Ryland's Musings From Two Decades of Sundance
It's hard for me to overstate the importance of Sundance on my career, and even my personal life in adulthood.
At the height of my fest-going career, I was going to nearly two dozen festivals a year. Those trickled down to really just two festivals I never miss, and Sundance is one of them. I call Sundance my happy place. So on the eve of what many are part jokingly calling the "Final Sundance" (it's actually just the final Sundance in Park City, but more on that later), I want to share some of the moments, memories, and movies that make me smile the most when I think back on my almost two decades of attending the fest.
I've been to Sundance as a fan, an assistant, a critic, an entrepreneur, a filmmaker, and just about everything in between. I've seen Paul McCartney play with Dave Grohl, partied with first-time filmmakers before they won their Oscars, and crossed paths with people who shaped the way I think about movies. I've made lifelong friends there, and I've lost some there too. And oh yes, have I seen some truly great movies.
"Everybody thinks every movie is five stars at their first Sundance" - Bingham Ray
My earliest memory of Sundance as anything more than the mythical place that birthed such touchstone movies as Clerks and Sex Lies and Videotape was 2007. I was a few months into my first job in Hollywood as an assistant at the production company Sidney Kimmel Entertainment. This was an incredible time to be in the film business. DVD sales and the first glimmers of streaming were fuelling a gold rush in indie film and it all revolved around Sundance. While I wasn't quite advanced enough in my career to attend indie Valhalla that first year, I have a clear-as-day memory of watching every second of the short-lived "Festival Dailies" TV show.
Festival Dailies was a dispatch from the festival that aired each day of the festival on the co-branded Sundance Channel cable network. It was kind of a magazine version of those 90-second bumpers that run before movies at the fest. Where those are images and sound bites from around the festival, this program took a deep dive into what had happened and the movies that had premiered the previous day at Sundance. A host would interview the director of one of the hot movies on, say, a ski lift. A crew would venture into a main street party. More than anything I just remember the show made me feel like I was on the ground in Park CIty. It made the festival real in a way that reading reviews in Variety couldn't, and cemented the idea in my brain that I absolutely had to experience it myself.
Bright-eyed assistants descend on Sundance 2008.
That opportunity came one year later. By this point SKE had transitioned from a production company to a full fledged 'indie studio.' We'd grown from about 12 people to closer to 30, including hiring the indie legend Bingham Ray to oversee a newly formed distribution arm (SKE would distribute such notable films as Lars and the Real Girl, Adventureland, and Synechdoche New York before exiting that line of work a few years later). I was Bingham's de facto LA assistant and when he and the top brass returned from the opening weekend at the festival, they were kind enough to tell the cadre of senior assistants that we should take over the SKE condo for the second weekend and go watch movies. Bingham even handed me his ultra access express badge to wear and walk into any movie I wanted. "Just be careful who you show this to," Bingham told me. "I have a bit of a radius at this festival."
With that ridiculous understatement in mind and the carefree attitude of a bright-eyed 20-something with nothing to lose, I walked in and out of the Eccles, Library, and Egyptian like I was the king of Park City. Movies that stand out in my memory include Frozen River, Be Kind Rewind, Man On Wire, Assassination of a High School President, Hamlet 2, and my personal fave, The Wackness. I remember raving about pretty much everything I saw and Bingham just giving me the proverbial pat on the head, telling me, "Everybody thinks every movie is five stars at their first Sundance."
Maybe most remarkably, I was never once questioned as to why I had a 50-something year old bald man on my badge. As an almost too hilarious aside that I probably didn't fully get at the time, Bingham had asked me to submit a photo of Alex Gibney for his badge, so I actually had a different 50-something year old bald man on my badge. That badge, which still hangs on my wall, is one of my most treasured Sundance artifacts.
Fast forward two years and my career had by this point led me away from SKE and towards my then dreams of being a screenwriter. This had kept me broke and in LA for the 2009 edition of the fest while some of my friends had attended as part of a crew of party workers. Sundance parties in this era were so epic they would literally travel dozens of kids in their 20s just to stay in flop houses and service the gifting lounges and all-night soirees. It paid almost nothing but you could more than make it worth it by collecting suitcases full of free schwag from designer jeans to expensive jackets, many of which would end up on eBay in the weeks that followed.
I was determined to get back to the festival for the 2010 edition and find my destiny, so when one of my party-crew pals said I could crash on the floor as long as I didn't tell his boss, I was in. But how would I go see movies? On my previous trip I had been lucky enough to have the express badge (albeit not my own), so the prospect of showing up and waiting in the famous overnight lines for tickets was a daunting one. However I had one ace up my sleeve.
"We're an equal opportunity shop around here, so here's Ryland Aldrich with a dissenting view..." - Todd Brown
The previous September I had tagged along with a buddy to a little Austin festival called Fantastic Fest. The early days of that festival deserve their own essay, but one of the highlights was meeting Todd Brown, the founder of Twitch Film, a film blog I head read for years. We had got along well and chatted about filmmaking in LA, a world he was just starting to take a bigger interest in. We had kept in touch and with Sundance close on the horizon, I reached out and asked if he needed anyone to file some reviews from the festival. He was all for it and even offered to send me a letter that would get me a press badge at the festival. While this wasn't the holy grail of express badge Bingham had provided, it was worlds better than scrounging for tickets and waiting in standby lines.
The first review I ever filed for Twitch Film (the precursor to this very Screen Anarchy, in case anyone reading this is new around here), was for the ski lift midnighter Frozen by Adam Green (yes, that's Adam F'n Green). Suffice to say I was less than impressed by Frozen and I made the classic mistake I've seen so many new writers make for film blogs by trashing a film in their first review. "While there are some great campy moments, they are unfortunately sandwiched between way too much mediocre dialog. Frozen probably would have made a fantastic short - but it makes for a rather painful feature."
I sent the review in to Todd who was kind enough to post it (under his byline as I wasn't yet registered on the site). However he was sure to make it clear that my opinion was not to be trusted by starting the review with this tasty intro: "[We ran an earlier and very positive review of Adam Green's Frozen here a while back. It's a take on the film that I'm in pretty solid agreement with but we're an equal opportunity shop around here, so here's Ryland Aldrich with a dissenting view.]" Ouch.
I filed two other reviews from that Sundance. One mostly positive review of Michael Winterbottom's Casey Affleck starrer The Killer Inside Me, "if one can stomach the violence, the film is an impressive trip inside the mind of a mad man," and a mixed negative review of Daniel Grou's 7 Days, "While it provides plenty of shriek-worthy visuals, the film's protagonist proves just too unsympathetic and the story ultimately disappoints." Both were published under Todd's byline, but neither received the "don't trust this guy" preamble.
It was a full 365 days until I published again on Twitch Film but with Sundance approaching, I reached out to Todd again and to my surprise he was game to have me back. He even gave me a login so my reviews could have my name on them. I found a couch for $75 a night on facebook with about 16 other bright eyed Sundance goers and took to the snow for another go around with a press badge.
2011 was a killer year at Sundance and by this point I felt like I was in the club. I reviewed Jason Eisner's epic midnighter Hobo With a Shotgun ("Eisener holds nothing back, giving us far more mutilation madness, clever decapitations, and uproarious ultra-violence than his hilarious Grindhouse trailer"), Shunji Iwai's creepy gem Vampire, ("While some will find the film too dark, too graphic, too weird - fans will surely find much to love in the artistry, the intricacy, the magic"), and Jose Padilha's Brazillian actioner Elite Squad 2, ("this excellently written and executed actioner pulls the covers back on the militias that control elections in Rio's favelas, the whole time keeping all guns blazing"). If you are wondering why none of those reviews say Sundance, we had a habit in those days of Twitch Film of reposting reviews for later festivals, breaking the original links in the process. Solid SEO strategy.
But the movie I remember most from that festival and maybe the movie that captures this era in indie cinema better than any from 2011 was Evan Glodell's Bellflower. It was partially the DIY filmmaking, partially the who give a fuck attitude, partially the fact I ended up partying with these crazy kids from Camarillo the night of their Sundance premiere and all they wanted to do was shotgun beers, part the killer Oscilloscope DVD, part the viral Mother Medusa campaign my later wife (who wouldn't give me the time of day at that point) ran, partially the fact that this would end up being Evan's one and only feature film (though his producer Vince has had a solid career), but damn this movie was awesome. I wouldn't end up reviewing the film until later that year. By that time Greg Christie ("Bellflower is also a work of modern American art, a piece that is as engrossing as it is off putting">, Charles Webb ("I think the moment I realized I hated Evan Glodell's directorial debut, Bellflower was about the third or fourth time one of its vacuous, dull characters conflated Mad Max with its sequel, The Road Warrior"), and Matthew Lee ("a bold, confident début feature, but one so relentlessly contrived, with all its cast either meathead lunks, conniving harpies or ineffectual drones, it's impossible to admire.") had all reviewed the film. But these were the wild west days of this site where anyone who wanted to file a review could go ahead. I like to think my review was the most positive. "This thrill ride turns out to be far more compelling than any typical world ending actioner and leaves you reeling from experience long after walking out of the theater."
Sundance 2011 marked the real beginning of my tenure with the site that would later become Screen Anarchy. I'd soon be traveling the world filing reviews and dispatches as the site's festivals editor. While I'd continue to write full reviews of films for the next few years, it was pieces like my Sundance 2011 wrap up that helped me find my voice as less of a critic, and more of someone who just wanted to help people find good movies.
Stevie Nicks performs with Foo Fighters. Guys, phone cameras were really bad in 2013.
"I remember you. You hated my movie." - Undisclosed Filmmaker
Through all those years of going to Sundance and writing about movies, I was also trying hard ot make movies that would maybe, just maybe, also play at Sundance. This started with dreams of writing my own movies. After a few years of banging my head against that wall, I took a gig helping production manage a friend's microbudget feature. That movie went nowhere but I did learn I had a bit of a knack for the producing side of things. That friend asked me to help out with his next movie, but for some reason I passed (probably had a festival to go to) and was shocked when he called me to tell me the movie had been accepted to Sundance. So when he asked me to produce his follow up, you better believe I was on board.
Unfortunately, that movie was rejected from Sundance (it's not who you know). So was the next one (or who your friends know). And the next one (or who you hang out with at literally every film festival for years). But finally in 2016, instead of the Thanksgiving tradition of being disappointed by a Sundance rejection. I received the magical call from the brilliant director Michelle Morgan with whom I'd made her debut feature. Well, actually, I missed her call. And she left a voicemail chiding me for not picking up when she had the absolute best news I'd ever received in my career to share with me.
The L.A. Times (the movie, not the newspaper) team takes on Park City in 2017.
Sundance 2017 would see the premiere of a movie I'd spent the previous year producing that at that time was called L.A. Times. We knew it was a bad name. But it fit the film. What we didn't know was that the actual L.A. Times (newspaper that is) would threaten legal action against the Sundance Film Festival if they screened the film with that title. I have the clearest memory of pushing a shopping cart around the Fresh Market in Park City while on the phone with Sundance festival heads John Cooper and Trevor Groth. To their ultimate credit, their response was, who cares, we're playing the movie.
We'd ultimately end up changing the film's title to It Happened in L.A.. But that was way later after the film had died a slow painful death that befell so many indies in the post Netflix output deal era of the late 2010s. But I prefer to remember the good days. The days of Sundance 2017 when I was a Sundance filmmaker and the magic of Sundance was just that little bit more magical. The incredible premiere at the Library, sitting and watching as the audience love-fested around us. The after party with live set by the band Rooney that I still maintain (and have had others confirm) was the best Sundance premiere party of all time. The trip to Salt Lake to watch the movie with a normie audience and chat with for hours after the screening ended. Or sticking around until the awards weekend to just enjoy every minute. We don't need to mention the lukewarm reviews -- though Zach Gayne's SA review was quite kind ("I cannot ignore a film that rubs me in the same satisfying way as the Whit Stillman trilogy, while managing to completely stand on its own"). Suffice to say having a movie at Sundance was the high water mark of my time attending the fest.
Some have said it was the best after party in Sundance history.
The day before that 2017 festival kicked off, I was at the festival headquarters collecting my dual press and filmmaker badges (hanging next to Bingham's to this day). As I exited the Sheraton, a packed sedan pulled up and one of my closest festival buddies squeezed out, stiff from finally completing the long drive from LA. He introduced me to his carmates from the journey, a couple of whom were filmmakers I was familiar with. When I said my name and shook hands, one of them looked at me and with total disdain said, "I know you, you hated my movie." To be honest I had barely remembered their movie but it dawned on me then and there that if I was going to be a Sundance filmmaker, I could no longer be a Sundance critic. I wrote just one review, my final SA review, at that year's festival for the horror anthology XX ("a very enjoyable and often scary anthology that shows a ton of promise from its directors,") but did also publish what I think was one of my best wrap ups and would continue to write previews, dispatches, and wraps from Sundance and other festivals for years.
"I want to figure out what comes after cinema" - Chris Milk
Aside from the movies, and the friends, and the parties, the thing that made me the most excited to go to Sundance for a few solid years was when VR absolutely took over the 'art' section New Frontier. Sundance was on the bleeding edge of immersive storytelling from 2015-2020 and I was committed to trying everything and chronicling what I could for SA. Here are my dispatches from 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2020.
In those early days, we really felt like we were on the verge of a whole new form of storytelling. Talented filmmakers like Chris Milk, Eliza McNitt, Felix & Paul, Eugene Chung, Janicza Bravo, Eric Darnell, Edward Robles, and a handful of others were defining a new grammar. It was an incredibly exciting time and those first few years were electric. Like so many other aspects of filmmaking, the party started at Sundance but spread to SXSW, Tribeca, Cannes, Venice, TIFF, and even AFI Fest. For a few short years the VR crew was my crew and it really felt like we were on to something.
Then, well then it all kind of died. The mass adoption never came. Big tech funding dried up. People realized it was hard to watch content in a headset. And frankly, that new grammar for cinematic 360 storytelling just never developed far enough to find its footing. I'd love to think we were just early and this is just the trough of disillusionment before 360 filmmaking comes back in a big way. Maybe. I'll be standing by, in my little 8' by 8' designated section of the New Frontier basement space if it does.
"You don't want to hear from me, you want to hear from this guy..." - Paul Allen
If it isn't clear by now, I have a ton of incredible memories from my years attending Sundance. There was the ridiculously stressful viewing of Gasper Noe's Enter the Void in 2010 that drove me into the cold to ask a stranger for a cigarette after the film, even though I didn't smoke. Or the Eccles screening of Beasts of the Southern Wild where a buddy and I just looked at each other with astonishment as the crowd erupted with pure joy, sure we had just witnessed one of Sundance's finest moments.
There were all the great, great midnight movies at the Library from Hobo with a Shotgun to V/H/S to Mandy to The Greasy Strangler. There was the time Gareth Evans and Todd and the whole XYZ team came to town for The Raid 2 and we partied in the empty hotel lobby until dawn. There were many nights at the Yarrow bar, many wraps from the Fresh Market, and a few great blogger parties across the street with at least few great pals.
There was the VR experience in the Sheraton swimming pool, the time I sat across from Neil Young and then watched him give a 30 minute talk after a film at Slamdance, or the Sound City premiere after party where Dave Grohl and Foo Fighters served as the house band playing covers and originals with a cavalcade of stars including Steve Knicks, Rage Against the Machine, John Fogerty, Rick Springfield, Cheap Trick, Queens of the Stone Age, and freaking Paul McCartney.
One of my most surreal Sundance experiences was at a screening of the Louie Psihoyos's Racing Extinction.at the MARC in 2015. That film was executive produced by Paul Allen who was in attendance. When the Q&A started and the filmmakers asked Paul to come on stage. Paul deferred, announcing the audience didn't want to hear from him, but that the person sitting to his left should say a few words. Elon Musk got up and took to the stage answering questions on a variety of topics and downright stunning the audience with his brilliance for a solid 15 minutes. Not sure what happened to that guy.
"I have a bit of a radius..." - Bingham Ray
Bingham stayed an extremely important part of my Sundance experience even after I (and he) had long since left SKE. In 2011 as the festival was kicking off, I gave him a shout to see if he wanted to grab a coffee and catch up. "Come meet me at HQ, I need to talk someone into giving me a badge," he told me. I did just that and sure enough, so did he.
Leaving with his mysteriously obtained badge, we walked towards the shuttle to go find coffee. Walking around Sundance with Bingham was always entertaining but damn if it didn't take forever to get anywhere. He couldn't walk 30 seconds without someone stopping with him to chat. But as we were just finishing a conversation with some famous filmmaker, Manohla Dargis emerged and grabbed him. "Bingham, we have to go, Lou Reed is screening a surprise short he directed!"
We hurried over to the Holiday and were whisked in like royalty to the front row of the screening where magically 3 seats were waiting for us. We watched the short (Reed's lone directorial credit, Red Shirley), and then sat 4 feet from the legend as he came out and took a seat to discuss the film with the audience.
Manohla, Bingham and I exited abuzz from the experience. Some friend of Bingham's or Manohla's was chatting and asked if we were going to go see the Mark Pellington film I Melt with You that was about to start, The film had been high on my list and Manohla was game. Bingham was less so and told me to go with Manohla. I was way down to watch a movie with one of the world's most famous film critics so said my goodbyes and promised to get that coffee with Bingham another time.
Bingham Ray
We never got that coffee.
The next year Bingham travelled to Sundance in his newly minted role as head of the San Francisco Film Society. He suffered a series of strokes and died in Utah. Needless to say it was an emotional festival. The movies played but something was missing. Towards the middle of the fest, the festival organizers put on an impromptu event for Bingham's friends to gather and tell stories at High West. The place was completely packed. I got up and told my story about the express badge. It was cathartic. This was Bingham's radius.
Sundance now has a theater named in Bingham's honor, The Ray. It used to be a sporting goods store. I don't know what will become of The Ray after this final Sundance in Park City. Will there be a different The Ray in Boulder?
As I mentioned, there have been plenty of jokes about this being the final Sundance. But there is clearly some truth in that too. While there will be a Sundance in 2027, even Fest Director Eugene Hernandez has said it's more like they are building a brand new festival in Boulder than moving a festival from Park City.
There are serious questions to be asked about what exactly the role of an indie sales festival is in 2026. Acquisition execs used to jockey for spots at opening night screenings because that was the only way to see the movie first and get in their bids before someone beat them to the punch. But that's just not how film sales work anymore. It's a buyers market and only the very top filmmakers can hold out on sending links or setting screenings for the distributors with deep pockets. And the films that don't sell to those top buyers? Ooof. It's a dark and dreary road ahead.
And yet, for all the talk about broken models and sales figures, there has always been something so much bigger about this little festival. Sundance has more than earned its place as the starting gun for film season precisely because so many films that begin there, go on to find success with critics, with audiences, and even at the Oscars. Filmmakers will still want their first big moment there. The Sundance Labs will still do the incredible and important work of helping new voices become stronger, louder voices. And a new generation will still do what many of us did: stand in line, take chances on unknown titles, fall in love with something unexpected, and walk back out into the cold feeling like cinema is alive.
For a new generation of hopeful filmmakers, hopeful film critics, and hopeful party goers, maybe Sundance in Boulder will just be Sundance. Hopefully it will be their happy place too.
