The Sundance Diaries: Part One
All week, we’ll be sharing reflections from our 2018 Cassian Elwes Independent Screenwriting Fellow, Heather Faris! Heather’s script RIPPLE was selected for this year’s partnership, and she attended the 2018 Sundance Film Festival as a part of that fellowship. We’ll let Heather take it from here!
Day One
3:30 am. January 18. I wake up a half hour before my alarm goes off to catch an early flight to Salt Lake City. I’ve been walking around with a big smile for two weeks and a little sleep deprivation changes nothing. I’m singing when I stumble into Boston’s Logan airport, the sun not yet up. At the gate I bump into my childhood friend, Ty Burr, brilliant film critic for the Boston Globe, heading out on the same flight to Sundance. And so continues the writerly journey that feels increasingly like SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE: part luck, part grit, and part magic.
It began on New Year’s Day. I was hungover, exhausted, and putting gas in my car en route to New York City in five-degree weather. Feeling like an invertebrate with a popsicle brain, I return to my car to see that I’d missed a call from Beverly Hills. I listen to the message in shock. It’s Cassian Elwes! He answers when I ring back and invites me to join him at Sundance for the screenwriting fellowship that he sponsors with his pal, Franklin Leonard, founder of the Black List. Holy moly! I’m going to Sundance! With Cassian Elwes, genius godfather of independent cinema! Hallelujah! Of course I cry.
Salt Lake City. I’m walking through the airport grinning like a lunatic at the mountains and even happier when I meet Cassian’s charmed assistant, Evan Arnold, someone able to leap tall problems and herd the cat crew with a smile. Together with Benita Ozoude and Giselle Bonilla, two very talented, young filmmakers, winners of the 2018 Horizon Directing Awards, we pile ourselves into a massive Suburban. We pick up Cassian and his remarkable daughter, producer Arielle Elwes, and head to Park City. Pinch me. Elvis is in the van, but he seems more like the good witch Galinda. His daughter is equally gracious, smart as a whip, and beaming as if the angels forgot to turn off her headlights. That acorn didn’t fall too far from the creative tree.
As we thread our way through the mountains in the Chevrolet Suburban version of a film fanatic’s Pope-mobile, team Elwes is surprised by the complete lack of snow on the ground, but we know it’s coming. A storm is predicted for Friday, as are 60,000 Sundance visitors, descending on Park City, a town of 10,000, for a cluster*uck of creativity. Cassian and Arielle prepare us for the festival, bringing everyone up to speed on what led us to this completely surreal moment in the Pope-mobile.
Thank goodness for the events that inspired Cassian to nurture diverse voices in the film industry. After hitting it out of the park with successes like THE BUTLER, DALLAS BUYERS CLUB, BLUE VALENTINE, and ALL IS LOST, Cassian had a life-changing in-flight experience with a traumatized war veteran that gave him pause. When he shared with his good pal, Franklin Leonard, founder of the ubiquitous Black List, that he might take a month off to build houses with Habitat for Humanity, Franklin told him he was a complete idiot. Why do that when you can use your skill set to mentor fresh talent in the film industry? Smart fella. So Cassian teamed up with Franklin to create the first Cassian Elwes screenwriting fellowship in 2013, which brought him the satisfaction of seeing Sundance through the wide-eyed wonder of film freakish scribes who dream of birthing those damn stories in their heads.
Recognizing the need to also foster emerging female directors, the following year, Cassian partnered with powerhouse producers Christine Vachon (BOYS DON’T CRY, CAROL) and Lynette Howell Taylor (BLUE VALENTINE) to create the Horizon Award. Irked by the stats that for several years running only 7% of the top 250 films were directed by women, they wanted to help create meaningful change. Prescient in their efforts to move the pendulum towards a more balanced and representative entertainment business, they helped galvanize a movement.
Arriving in Park City we stop at the grocery store. Giselle, Benita, and I deliriously push a shopping cart around under the watchful, generous eye of team Elwes, gathering goodies for late night and early morning fortification. We’re certainly not in Kansas anymore and Team Elwes has already taken us under wing.
Evan drops Giselle, Benita, and me at our palatial mountainside condo, complete with hot tub and fireplace. He and the others venture out to the Sundance office to pick up credentials while we fall onto our beds, leaving one dream for another. Evan stops by later and we all hang out till midnight, hearing more tales of the industry. Just after we turn in for the night, 2015 Horizon Award winner, Verónica Ortiz-Calderón arrives from Puerto Rico. She’s brought, CANDLELIGHT, a short film about Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico that was sponsored by Cassian, Christine Vachon and Lynette Howell Taylor.
Day Two
Friday. I bounce out of bed, eager to meet the gals from the Black List at my first Sundance film. Things are starting to heat up downtown, and not knowing the terrain, I get to the Ray Theatre early, still pretty much in shock that I’m at Sundance. Black List mavens, Megan Halpern, Director of Events and Partnerships, and Assistant, Lauren Brown, meet me under the ticket line tent and handover a fistful of much sought-after screening tickets for the weekend. We find seats for BLINDSPOTTING and settle into what feels like a familiar groove. These women are wicked smart, so kind and friendly, brilliant in various ways that will reveal themselves over the next couple days.
BLINDSPOTTING, a drama about race relations and police brutality in Oakland, seeps into your soul and rearranges the unconscious furniture. It’s stunning and not to be missed. Directed by former music video creator, Carlos López Estrada, the sound editing paired with brilliant images, together with a story that was ten years in the making by actors Daveed Diggs and Rafael Casal, hits it out of the park. BLINDSPOTTING has a quick tempo, strong wit, and powerful message expressed in an entirely original manner.
We stumble out of the theater barely able to breathe. All three of us are in shock. We take some time to recover in the parking lot before catching a car over to the Eccles Theatre for MONSTERS AND MEN. It’s another insightful film about police brutality, but doesn’t have the same effect on any of us. It was probably unfair to see a similar film, so close on the heels of BLINDSPOTTING.
Afterwards I grab a ride over to the condo where Cassian, Arielle, and Evan are staying. We hang out with the Horizon Award winners, asking questions and hearing tales from the trenches. Then it’s back to our own nearby Deer Valley condo to regroup before we head out to parties. I’m loving the casual, après-ski vibe of Sundance and glad to be traveling without even one dress. The most essential clothing item seems to be a comfortable pair of boots.
First stop is a hopping party in the Macro Ventures Lounge sponsored by Charles King, a producer on Cassian’s breakout 2017 film, MUDBOUND, as well as on FENCES, ROMAN J. ISRAEL and SORRY TO BOTHER YOU (which premiered this year at Sundance). It’s a friendly crowd and we meet various folks who invite us to other events and share their cinematic wisdom. A DJ’s spinning, food and drink are flowing, the crowd is dancing and we all discover that our gal, Giselle Bonilla, has some serious dance moves, as well as a degree from NYU and a 2018 Horizon award. All three of the Horizon winners are stunningly competent and well-spoken young women. If this is the future, it’s looking bright.
We venture out into the gathering blizzard and head over to Hotel Park City, an elegant spot and home to all the many Black List fetes at Sundance. I’m thrilled to meet Franklin Leonard, a big-hearted fellow with a high-octane brain to match. He’s known to be a force of nature so there’s no surprise that this Harvard grad who engineered clever ways to identify the best agented and unagented scripts, creates opportunities for diverse storytelling, and throws the hottest parties, also has a wicked sense of humor and is well-read on even the most obscure political research about mapping social media ecosystems. And as the week goes on, it’s clear that his events are magnetizing the coolest of cool, all of it so aptly organized by Megan Halpern and her team.
Stay tuned for part two of Heather’s Sundance Diaries tomorrow!
