FIELD GUIDE
Sundance posters from 1985-1987
The Sundance Film Festival BY JEREMY PUGH
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POSTERS COURTESY SUNDANCE INSTITUTE
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City residents usually bug out during the January H E R E A R E F E W T H I N G S on the cultural invasion—ironically, the perfect time of year to visit calendar in Utah that are as out of sync with Southern California.) The first language is the disdainful the traditional, quaint Beehive lifestyle as speech of the aloof artist, wherein to actually like the Sundance Film Festival. Each year, thousands of something is decidedly uncool. The local language is one of people in black descend upon Park City like a plague of unbridled enthusiasm and charming goofiness. We like Mormon crickets: Publicists, industry wonks, filmmakers, things here. We really do. I love us for that. photographers, celebrities and their handlers, and a host of hangers-on crowd fresh from L.A., be-scarved, The Sundancers, however, come with their be-turtlenecked, be-satcheled and shod in lists, a hierarchy of A through Z listers. There impractical shoes. are clipboards waiting outside of all the private WE SEEK Of course, we Utahns love Sundance. It’s a APPROVAL LIKE parties, celebrity lounges and concerts. Out there in party land, there are lists upon lists brush with the larger world that all Utahns A MIDDLE upon lists and rope lines and waiting in the cold secretly crave. (See: The Winter Olympic Games, CHILD. WE ARE to get into someplace only to find that there’s 2002.) Despite the changing landscape of Utah THE JAN BRADY another level of VIP-ness beyond the first gate. (especially Park City), we maintain our low OF THE UNITED There always seems to be another level of even self-esteem problem—an underdog, outsider more exclusive and elusive exclusivity beyond— stance that hearkens back to the days of STATES.” each layered inside the next like a matryoshka Brigham. On one hand, we’re proud of our weird doll. I imagine that eventually, you get to one super cool heritage and, on the other, we seek approval like a middle room, containing one super cool VIP. Who could, if there child. We are the Jan Brady of the United States. were anyone else there to hear, be heard to exclaim, “I Each year, the crowd that arrives from the coast and the think I won!” local crowd that arrives from the Salt Lake Valley mingle on Main Street to babble in two separate languages. (Park Welcome back to town, Hollywood. Don’t slip on the ice.
