To clarify about needing place to stay: Park City. Downtown SLC tolerable. Any farther and sleeping in car really would be preferable.

Was anyone at the “Manure” screening last night to confirm or deny that it bombed, and the cast refused to answer questions?

FINE. I’m sleeping in my car tonight and tomorrow. SEE IF I CARE.

Sundance Diary Day 6 (includes annual anecdote set in a bathroom): http://tinyurl.com/937jd5

Day 6 (Tuesday, Jan. 20)

Laremy and I had to check out of our Film.com-funded condo this morning, but first we had to watch a few minutes of the inauguration proceedings on the telly. Dick Cheney was in a wheelchair, presumably because his powers are diminishing as his empire slips out of his grasp; by the end of the day, he was nothing but a withered bag of skin. Laremy said it would be funny if, as Obama took the oath, he announced that he was a secret Mormon. Nobody would have seen that one coming!

But then we had to go watch movies. My first screening, a sparsely populated press event at Holiday Village, was “Mystery Team,” starring the comedy troupe DerrickComedy as a trio of child sleuths (think Encyclopedia Brown) who are now high school seniors but still act like child sleuths. (All their usual suspects are 7-year-olds.) And now they’re trying to solve a double murder. It’s funny, sometimes hilarious, but it’s way too long. It’s an 80-minute movie trapped in the body of a 105-minute movie.

Immediately after this, with hardly a moment to spare, was “Sin Nombre,” a violent drama about gangs in the southern reaches of Mexico who cross paths with immigrants on their way to the U.S. It was interesting to be reminded that Mexico has another border, i.e., the one with Guatemala, and that apparently that border is significantly easier to cross than the northern one.

Continue reading…