I don’t really cover Sundance. While film blog editors around the US all pile into Park City, Utah to get the skinny on the upcoming “indie” film slate, I stay in Brooklyn, frantically buying new hats to keep my damn ears warn during this period of increasingly brisk wind. But, that doesn’t mean I’m not reading and opinionating (I would like to coin this term as the present participle of being opinionated) throughout the whole experience.The problem with Sundance is that it is increasingly becoming an event so crowded with D-List celebrities (once again in attendance this year: Paris Hilton) that has actually had trouble in the past few years launching long lives for movies that screen there.
Last year saw Frozen River wind the Grand Prize for a dramatic film, but even Melissa Leo’s nomination from that film for the Academy Awards was largely unpredicted (though not undeserved). Man On Wire also stood out for winning the documentary Grand Jury Prize, and the first film to get sold, Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired, aired on HBO. It was great, but it wasn’t a huge landmark in documentary cinema.
The relevance of Sundance is debatable in the sphere of movies most interesting because of their completely absurd and illogical twists and turns (this covers most sequels and blockbusters), but two events this year should be highlighted; one because of it’s new media relevancy and the other because it’s just so f-ing ridiculous.
I’m talking about Mystery Team and the fistfight between Variety critic John Anderson and producer Jeff “The Dude” Dowd…
First up: fisticuffs.
John Anderson was sent to review Dirt! The Movie, which is described by the filmmakers thusly:
Possessing both a cosmic perspective that reaches into the vastness of time and space, and the kind of warm, earnest energy that inspires small revolutions inside human hearts, Dirt! The Movie offers an important and timely look at the vital relationship between those of us on Earth and something that is easy to take for granted—the soil upon which we tread. Inspired by William Bryant Logan’s acclaimed book Dirt, the Ecstatic Skin of the Earth, directors Bill Benenson and Gene Rosow employ a colorful combination of animation, vignettes, and personal accounts from farmers, physicists, church leaders, children, wine critics, anthropologists, and activists to learn about dirt—where it comes from, how we regard (or disregard) it, how it sustains us, the way it has become endangered, and what we can do about it.
Sounds kind of like a snore-fest, but this is Variety we’re talking about, and they would be remiss not to cover anything.
So, Anderson didn’t really like the movie, telling producer Dude…ahem, Dowd… that the movie was “poor, too simplistic, too redundant.” Dowd, being a producer AND the guy that was the template for Jeff Bridges’ Dude, tried to make the film’s pitch to Anderson, in an attempt to soften the blow of a horrible Variety review.
The rest was covered, surprisingly, by Variety:
Dowd told him to listen to how the audience responded. “They’re sheep,” Anderson said. “You’ve got so much power,” said Dowd. “Before you write this we should have more discussion.”
“He was accusing me of not caring about the state of the world because I didn’t like his film,” Anderson says. When they arrived at the restaurant he said, “OK, this conversation is over.” But Dowd wasn’t letting up, says Anderson, who sat down with a friend at a table. Then Dowd pulled up a chair and “continues to make his sales pitch. He wouldn’t go away, take no for an answer.”
“I told you to get away from me,” Anderson said. Dowd says he added, “‘Throw this riff-raff out of here!’”
Anderson told Dowd to “fuck off and get out” and Dowd did leave, but returned ten minutes later with Jackie “The Joke Man” Martling (The Howard Stern Show) to speak on behalf of the film. Anderson had moved to a table for four and didn’t recognize Martling, but wasn’t having any of it anyway. Dowd “starts berating me,” Anderson says. “He’s a big intimidating guy hovering over the table. I got really pissed off.”
Anderson said, “I told you to get away.”
Martling said, “I just wanted to tell you…”
Anderson said, “Are you a friend of Jeff’s? Can’t you see I’m eating breakfast?” Dowd says Anderson got up and said, “I told you I would punch you.” Anderson denies he threatened any punching.
Dowd kept talking and Anderson got up and walked four steps, says Dowd, clenched up and hit him in the shoulder, chest and chin, and then his lip. Anderson remembers pushing Dowd away and says he “popped his nose.” What did his friends do, he asks, “to deserve him?”
The entire thing left Dowd mildly smarting, but not bleeding and eventually lead to Anderson being taken off reviewing duties for Dirt!
Just goes to show you that if you manage to find the guy reviewing your film after it has a lack-luster showing, you can always just goad him into punching you.
The second Sundance story of note is the non-sale of Mystery Team, a midnight showing film made by the Derrick comedy group made up of Dominic Dierkes, DC Pierson, Donald Glover, Meggie McFadden and Dan Eckman.
You might remember Derrick from their YouTube sensation status, greatly erupting after their sketch Bro Rape hit viral status (probably NSFW like most things involving the word “rape”):
Mystery Team was slowly put together with profits from the Derrick shorts and private investments. It’s the srotry of three Encyclopedia Brown-like child detectives who are about to graduate high school and are no longer taken seriously for solving crimes like who ate Ms. Johnson’s pie. When a little girl hires them (for a dime) to find out who killed her parents, the manboy detectives are sent on their first real mystery-solving adventure.
The film played well, and because of their online fanbase, drove traffic to a few blogs that reviewd the film (/Film, Cinematical, Film School Rejects, Latino Review, Cinemablend). But, in the forever-changing relationship between online fans and movie studios that have all the money, Mystery Team ended Sundance unsold.
Now the showdown: Is positive online press going to be enough to sell this film after Sundance?
On one hand, Snakes On A Plane seemed to be the only proof that studios needed to label the internet as a force that doesn’t translate directly to dollars in the box office. On the other hand, Mystery Team managed to get towards the top of the pile, hooking the genre obsessed who had little else to champion this Sundance season outside of the faux-blacksploitation film Black Dynamite. But while blacksploitationsold to Sony Pictures Worldwide Acquisitions Group for $2 mil, Mystery Team somehow got added to the “maybe DVD release” pile of Sundance un-boughts.
And the debate doesn’t center around “should” Mystery Team see a theater release as much as “would” Mystery Team be more profitable as a theater or DVD release. The strings of the studio purse are held by those who want to see competing box office, and Mystery Team doesn’t have a clear slot. Maybe the Napoleon Dynamite late-summer release model might propel Mystery Team to cult hit status, but even then most of the profits are going to be with DVD sales.
What is needed to prove to some studio (Sony Picture Classics? Fox Searchlight?) that Mystery Team is capable of drawing an audience that isn’t internet flackeys (I’m referring to you). What I want is some glint of hope from Sundance that a group of relatively unknown creatives can still make it at that festival, where there are fist-fights over certain reviews and films are more likely to be declared dead than bought and championed.
Here be the preview, tell all your non-internet friends (you do have that, don’t you?)
