Day 6 (Tuesday, Jan. 24):

I’ve been averaging something like 5 1/2 hours of sleep each night, generally nodding off at 2 a.m. and getting up at 7:30. They don’t call it “beauty sleep” for nothing: I am now exceedingly ugly. While I slept last night I developed some kind of weird pimple/sore hybrid just above my left eyebrow, red and inflamed and unsightly. At this rate, by the end of the festival I’ll look like Quasimodo, or Tommy Lee Jones.

Today’s weather was beautiful. Temperatures were only in the upper 20s, but the sun shone brightly and made it feel much warmer than that. I bounced into the Yarrow just in time for a press screening of “Wristcutters: A Love Story,” which is one of those movies that you see just because of the title.

It’s an imaginative, whimsical film about an afterlife populated solely by people who committed suicide. (If you die some other way, you go somewhere else.) The suicide world looks like regular Earth life, with cities and cars and jobs and everything, and everyone bears the scars of how they died. One young man who offed himself when his girlfriend dumped him is stunned to learn that she arrived about a month after he did — surely out of sadness over his death, he reasons. So he and two of his friends embark on a “Wizard of Oz”-style journey to find her, and to find answers about this strange afterlife. I liked the film a lot.

Up next: “This Film Is Not Yet Rated,” a documentary about the rating system, and the movie I was most interested in seeing at this festival. It did not disappoint me.

Documentarian Kirby Dick basically takes the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) apart, showing the contradictions, inconsistencies and blatant lies that exist as part of its secretive, totalitarian way of rating movies.

Here’s how it works: A board of nine people watch every movie submitted to them and give it a rating of G, PG, PG-13, R or NC-17. The board is anonymous; the MPAA flatly refuses to give their names. All they’ll say is that they’re all parents of children between the ages of 5 and 17.

But you can choose any three films at random and find wild inconsistencies in the way ratings are given. One fantastic sequence in “This Film Is Not Yet Rated” does a side-by-side comparison of films, showing scenes that are nearly identical to each other in content — often even with identical camera angles and lighting — but that got different ratings.

Dick also shows how violence is much, much more acceptable in movies than sex is. “Sin City,” for example, is rife with outrageous bloody violence and gets an R. “The Cooler,” meanwhile, gets an NC-17 solely because Maria Bello’s pubic hair is briefly visible in a sex scene — and yes, that’s the reason the MPAA gave the filmmaker.

There’s a clip of former MPAA head Jack Valenti (the founder of the ratings system) saying that far more movies are given the NC-17 rating because of violence than because of sex. Then Dick gives the REAL statistics: It’s the other way around, by a margin of 4 to 1. Valenti is either lying or has no idea how his own system works.

But the BEST part of the movie is when Kirby Dick hires a team of private investigators to find out who the anonymous members of the ratings board are! And guess what? Contrary to what the MPAA tells people, one of the board members has NO children, while several others have children who are much older than 17. I guess you can make up whatever lies you want about your hiring practices when you don’t think anyone will ever find out who you’ve hired.

If you don’t like the rating the board gives your movie, you can appeal. The appeal goes to an entirely separate board, which is also anonymous — EVEN THOUGH YOU’RE MEETING WITH THEM FACE-TO-FACE. That’s right: You sit in a room with them and discuss your movie with them, but you are not allowed to know their names. Everyone, the filmmaker included, wears a number instead. (Dick unmasks the appeals board, too, by the way, and puts all their names on the screen. He tells us their day jobs, too, mostly as heads of theater chains and other film-related corporations.)

Oh, and in that appeal, you are NOT ALLOWED to cite precedent. You can’t say, “Such-and-such film included a scene that was exactly like mine, but you only gave it an R, while you gave mine an NC-17.” If you bring up other films, the MPAA lawyer will cut you off and make you stop talking. Dick learns all this when he submits an early version of his own film — “This Film Is Not Yet Rated” — to the MPAA board and gets, predictably, an NC-17. (Which means that “This Film Is Not Yet Rated” is, in fact, rated.)

I would love to have been in the room when the ratings board watched a movie about themselves — a movie that discloses their identities and shows the hypocrisy of their organization. I’m surprised they didn’t make up a new, even stricter rating just for the occasion.

The MPAA’s defense of its outrageously unfair system is that you don’t HAVE to get your movie rated at all. You can release it with no rating if you want to. Of course, they know good and well that many theater chains refuse to show unrated films, and that being “unrated” is almost as poisonous as being NC-17. But they don’t care, obviously. They have their insular little system, they’re the only game in town, and filmmakers have absolutely no recourse, no way of fighting to change the system. As one interviewee observes, it might be better if it were the government doing it, because at least then all of its practices would be subject to judicial review. The MPAA doesn’t have to answer to anyone.

One more stupid Jack Valenti statement. He says: “If you make a movie that a lot of people want to see, no rating will hurt you. And if you make a movie that nobody wants to see, no rating will help you.” He goes on to say that a movie’s rating has no effect on its box office — which is complete and utter crap, of course. Everyone in the industry knows PG-13 is the most lucrative rating. It lets teenagers watch it without a parent or guardian, but it doesn’t have the “only for kids” stigma of PG and G. When studios want a film to be a huge hit, they ensure that it gets a PG-13 rating. Is Jack Valenti a liar or merely an idiot?

As one who has often being amazed by the MPAA’s outrageously arbitrary system, I was stunned to see just how screwed up the organization is. I mean, I knew ratings were given inconsistently; you need only compare the raunchiness of a PG-13 Austin Powers film with the tameness of, say, the R-rated “Hide and Seek” (that Robert DeNiro/Dakota Fanning thriller) to see how draconian and pharisaical the MPAA is.

What I didn’t realize was how secretive they are, how they break their own rules constantly, how they treat different types of films differently. A lesbian teenager masturbating while fully clothed in “But I’m a Cheerleader” warrants an NC-17 rating, while Jason Biggs violating a pastry with his naked butt visible in “American Pie” gets an R. Why? Because at least the Jason Biggs character was fantasizing about the OPPOSITE sex. What kind of sense does that make?

Anyway, maybe you don’t care about all of this. But the movie was fascinating to me, an almost perfect exposé of one of America’s most influential yet mysterious groups.

Scott from HBS.com and I went to Burger King afterward, where there was more ranting and raving. When it comes to ranting and raving, Scott is much better at it than I am, not to mention louder. They don’t call him The Angry Jew for nothing.

I went to festival headquarters after that to write for a while, and thence to the Eccles for a public screening of “Cargo.” There I ran into my pal Shawn Levy, film critic for The Oregonian, and we chatted until the movie began. It was a shame we couldn’t continue chatting during the movie, or instead of the movie, or in a way that would set the movie on fire, because the movie sucked.

It’s set aboard a cargo ship whereon a young man has stowed away and, upon being discovered, is witness to all manner of odd occurrences. But the movie is obtuse and obscure, leaving some things unexplained and others not explained well. It was dreadfully unsatisfying, like pulling apart an Oreo to discover not creme but mayonnaise. (Actually, that sounds kind of good. Never mind.)

When I left “Cargo,” it was about 7:40 p.m. and I was hedging my bets. It was a few hours before I had any specific obligation, but I wasn’t sure I felt like seeing a movie in the meantime. The alternative was to find a place to sit and write for a while; the problem is, my laptop is five years old (or 8,000,000 in computer years), and its battery runs out after 15 minutes of use. Hence, I needed a place with an electrical outlet to plug the charger into, and you’d be surprised how many coffeeshops, restaurants and other places of leisure don’t have outlets readily available, and festival headquarters and the Sundance House were closed by now.

So on a whim, I got off the shuttle bus at the Yarrow and wandered into an 8 p.m. press screening of something called “Son of Man.” The description looked interesting: the biblical story of Jesus, set in modern-day Africa. It sounded crazy — just crazy enough to work.

It’s not a great movie, as it turns out — there is almost no characterization or emotional connection — but it’s worth seeing just to see how the story of the Gospels is adapted for modern Africa. A lot of things translate perfectly: Africa has plenty of poor people, plenty of sick people, and plenty of political and social upheaval, just as Judea did in Christ’s time. And in a land of warlords and dictators, it’s easy to see why Jesus’ message of pacifism and non-violence would strike a chord with so many listeners. So it’s an interesting concept for a film, if nothing else.

It was 9:30 now, and I was hungry. I got my car from near headquarters and drove to Pier 49 Pizza, which it turns out closes at 9. I wound up at Taco Maker, just managing to sneak in before it closed at 10. I forget sometimes that Park City is actually a small, quiet place, where everything closes early, even during Sundance, except for Main Street establishments.

I was supposed to meet some Portland-area friends at a particular Main Street restaurant at 11, so I headed up there after finishing my Taco Maker crispy bean burritos. Alas, the restaurant in question was closed — not permanently, like Burgie’s, but just tonight. (Why do you close your restaurant in the middle of the city’s busiest week?) I had some more time to kill anyway, so I walked up and down Main Street, watching the lines of well-dressed young people trying to gain access to parties and concerts, seeing how everyone constantly scans the crowds for famous faces, noticing how as soon as I recognize that a person is fat or has bad hair, I automatically eliminate them from the “possibly famous” category, feeling bad about that because it means Rosie O’Donnell could walk past me and I wouldn’t even know it.

I was looking for an alternate meeting place for my Portland friends, and I was surprised to see how many restaurants, even on Main Street, were closed after 10. All the closed businesses were especially distressing to me now, as the Taco Maker crispy bean burritos, while delicious, had performed an act of terrorism upon me, giving me an immediate and non-negotiable desire to use a bathroom.

As luck would have it, I passed a clothing store that was still open. (Why do restaurants close at 10 while clothing stores stay open until midnight? What kind of backward place is this?) From the window I could see they had a public restroom (which is also unusual for a clothing store, but I wasn’t going to question it). I didn’t want to be uncool or crass by barging in JUST to use the restroom, but I figured if I feigned interest in their merchandise for a few minutes, I could then casually say, “Oh, I think I’ll use your restroom as long as I’m here.”

This was a very trendy, very hip kind of store. The shirts, which look no different in style or quality from the $25 ones at Old Navy, cost $90. The blue jeans were upwards of $100. There was a handmade leather jacket for $1,150, which is more than I paid for my car. Even if I could afford a $1,150 jacket, I wouldn’t be cool enough to wear it. They probably wouldn’t even sell it to me, the way stores won’t sell belly-exposing shirts to girls who will look awful in them (unless it’s only in my perfect fantasy world where stores do that).

My plan went off without a hitch. I pretended to be legitimately interested in blowing hundreds of dollars on clothes — or at least open to the possibility — before nonchalantly moseying to the restroom, where an episode of alarming fury was unleashed on the facilities. I made a hasty retreat thereafter, wanting to flee the scene before my crime was discovered.

It was too late to meet my Portland friends now, as I was seeing a midnight movie with Scott the Angry Jew at the Egyptian Theatre on Main Street, and also because no new meeting place had been established. As I walked toward the theater, whom should I run into but my friend Adam Johnson, an occasional actor, a frequent Sundance visitor, and an excellent Christopher Walken impersonator. He was working for the festival, driving people around in Volkswagens (the official car of Sundance). At present, he was waiting for someone named Quentin to emerge from a restaurant, one of the few eateries open past 10, apparently. We don’t think it was Tarantino, but we couldn’t think of any other Quentins who would be getting limousine services from Sundance.

While I was chatting with Adam, a friend of his who is also driving VWs all week showed up to collect Maggie Gyllenhaal and Peter Sarsgaard, who arrived momentarily and walked right past me, accompanied by an unidentified woman. Maggie looked skeletal, as is the custom in Hollywood. Peter looked like Peter. And who was the third person? Chaperone? Third wheel? Anyway, they all got into Adam’s friend’s VW and sped away, and I left Adam to wait for the unfamous Quentin, whoever he was.

Scott and I watched “Salvage,” a very low-budget, low-impact, low-quality horror film about a girl who keeps imagining she’s being stalked and killed by a maniac. It becomes apparent early on that little or none of what’s happening to her is real, and so the question is: Why should we be scared for her?

Approximately half the shots in the movie are of the girl backing away slowly from something. The other half are of her walking slowly down stairs or around corners, saying, “Hello? Is someone there?” Scott and I hightailed it as soon as the movie was over, cursing ourselves at having stayed out so late for something so useless. I hurried back to the condo and fell asleep, though not necessarily in that order.