag later i am home from sundance (well, plus one week and one day). it was a lot of fun, and definitely nice to just hang out, not have to worry about work, or waking up early if you didn't want to, or nagging parents, or telling someone what time you're going to be home.
flight and first day - jan 20/21
i got home from work with my clean teeth and finished up last minute packing and what not. my parents drove me to the long beach airport, except we got a little lost. my parents were yelling at each other about which way to go, and after calling multiple people who didn't answer, sergi finally gave me directions of how to get on route to the airport. thanks sergi! after a mini fight with my mom (gotta have one for the road right?) i boarded my plane to salt lake city. you'd think a flight in the middle of the week at 8pm wouldn't be too full right? wrong.. crowwwded. but i guess because it was snow season and sundance.. so whatever. i got to salt lake at 11-ish and then took the half hour shuttle ride to park city and got dropped off at the cabin my sister rented.. it was pretty nice. except i had to walk up this long hill of a driveway in the cold thin air... with my heavy luggage.. haha.. i'm such a wuss. but it was cool. we stayed up kind of late.. i watched my sister and jeff-gu play scrabble until the wee hours of the morning. they were having a scrabble feud inspired by their screening of Word Wars. we were supposed to wake up early and try to get on the stand by list for Super Size Me but didn't quite make it, so after sleeping a little bit more chris, joan and i went to go get tickets for Easy. also that morning chris decided to make an cheese omelette. but as he grabbed the cheese out of the fridge again to add more cheese he carried the bag upside down and i watched the shredded cheese rain onto the kitchen floor. i tell chris and he promptly yells "LIAR!.. this bag isn't resealable" and i fall over laughing. it doesn't sound quite as funny as i type this out.. but i wanted to write it, so when i re-read this i can remember and chuckle to myself. :P
Easy was pretty good. it was lots of nekkid-ness... and the first girl from mighty ducks was in the movie and there for the q&a session afterwards so i got to meet her!! i am a huge dork and went and told her how i was excited to see her in this movie because i love the mighty ducks movie. yes.. i am a big 'ol dork. ate lunch at the way too expensive concession stand. and then caught another screening Brother to Brother at the Library (the same place as the first screening). it was the actual park city library and they had a auditorium which was pretty cool. i think it was the second largest screening venue. after that we headed over to the holiday theaters, which was three small theaters that they were using for sundance (sucks for people who live there.. where do they go to watch regular movies?) i helped pass out lithographs and fake tattoos as giveaways for the second screening of my sister's doc In the Realms of the Unreal during the screening we hung out at this cute little place two stores down called rUinTAH eggs. cute huh? :P
it was a breakfast foody type place that was open until 3am, probably quite the popular hang out. they have rad hot chocolate. we had dinner until it was time to go back for the q&a session and pass stuff out again. after the screening i wanted to go try and catch zach braff's movie Garden State but there was like a million people waiting in line to get on the wait list (on top of people who already had actual tickets) so since there was like 300 people in front of me i opted to just not waste my time. i called up courtney who i had run into earlier in the day to see what she was doing. it was pretty crazy.. i was shopping in the sundance merch booth at gateway where she was volunteering and she came up to me and was like "is your name jean?" we met sophomore year through circle k and just kind of lost touch since then (USD cki fell apart, she went abroad to spain, blah blah blah) but it was rad to see her again. and that night i got to hang out with her, and her friends ruth ann and matt. we had a good amount of fun, we first went to this bar j.b. mulligans (where i lost one of my gloves... boo) and then made the taxi man drive all over town trying to fidn where the gen art/fcuk party was.
it was on very top of this mountain in this huge cabin. pretty crazy. there was free drinks, food and the roots were playing. since ruth ann's friend was working the door she got me and matt wristbands. nice to know friends in high places. we drank and partied and danced we got free chapstick on a rope, fcuk safely condoms (they're different colors too!) and giftbags. :) nice.
second day - jan 22
slept in since we had such a full day the day before. but joan's friend was working in the box office, so we got all kinds of hook ups with tickets. sweet huh? she got us tickets to Napolean Dynamite which i hadn't originally anticipated on seeing, but a lot of people had been saying good things about it, so i was excited to see it. it was showing at Eccles Theater which is the biggest and nicest venue out of all the ones for the sundance screenings (at least in park city). but it's the high school's auditorium.. that must be nice for the students, even if they have to put up with the public coming and invading their school. it was really nice, a huge stage, nice seats and even a balcony. but anyways.. when we got to eccles the wait list line was huge and crazy, thank god we had tickets. there was also a bunch of people standing around tryng to buy tickets because they didn't want to wait in line, or just realized they didn't have a chance.
while my sister was waiting for chris to come back from parking the car she said some guy was like "who wants to buy one ticket?" and some guy jumped out from line and was like "i'll pay $100!!" crazy huh? that's where i audio blogged from, waiting for the movie to start. i saw danny glover pass by (i didn't know he was one of the grand jury judges) and there was this girl sitting a few rows behind me that looked kind of like hilary duff, and it was her sister (who was in the movie)... haha... i found myself thinking.. "man.. i wish norma and maritza were here" hahah. but the movie was super funny and entertaining and i guess it was the premiere screening so i think the full cast was there. it gave me hope for the high school dork in me :) afterwards we shuttled it on over to main street where there was a bunch of shops, another movie venue (the egyptian) and the sundance house, filmmaker's lodge.. etc etc etc. we ate lunch at this pizza place that was pretty yummy and then went to catch A Good Lawyer's Wife a korean movie. we caught dinner at this mexican food place called zona rosa. i had a $10 off coupon from a book i picked up (go me).. but it was still pretty expensive for food that was okay. we hurried back to eccles for D.E.B.S. my sister was really excited for this movie, but once it started... we were all kind of blah. it was alright.. i thought it was going to be kidn of alias-y but it was more like charlie's angels 2 but worse. guys might like it cuz there's models in short skirts and a lesbian action based plot... and i could see them marketing it really well and creating this big hype.. but really.. don't go see it. unless you loved charlie's angels 2... then whatever floats your boat.
we caught the shuttle over to the VW drive in party, which sounded kind of cool but that was also not quite as fun either. especially because my sister and chris aren't big partiers, or at least not with me around :P it was in this huge warehouse/barn thing.. and there was dirt and straw all over the ground and kinda smelled like fertilizer. there was a dance area in the middle, but it was trance/house music and all the lights were on.. not my ideal dancing environment especially since joan and chris didn't want to. i'm not also a big dance by myself type either. there was this hp station where they'd take pictures and print their out on their photo printers so that was pretty cool. and then they also had 9 of their cars in set up facing this giant screen (drive in party... get it?) so we got to sit in this bug convertible .. it was neat. (yea i know nicole... boo volkswagen boo.. but i was just sitting in it :P) too bad i didn't get to sit in the new toureg (vw suv).. that would have been pretty sweet.
third day - jan 23
and so the fun continues. we decided to shuttle it to eccles (instead of dealing with the traffic) and were a little late but still on time to our first screening of the day November it was kind of like a thriller in the sixth sense kind of style. courtney cox-arquette was in it, so that was pretty cool to see her in a different kind of thing. it was good, and i didn't really get it at first, but after the q&a i understood it a little more. i'm not that bright with thinking kind of movies :P but i'm glad i got to see it. they won the cinematography award, and my sister had really liked their work, and it was all shot on DVcam so that was pretty impressive.
chris went off to go meet with his friends, so joan and i didn't really have plans, we wanted to catch The Best Theif in the World because we were going to get free tickets, but we didn't think we could get to it in time, so we ended up watching Below the Belt which neither joan or myself thought was very good, but joan's friends really loved.. hmm.. different strokes for different folks right? it was a play adapted into a movie, so it was really talky and there was lots of cg effects. afterwards i treated my sissy-poo to the "Grub Steak House" which is where they had this great steak dinner when my sister came to sundance with BLT so she was excited to go again and was craving really good steak. i had a coupon for a free dessert (good 'ol coupon book) but it wasn't valid during sundance, and my sister just HAD to point it out to the waiter... dang it. but since my sister had let me crash in her cabin and pretty much paid for all our other meals i took care of this one. :) how nice of me huh? :P we tried to catch Super Size Me but we had thought that one of joan's friends' friends could walk us in because they had worked on it, but her friend flaked, so there went the friends' friend. joan's friend was a publicist for the movie and he could get us one ticket, but that wasn't really enough either.. boo. the other sucky part was that this guy had tickets to sell and walked right past me, and i had wanted to say something to him, but i didn't want to harass him, and then he gave the tickets to another girl boo. so joan and i went home and just chilled... but there was nothing on tv, and not much else to do, so we decided to go to walmart. fun huh? hahhaa. nicole and beth's favorite pasttime. so spent some time at wal mart, then albertson's and then back home and it was finally time for the midnight screening of In the Realms of the Unreal. i got courtney and ruth ann tickets and we all watched it, well.. kinda court and ruth ann fell asleep.. oops. hey it was a midnight screening and they had worked all day. it was good, kind of sad because they guy (henry darger) had a sad life story, but fascinating as well :P afterwards matt dragged courtney and ruth ann to rUinTAH, so i went to chit chat for a bit and joan and chris came along (since they were my ride home). we sat, chatted and drank hot chocolate.. yum :) it was fun, we were all kind of delirious.. it was a good time.
day 4 & 5 - jan 24/25
it was my last day at sundance (saaad) so i had to make the most of it right? i got up to meet courtney and ruth ann and their roommate robin to try and catch Word Wars but yet again we underestimate the craziness of people and there's like 100 ppl or so in front of us and we won't get in. boo. so we go to this place called Renee's which is a vegetarian place, but there's lots of fake meat stuff like b.l.a.t.'s and i had chicken taquitos and courtney had an omelette. my mom would have loved that place, if she ever goes to park city, we'll go there :) she hates going to "american food" places because they only have pasta or salad and she just doesn't like those limitations. but anyhoo... it was alright.. they had this really really good dessert (i love my desserts) of a fudge brownie with peanut butter mousse and fresh whipped cream.. it was amazing. we also got key lime pie (i'm a piggy.. i know) but it wasn't as great. it was very tarty... but nothing beats chocolate :P we walked around and went to the sundance house where we sat in the VW massage chairs (oohh) and checked email. i also saw all these posters of picture they took of actors/directors/musicians at sundance. snapped pix of jason mraz when he played at the cafe there (i missed it .. boo) but he played sunday before i even got there.. sucky. and snapped jessica's pix (the director of my sis' doc) and a pix of these muppets that they had in the shorts at the beginning of each movie. they'd say like "sundance myth #9: it's never too early" and then show the muppets freezing in the snow late at night waiting to get tickets to a showing the next day. they had really funny ones.. like my sister said "everything's funnier with muppets."
i met chris and joan at eccles and i waited in line to get a ticket for Zatoichi, which wasn't too hard. it was a japanese kung fu movie, pretty violent (thanks for telling me in advance joan) and i kept having to move my head side to side so i could read the caption cuz there was a pretty big dude in front of me. and i kept thinking.. man.. i wish i was sakura so i could just understand japanese and wouldn't have to keep moving around to understand what's goin' on. afterwards we got on the shuttle to the awards show, and while waiting for joan's friends to show up my sister wanted to take pictures with her motion camera. it had four lenses and takes pictures 2 split seconds apart, so you click it and it goes *click click click click* and catches your motion. so my sister told me to go run in the snow ... so of course, i did it. except the snow bank was pretty high, so i climbed to edge of the snow and 1-2-3 i stepped out to start my run. i thought maybe if i ran fast enough i wouldn't fall through and i could actually run. uh no. i stepped on the snow and my leg fell in and i fell in the snow. i hear my sister laughing and saying how she got a great shot, probably of my ass as i fell in the snow. fun huh? i tried to get the snow off me before it made my clothes wet and tore open my pack of hot hands (these all natural herb packs that emit heat.. like an ice pack, but opposite). they're like the best cold weather invention ever, they get pretty hot too. you put them in your pocket and you are happy and toasty :) my sister's publicist friend knew i had them and stuck his hands in my pockets and i was like whoa.. but i think he was gay so it was a friendly invasion. i gave him one of my hot hands and so hopefully i can call in a favor next time :P jk.
anyways, i sat in the anterior room of the awards ceremony, which was just this big room where they set up chairs and a giant screen of what was going on inside (where the important people were :P) i sat by myself when everyone else inside, and i was a little buzzed from my wine and beer and no dinner. weird huh? anyways.. on the way to the bathroom i walked by the awards ceremony room and i swear to god it looked just like international convention, rows of chairs, giant screens, podium. fun huh? so i guess i wasn't missing out on too much, except the people. my sister sat behind zach braff and zooey deschanel and jake gyllenhall hosted the awards show. yea.. that's definitely different from icon. but anyways... it was kind of sad that my sister's doc didn't win anything, but there were only a few awards and so many entries. they started describing the grand jury doc winner about the struggle of an artist, and i got really excited because i thought it might be my sister's, but it wasn't. such a let down, it was just like reliving that scrapbook blasphemy :P afterwards my sister had tickets to one last movie at 9pm, but we didn't get out until 8:30pm and we were starving. there was a party going on but my sister and chris wanted to watch the movie. but there was free food, so we tried to catch both. it was a "Rock Around the Block" party that Sundance was hosting, as the last hurrah. it was pretty fun though. it was kind of like grad night, and they took this street, set up fun lights and screens on the outside and had like 9 or so businesses as the "party places" where they had food, drinks, activities. you got a wristband and could hop from place to place. we rushed to the least crowded one, a mexican food place, la casita. it was real yummy and thankfully we got there before it was super crowded and got a plate and a table. we scarfed our food as fast as possible so we could leave for the movie. as we were leaving they had stopped letting people in, so with the taquitos in my pocket (ghetto.. i know, but i didn't want to waste them and throw them away) we ran up the hill to the egyptian. well tried to at least, with a full stomach, carrying lots of junk (i hadn't gone back to the cabin that day) and the thin air, running up hills was not in my best interest. it also started snowing on our walk up there, and that was super exciting. i was so glad it was snowing, i don't really remember being in real snow, so i was glad to hear that a snow storm was coming in (i'm a weirdo.. i know). we got to the theater and thankfully they let us in even though we were late because chris ran ahead and let them know we were still coming. we watched Last Life in the Universe which was another japanese movie. it wasn't too bad although i didn't quite get it, i think because we missed the beginning. we got outside and it was still snowing!! yay!! i took lots of pictures and videos, and played. and funny enough.. it was "snowing on main street!!!" but this time for real. funny coincidence huh? so cute. afterwards chris headed back home and joan and i went back to the parties (at my request). i just wanted to go see the other places and soak up as much fun before it was time to leave.
we went into this bar where they had chocolate fondue and fruit earlier in the night, so i saw the empty fruit plates and solidified chocolate.. boo... i waited a long long time for drinks cuz there were so many people, but i also didn't want to drink that much anyways because i had to pack and catch my shuttle at 4am for my 6:30am flight (painful!). we went outside and it had started snowing a lot harder, and i was elated. i took pictures, ran around in the snow, my sister started networking yet again, so i just played :) finally i ran into the salon, where i was hoping to get some free beauty products or maybe a manicure or something, but they had the hp thing again where they'd print you pictures, so joan and i did that again.
we left there and it was snowing real hard so we walked through the snow, took some pictures along the way next to sundance signs and finally got to the shuttle station. got back to the parking lot where we parked the car. we had to wipe the snow off the car though.. crazy!!! i had this little scraper that i had found in the car, and ended up wiping a lot of snow on to myself (stupid) but it was still fun. i was lovin' it. joan drove back and she said it was a little hard and scary driving in the snow. finally we got back home driving kind of slow on the unpaved road up to the house and joan tried to drive up the steep long driveway to the cabin. but the tires would melt the snow to ice and the car would slide to the side and i had visions of crashing into the rocks. it was pretty freaky. so my sister tried to park on the side of the street and it was kind of hard to turn around and fyi my sister is really really REALLY bad at parallel parking or even parking at curbs.. well especially in the snow. she was scared that if she parked too close that maybe it would get stuck or something.. so she didn't want to park too close, but she was parking real far away, like 2 feet, so i had to park the car. it was definitely pretty hard to drive in the snow, especially on hills. and i started to smell this slight burning smell, so i freaked. but we finally parked and i walked up to the house, and right before we went in, my sister was like "you could make your snow angel here" (the driveway in front of the garage). i had been talking all week about how i kinda really wanted to make a snow angel, and so now here was my chance. so i stripped off my jacket and lied down in the snow and made my snow angel. it was WAY fun and kind of cold. if my mom finds out she'll probably hurt me, but hey.. i ran inside and took off the wet clothes and took a hot shower, so no harm no foul right?
i made a snow angel :) i spent the next few hours sorting through all the crap i had picked up free magazines, free gift stuff, random movie postcards, movie giveaways and souvenirs, indie wires and sundance bulletins and packed. i finished with enough time to make myself some breakfast, clean up stuff in the kitchen, finish my ice cream, watch some fuzzy full house with no sound and take a ten minute nap. i saw the shuttle guy outside and they called me cuz i guess the guy had walked up the driveway and he didn't want to ring the doorbell (because it was 4am and the house was dark) so i told them that i'd be right down and i had to walk down the driveway and they said to be careful and take my time. so as i was walking down the driveway i see the shuttle guy leave and i'm like "what the heck!!!" but then i see him turn around down the street (as i'm frantically trying to call the shuttle company) and he passes the me and tells me he'll be right back cuz he has to turn around again. why were you leaving huh? i was the first stop of 5 (crazy flight schedules) and driving to the airport was a bit scary. he was going pretty fast, but i guess he was used to it. there were these girls on the corner who flagged us down and asked if they could get a ride, but the shuttle guy said that he was in a hurry, but immediately after that another shuttle drove up to get them. there was a jackknifed big rig taking up 3 of the 4 lanes of the freeway, but before we were close enough to know that i was scared that we would be stuck there for hours. btw- how do you know what lanes are what when snow is covering the freeway? that's kind of a scary thought. we were also behind a few snow plows that were kind of big and scary, but slow, so our shuttle guy sped past them. i fell asleep after that until we got to the airport and then checked in, and got on the plane. there was snow covering the plane and i figured it'd just fall off once we were going fast enough, but i guess they had to spray this "de-icing" goo on the plane to get it all off first. after that i fell asleep, woke up to drink some apple juice and water and slept some more. it was a good time. i snapped a few pictures of the clouds and the wonderful sun as we arrived back in long beach.
yay california, i couldn't wait to put on my reefs again. my daddy picked me up and drove me home and i went straight to bed. i slept all day until beth called to wake me up for the game. good thing she did or i probably would have slept right through it. so that was sundance. it was tons of fun, i'm glad that i ran into courtney because it made my sundance experience that much better. i'm glad i got to hang out with my sister again, because we hardly get to now that she moved out. and chris was great and tons of fun. thanks utah!
sundance pictures here... watch out there are 300+
No comments:
Post a Comment