Sundance 2007 - Day 3

Saturday in Park City and it is pretty busy. The busses are crowded, the sidewalks are jammed, and the restaurant staff don't give a damn.

Waking up and taking our time to leave the motel in Coalvillle, we drove back to the Yarrow Hotel in Park City to park the car and have breakfast. Then up to Main Street. I go to my scheduled interview with the ladies of Indie Appeal
(myspace/indieappeal.com), a sort of hip The View, or as they say, not your mother's talk show. Kris walks up to the Egyptian Theatre to get wait list tickets for a 3pm movie.

The interview goes great. The ladies, Amy, Lauren, Maura and Mecca are all really sweet and full of bubbly energy and fun to talk to. I'm getting the star treatment for a few minutes and it's great. I talked about Phantom Love, Cup Of My Blood, and my film, Slave. Fun stuff, I can't wait to do more TV appearances.

The interview was in a building on Main Street that was set up like a big promtional and swag event for invited guests only. There was a liquor sponsor, a furniture company, a water company, a clothing company, The Illinois Film Office had a booth, a Canadian diamond company, The Penninsula Hotel in Chicago, and a few others. My friend John Diggles sponsored a booth for his product. Xango, a new mangosteen drink, that is quite delicious and good for you too!

Kris talked her way past the doorman and was waiting for me downstairs on the first floor when the interview was over. Kris couldn't get wait list tickets for the film because this year they only give one per person, so no movie. I said we should go back up to 3, I wanted to introduce her to the Indie Appeal ladies. That turned into them asking to interview Kris, so a time was set and we left the Main Event building to have a coffee and look around Main Street.

There was a Starbucks on Main St. last time I was here, and it was now a local coffee place. How often does that happen? I wonder what the story behind that was?

We went back to the Main Event and watched the ladies finish their interview with some filmmakers who have a film in Slamdance, Over the GW. It looked pretty intense.

Then Kris was just about to go on set for her interview, when the press agent for the event brought up a guy (a celebrity) and asked him if he wanted to talk to the ladies? He jumps right on set an takes over, and they let it happen. The guy was Dustin Diamond who played Screech on Saved By The Bell from 1989 - 1993. Wow. I missed television those years.

It was pretty funny to watch as he talked about why he is here (he is being followed around for a reality TV show) and he did comedy bits from other movies and turned everything into a self depricating sexual inuendo. Wow.

Kris did her interview and she was great, talking about her art and her clairvoyance, and how she works the two together.
We took photos, we chatted and left.

We went downstairs to the second floor to see what else we could get from the other sponsors. I could get used to the star treatment. We talked to the Peninsula Hotel people from Chicago and tasted their amazing hot chocolate. Then had a Patron margarita, it was after 3 already, and walked to the back room by the Gold Toe sock display. The two ladies there, Jen and Ericka, were so nice, invited us to sit. I think they were happy to have company. They gave us lots of socks, and told us they get calls from stars, like this, "I'm in my closet, and it's all beige and brown, and I don't have any socks to match, can you send me 100 pairs?" And they do it. Once.

They gave us socks.

Then Jen asks Kris what she does, and Kris starts telling her about painting in reverse on vinyl, and Jen gets this weird look on her face and says, "I know you, some one told me about you." Someone who Kris doesn't know had told Jen about her paintings last year. Jen remembered her as soon as she heard the reverse painting on vinyl. That was a spooky cool wow moment for Kris.

All this has happened and it's not even 5 PM. So we leave there and go up Main Street to meet Jeff Gold and his girlfriend Liz, and a couple of other friends for an early dinner. The restaurant is Shabu, and the only reservation Jeff could get was 5 pm. This is important because later it comes up. The restaurant is very crowded and very expensive. Fine dining, right?

The food is good, the service fine, we are all talking and drinking and enjoying ourselves. The bill comes, it's paid, and two members of our table leave, and we ask the waiter for more water. Jeff leaves the table for a minute, Liz, Kris and I are there, and the waiter tells us, very rudely, that we have been there too long, our reservation was from 5 to 7, they let us stay till eight, (it's only 7:30) but they have been very generous to us and let us stay but now they have to turn the table and we have to go as he grabs the water glass away from Liz. We were stunned. The billl for 7 of us, though I didn't see it, had to be about 400 to 500 bucks. This isn't a diner. So Jeff comes back and I tell him what happened. He gets mad, Liz gets mad. We all got mad. So we said something. Jeff wantes to talk to the manager. The waiter goes away, and when he comes back he is very apologetic, but never really says I'm sorry for the way he acted, but the manager has instructed him to tell us we can stay and they would like to buy us a drink. So we take the drink, and take our time, but it was a very strange experience. A Waitergonebad for sure!

After that we had to get going to our second screening of Phantom Love, which I liked even more the second time, and this time I was invited down to the podium by the director for the Q & A. That was fun. Nina answered questions about the film.

By the time we got out of there it was almost midnight and we decided to head back to Coalville. Nothing happened on the way. We sat in the hot tub at the motel. I'm addicted to hot tubs now. That was day three.