At 25 years of age, Sundance is the country’s premier festival of independent film. But a lot has changed over that quarter century. Well, actually, one thing has changed: m-o-n-e-y. There’s a ton of Hollywood cash spent at Sundance, and I could see it everywhere I looked last week. The “VIP” corporate parties on Main Street. The piles of free stuff for celebrities. The Moviefone flacks in their garish red suits. The furry boots worn by nearly every female in town.
In the midst of the hype, plenty of not-so-glamorous films were being screened. In fact, some watchers called this the “year of the message movie.” The festival’s 120-plus features included serious explorations of terrorism, the death penalty, and, yes, the fate of our fragile planet.
I was at Sundance helping friends with a documentary project, and I’d heard that tickets were nearly impossible to come by. But after spending time in a couple of painfully early wait-list lines, I managed to get in, and get an eyeful.
A Mobile Murder MysteryThe first film I saw, Who Killed the Electric Car?, tracks the demise of a short-lived, much-loved piece of adva... Read more
