With midnight just around the corner and nearly 12 hours of schmoozing with films and film fans and film folk socked away in the ol’ culture bank, strolling through the postcard that is Sundance Resort after a fresh snowfall has a surreal quality about it. There is something in the way the light plays across the slopes and through the trees up at Redford’s joint.
Then the dreamscape collapses with the news that they had reopened North Fork Canyon road to traffic with chains or four-wheel-drive. Drat! What better place than Sundance to become snowbound? OK, Alta but not during the film festival. It was the perfect opportunity for the inmates to run the asylum.
The Owl Bar, of course, would have served as anarchy-central. And with the Tree Room having only one waiter type that had made it up the canyon prior to the road closure, rounding up chow for the troops wouldn’t have been an issue. Every mess hall should have a huge Navajo rug hanging on the wall just above an encased museum-quality collection of Hopi Kachina Dolls.
The Screening Room could have been kept open round the clock to serve any variety of functions, from the continual-looping of whatever film stock had been previously re-spliced together by those with either a creative bent or maybe just one-too-many cocktails to those looking to curl up in a corner. Dibs on the couch!
I haven’t made it into the Rehearsal Hall so far this year, so I’m not sure what it could offer the revolution. Did I mention that this year’s festival is all about rebellion?
The manifesto goes something like, “This is the renewed rebellion. This is the recharged fight against the establishment of the expected. This is the rebirth of the battle for brave new ideas. This is Sundance, reminded. And this is your call to join us.” So it’s like we had been invited, had we become snowbound, to rebel creatively, of course!
But back to the Rehearsal Hall and how we could utilize it for our unmitigated pleasure. It would be great if they still had the same piano in there that Cyrus Chestnut performed upon back when the Sundance Film Festival put on that great series dedicated to jazz piano trios.
With its highly-polished floor, it could also serve at a dance hall or for a hastily-put-together game of “floor darts.” That would be the game invented by O.D. McGee back in the day up at that fine old saloon in Evanston, Pete’s Roc N Rye. The competition, comprised of flipping a “plumber’s friend” so that, when it lands, it sticks to the floor, in some circles has become a classic indoor sport.
Situated as it is above and to the side of the pool that is formed when the melting waters of Cascade Cirque flow over Stewart Falls and on down past the on-guard stone Indian Chief to rest for a spell before continuing on, the space echoes with light.
Of course, we would have had to keep the night ski lifts running and the rental shop open. And those cool log cabins that dot the landscape, it would be unconscionable not to, in some fashion, make them part of the rebellion.
Revolution does bring with it a sense of responsibility, however! Such a place as Sundance would itself rebel against disrespect on any level. The manner in which the human spaces were incorporated into the surrounding natural environment has an obvious spiritual quality about it.
That might be most evident in the library just off the Tree Room. With its fireplace and wall tapestries and bookshelves, the sense is of a reverence born deep down in the Proterozoic Eon geology that forms the bedrock of Mount Timpanogos itself. When you enter, you usher a “hush” in with you.
But now, with the road down the canyon reopened, all bets are off. The rebellion up at the Sundance Resort will have to continue only in its originally intended cinematic fashion. But that’s OK. Up there it has a holiness about it that somehow is lacking in its other manifestations.
Arriving as it does during the often bleak days of January, the Sundance Film Festival has always had perfect timing. Although many of my friends cringe at the thought of it transecting their lives, it’s become one of my favorite times of year. The films just keep getting more interesting and there’s always the chance of getting snowbound up North Fork Canyon. If you’re lucky!
Jay Meehan is a culture junkie and a free-lance writer with a background in commercial and community radio, among other pursuits. He has been a columnist and feature writer for various Park City publications going back to 1973.