Mischa Barton. Mary-Kate Olsen. Paris Hilton. Josh Hartnett. Sarah Jessica Parker.
Excuse me for name-dropping. I just got home from a weekend in Park City, Utah, where all the richest and famousest are chilling until January 28 to promote their newest indie movies and party it up in the hippest, coolest nightclubs on Main Street at the Sundance Film Festival.
Glamorous, right? Unfortunately, not quite. The Sundance for the stars and the Sundance for the moviegoers is a little bit different. While it is some sort of comfort to know that Jessica Alba is bundling up to protect herself from the same snowstorm that’s covering my car (and more importantly, my ski slopes) in a delicate layer of powder, we’re still in different worlds.
Luckily, although tickets are difficult to get, I did manage to see two movies: the premiere of The Broken, a horror film by British writer-director and Sundance-returnee Sean Ellis; and Robert De Niro’s film about film-making, What Just Happened? The movies were amazing, but total celeb-sightings? Depressingly, only one.
My advice for going to Sundance? Either be a celebrity, or take your celebrity-free sorrow to the slopes; with all the chaos downtown, they’re just about empty. Besides, you never know when you’ll run into Josh Hartnett, who, incidentally, snowboards.