Nine years ago, Destiny Grose attended the Park City Film Series, to see a foreign movie.
“I went there and they were very busy and didn’t have any one helping them,” Grose said during an interview with The Park Record. “I said, ‘Here let me sell tickets for you’ and I became an instant volunteer.”
After a couple of years as a volunteer, she was put on the board because of her love and knowledge of film.
“I love movies,” she said. “They are an insight to another life, country, world and situation. I like period pieces because I get a sense of history. I like documentaries because they are like reality TV, except better. I like adventure films such ‘127 Hours,’ because I would not dare go on hikes in canyons by myself. As you can see, movies are a chance for me to live vicariously in another world.”
Last year, Grose became the executive director of the Park City Film Series after former director Frank Normile moved to Canada.
“I was the likely choice along with George Dymalski,” Grose said. “Because I have always always seen a lot of movies.”
Grose was born and raised in Park City. The only child of Edwin and Roslyn Grose, she attended Marsac School.
“My parents were the owners of Park City Antique and Floor that was located in the Talisker building,” she said. “My dad was a lift superintendent for the Park City area.”
Grose had an unconventional upbringing. Her family didn’t have a TV, so she entertained herself by reading a book a day, every day.
“I went to the Park City Library when it was on Main Street,” she said. “They let me read books that were way above my reading level.”
Her father also encouraged her reading habit.
“After school, my dad would give me a couple of bucks and I would go buy a book every day at Dolly’s Bookstore, back when books cost a couple of bucks. Then I would sit behind the counter at my parents’ store and read until it was time to go home.”
When she was old enough to attend high school, Grose’s parents took her out of Park City to get her education.
“I eventually went to Europe when I was 16 to go to school. I graduated from a Swedish high school and Wasatch High simultaneously, because I was enrolled in both at the time and had enough credits.”
After graduation, Grose backpacked across Europe, living in any city she chose. It was there she developed a love for foreign films.
She loves to reminisce about Venice, Paris, London, Amsterdam, Spain and Isle of Skye, Scotland.
“It was great, but in a way the experience was squandered on my youth,” she said. “I would appreciate it so much more now.”
Upon returning to the States, Grose attended many colleges including the University of Utah and majored in psychology and a minor in criminology.
After leaving college, she began working as a probation/parole officer in Denver, Colo.
“I worked with rape crisis and a lot of criminal justice victim stuff,” she said. “I had great aspirations to help the world. But in that line of work, there is a level of burnout that happens, especially when you try to fix people.
“I learned quickly that you can’t help people unless they want to be helped and it was quite depressing,” she said. “I found that insane people made me criminal and criminal people made me insane.”
Grose was lured back to Park City by her grandmother.
“She was supposedly on her death bed,” Grose remembered. “She pleaded with me to come back and told me not to leave until she was dead. So I swore to her I wouldn’t, and she lived another 10 years.”
Grose landed a job as a theatre critic for The Park Record.
“Then at Sundance one year, I was mistakenly introduced as a film critic and instantly got a ton of work,” she said. “Interestingly enough, when I started out as a theatre critic, I worried that it was a dying audience because people weren’t going to the theaters as much. So I thought it would be fun to get into film because I thought everyone loved movies. Now I’m worried that people aren’t making the effort to get off their couches and going to the theatre to see movies in the dark on the big screen.”
In addition to her position at the Park City Film Series, Grose is also a personal shopper.
“When people who have second homes in Park City come to town, they want all their groceries and liquor to be stocked and ready to go,” she said. “As a personal shopper, I buy most everything, except clothes, for these people. I don’t do clothes because women lie about their sizes and I’m not a clothes girl.
“But buying the liquor, food and presents is a big business in town,” she said. “I shop for people who have never been to the grocery store before. Their personal assistants don’t shop and their chef’s don’t shop, either. I’ll get a text that an order is in and then go get the list.”
While she still likes to travel, Grose is always thinking about different ways to improve the Park City Film Series.
“We’re located in the Park City Library, but we don’t own our space,” she said. “We don’t have a lobby and we’re limited in what we can do.
“I have marquis envy and I think we could build a really cool place with a coffee shop,” she said. “It would be an ideal place to show foreign films and documentaries. I have people from Sundance telling me how great these new documentaries are and that I have to bring them to the series. Although I do make it a point to show at least one documentary and one foreign film during the Park City Film Series run, it’s expensive. Unless we have someone to underwrite the film or have enough people in the seats, we lose money showing them.”
Film will always be Grose’s first love, she said.
“Movies will always be a big part of who I am,” she said. “As it was when I was a kid, I still don’t have TV. I have a big screen hooked up to a DVD player. I am probably the only person in America who has not seen ‘Survivor’ or ‘American Idol’ and I like it that way.”