Snow, swag, sparkle challenge Sundance's indie spirit

By Andy Goldberg Jan 26, 2006, 20:13 GMT

Japanese Director Ryuichi Hiroki poses for a picture at the 25th Sundance Film Festival where his film \'It\'s Only Talk\' premieres, Tuesday, 24 January 2006, in Park City, Utah. The festival will run in Park City through 29 January. EPA/GEORGE FREY

Park City/San Francisco - When Hollywood legend Robert Redford started the Sundance Film Festival 25 years ago in a remote Utah ski resort, he envisaged a showcase for independent filmmakers that avoids Hollywood's commercial pressures.

So much for that idea, say a disgruntled band of Sundance purists.

To many of these fans of quirky independent cinema, the festival in Park City has become a victim of its own success, overrun by talentless celebrities, besieged by snapping paparazzi and dominated by corporate hospitality suites that shower stars with bags of swag while leaving struggling artists out in the cold - literally and figuratively.

Among the stars strutting their stuff on the town's packed main street are people like Lucy Lui, Jennifer Aniston, Matt Dillon, Gwyneth Paltrow and many others - a veritable two-week-long red carpet that runs through Sunday.

Over there is Rob Lowe with a big smile on his face and his arms full of free booty. 'I'm making Paris Hilton look like an Amish person,' he jokes.

On the other side of the traffic-jammed street is Terrence Howard, who was so convincing as a down-and-out DJ in last year's great Sundance spinoff Hustle & Flow.

'You've got iPods, phones and everything you could imagine - no money necessary,' he enthuses. 'I keep waiting for somebody to arrest me when I walk out.'

But others don't see the funny side. Critics of Sundance's commercialization claim that showering the big shots with everything from iPods to watches to perfume to vacations shows just how far Sundance has strayed from its mission.

'The festival that once - hell, just a few years ago - seemed to define the cutting edge of American pop culture has become an ambiguous brand name, basically a pretty winter stopover on the ceaseless gravy train of celebrity and publicity,' wrote Salon.com critic Andrew O'Hehir.

'It's Cannes, with earmuffs instead of bikinis, or anyway it's trying to be,' he complained.

At one party Tuesday night, Sundance purists hung a huge sign reading 'God Save the Hollywood Industry'. It showed a picture of Paris Hilton's face in a red circle with a slash through it.

The glitz and sparkle are not the only signs of Sundance's commercialization.

Brokeback Mountain, the hot favourite for this year's Oscar, was not a product of the festival. Yet its story of the gay relationship between two macho cowboys would probably not have made it to the big screen without the promotion of independent, risky moviemaking that Sundance has championed for the past quarter-century.

Sundance's alleged swerve to what O'Hehir calls 'the mini- mainstream' has fuelled the appetite of major Hollywood studios. All of them now have well funded independent labels that have been the most active buyers at Sundance in recent years.

Already this year, two of them - Fox Searchlight and Warner Independent Pictures - have paid a total of 16 million dollars for two movies, Little Miss Sunshine and The Science of Sleep, both widely considered to have the largest chance of commercial success.

But festival organizers, led by Redford and Sundance director Geoffrey Gilmore, say they remain fully committed to the original mission. They insist that despite the trappings of commercial success, the indie spirit remains alive and well at the heart of Sundance. <!--page-->

Gilmore called this year's event 'as independent as it's ever been,' and stressed that 'there can be no confusion between the films we're showing and anything the studios would have even considered making.'

Influential critic Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times agreed, noting that the centrepiece of the festival this year is as 'aggressively anti-commercial as possible'.

That's not just hype. The festival is chock full of message movies about everything from the war in Iraq (Iraq in Fragments, The Ground Truth: After the Killing Ends) to global warming (An Inconvenient Truth, starring Al Gore), gay issues (Kinky Boots), miscarriage of justice (The Trials of Darryl Hunt) and eating disorders (Thin).

There are also the sensitive dramas like Jennifer Aniston's keenly watched festival opener, Friends With Money, and the quirky comedies like that no studio would touch - like Stay, about a woman who impulsively pleasures her dog and tells her fiancé about it.

Movies like these and hundreds more at the festival are the answer to the crass commercialism that dominates the snowy surface of Sundance, says Larry Carroll, who is covering the festival for MTV.

'This year's festival is shaping up to be the most diverse and thought-provoking in recent memory,' he says.