Well, duh:
Hollywood veteran Robert Redford fears his Sundance Film Festival is growing too big, after seeing celebrities like Paris Hilton attend the event. Redford hosted his 25th annual festival in Park City, Utah, last month, which was started in 1979 to showcase low-budget, independent films and talent. However, as the festival grows larger and larger every year, some celebrities have begun turning up just for parties, even though they have nothing to do with the films on show. Redford tells Newsweek magazine, "To the outside world, it's a big fat market where you have people like Paris Hilton going to parties. Now, she doesn't have anything to do with anything. I think the festival is close to being out of control." Despite Redford's disdain for the socialite, Hilton has attended the parties of Sundance every year since 2004.
I'm not sure I buy this. The festival's "close to being out of control" because a few amateur porn stars like Hilton and Bai Ling show up to get their pictures taken and take home some free swag? Sorry Robert, but a handful of attention whores aren't the reason I have to walk in the middle of the street when I'm heading up Main to grab a beer at O'Shucks.
Is Sundance getting too big? I don't know...probably. It does seems like it's straining the limits of Park City's resources. Then again, I've only been attending for a few years. I have no fond recollection of the festival's glory days when, I guess, the only people who showed up were those serious about their love of independent film. 1983, in other words.
But the reason for the overcrowded shuttles and the wall-to-wall humanity in every public space isn't because Ms. Hilton and her entourage are in town (at least, not entirely), it's because Sundance itself has become less discriminating in what it screens. I'm not referring to film quality, necessarily (though that would certainly be argued by a couple of the guys I went with this year), but the number of premieres that have no business being there. Friends with Money? Your opening night film was a Jennifer Aniston movie that already had a Sony Pictures distribution arrangement in place? All Aboard!? Rosie's gay cruise documentary already had a deal with HBO, so why is it taking up screening time?
Hilton's home video, shot on a crappy camera with poor lighting and no budget, was more "indie" than either of these anyway.
And then there were the movies that got deals during the festival, but before they even screened, like Little Miss Sunshine and The Darwin Awards. Both were films with major stars and major studio backing, yet they're being screened alongside film funded with credit cards and money borrowed from parents.
I'm not here to argue that these films have no place at the festival, because the alternative - sitting through 90 minutes of a tortured artist's navel gazing - is pretty bad, but Redford and the Sundance folks need to rethink both the kinds of movies they screen and also how many they allow in. I think there were something on the order of 200 films this year, with all their attendant personnel and marketing folks, to say nothing of all the goddamn press required ro cover everything.
Press being so desperately critical to the whole process after all.