You’ve seen our camo t-shirts at film festivals around the country, you’ve asked for an opportunity to purchase them, and we’ve heard you - SAGIndie t-shirts are available for a limited time at the brand-new SAGIndie Store!
Just click here to visit the store, check out our models, and order your very own SAGIndie T-shirt!
Oh my god, you guys! It has been a long time, hasn’t it? I can explain! It happens every time I have more than one Sparks in a night (or day). Something messes with my brain. Something powerful. Something magical.
And that is exactly what happened sometime during our stay at the Sundance Film Festival. I had a couple Sparks and some beer and wine before going to sleep. I just woke up and I’m already at work! How did I get here, you guys? This Sparks stuff is amazing!
ANYWAY, the real reason I came here today is because a lot of friends have been asking me about Film Independent’s Filmmaker Labs. Why ask me? I know I don’t work for them, but I do know everything ever. (Thanks google!) I am personally applying for the Screenwriter Lab and concurrently pestering John August, via his impressive site on all things screenwriting.
Westerns have never really been my genre and certain blockbuster A-list stars from continents where pigs tails curl in the opposite directions don’t tend to pique my interest…but I held out and stayed through the first 20 minutes of this film.
Now, its no Diving Bell and the Butterfly, but I truly enjoyed it. A special mention if I may of Vinessa Shaw, a spectacular actress who I was absolutely thrilled to see playing opposite Russell Crowe and cannot wait to see in in The Lovers with Joaquin Phoenix. She’s done her time in indies and I could not be happier that she’s made her way into larger substantial projects. The studios are fortunate to have her.
In just over a week, the four of us will rise before dawn to schlep down to LAX for our annual flight to Salt Lake City, a low-slung, nondescript town which spends the winter hunkered down in a brown haze of chimney smoke which would make the Inland Empire proud.
Salt lake City is not our destination, of course - Sundance is. Actually, Park City is. Sundance the festival is not held at Sundance the resort, which is too bad, because they give you nice terrycloth bathrobes when you stay at the Sundance resort. And these little paper slippers, which are no good in the snow.
Ah, I’m drifting off-topic.
The Sundance Film Festival! Winter gathering place of the great and glittering! The place where the dream of independent filmmakers - and the mini-majors, specialty divisions of the majors, and the just plain majors - can come true: a 100% return on your investment, plus points on the back end!
Of course, when I tell people I’m headed to Sundance for the fourth time, they always say “Ooo, that sounds fun!” And since there is some element of truth to that, I always nod and say “Oh, yeah.” Because people want to believe that Sundance is fun, like they want to believe that the Oscars are relevant, and that anyone cares that the Golden Globes were canceled.
But I always feel like “Oh, yeah” is cheating them out of a fuller picture of what Sundance the festival is really like. So, in the interest of full disclosure, here are 10 Sundance experiences that I have had, and fully expect to have again:
1) Eating meat for every meal.
2) Being stuck on a packed shuttle bus next to a “producer” who’s shouting into his Bluetooth Borg earpiece at his “assistant”.
3) Jeff Dowd.
4) Watching drunk chicks in mini-skirts and Uggs scream “Wooooooo!”
5) Long opening night speeches. That’s right - speeches. No film festival is complete without lots of ‘em.
6) Grub Steak (see number 1)
7) The Sundance Flu.
8) Going to the Airborne Lounge to get free medicine for your Sundance Flu.
9) Being so sick with the Sundance Flu that you have to stay in your room and order pepperoni pizza (again, see number 1).
10) Seeing that one good movie you can’t wait to tell everybody you saw first at Sundance.
I came across this article by Emily over at Gawker and felt compelled to repost it here, because I feel the same way. What initially compelled me to want see the Cody/Reitman juggernaut Juno was the exact reason I left the theater with several handfuls of hair missing.
I’m not here to say that Juno is devoid of any positive characteristics, on the contrary! I have no complaints about the rest of the film. However, when I left the theater amidst the endless nattering about the sassy and precocious dialogue, I felt a strange desire to head to Costco to stock up in preparation of a long winter in hiding because otherwise I will probably be stoned to death by the film’s devout admirers.
Hi guys! Remember me? It’s been a while since the last threat of termination of my employment if I neglect to blog, and I do have some fond memories of putting everyone else to shame with the frequency of my posting. “So why,” you may ask, ”why is indieBlog more neglected than you were as a child? Don’t you want to be DMG’s favorite employee?” Yes, I am competetive and want the affection of my boss, but I am also very, very lazy. Are you suprised? You shouldn’t be!
With that revelation (I’m just going to embrace the lazy, ok guys?) I got to thinking: What do lazy people like me enjoy? Movie spoilers!
I managed to ctrl+c two urls for you guys! One for recent films with a time-sucking archive, and one of the top 50 movie endings of all time.
Maybe I’m not so lazy after all!
Emerging Pictures and SAGIndie invite you and a guest to a special advanced screening of Laura Smiles.
Thursday, July 26th @ 7:30 PM
Tribeca Cinemas
54 Varick Street (at Laight Street)
New York, NY 10013
To RSVP: distribution@emergingpictures.com or call 212.245.6767
Leave it to Susan Buice and Arin Crumley to be the first people to have their beautifully innovativefeature film available in it’s entirety on youtube.com.
If you haven’t seen it yet, please do. Your time to claim knowledge of this film “way before it got popular” is running out very, very quickly.
For some reason, when I jumped up and got a picture with Robert Duvall before he left our roundtable discussion (which was more of a forum than a roundtable), I heard several laughs and wondered why. Apparently, it’s because I struck a pose for the picture, which I didn’t think was such an odd thing to do. Chris, my co-worker, said that I could probably smooze my way into getting a picture with the Pope if I wanted to. I’ve taken so many pictures on this trip, many with other AmPav students, a few with celebrities, but the majority of my pictures have been with random French hotties that met on the street. It all began the night of the SAGIndie party at the Student Union. A bunch of us decided to get a bottle of wine and sit on the beach for a while once the party was over. As I made my way inside the bodega (I’m not sure what the French call these little shops, tabacs perhaps), I kept meeting eyes with a hottie sitting with some other men. After a while, I realized that the saying “take a picture, it lasts longer” made absolute sense. I got a girl from the group to translate and was able to get a picture with my hottie. After that, my mission has been to get pictures with as many hot French men as I possibly can. I have yet to be turned down. Sometimes they speak English and sometimes they don’t, but pulling my camera out and pantomiming seems to work all the same. My friends all think I’m crazy and out there, but I feel like it’s ok because I’m in France. Voila!
Editorial note: This blog was written by another of the AmPav students who nicely helped us out, Jai Hayes. I (Darrien), in fact, was NOT taking pictures with various hotties. I forgot my camera.
