After doing two or three print interviews, I raced down and went on to record an interview for the family/crew from a Salt Lake City TV station. They were lovely people and here we are, posing for a photo after the interview. By this time I was completely bleary-eyed and sure that I had come to Sundance for nothing more than to become a complete “media slut” and was going to be exposed as a shallow, fraud, phony, hack fake! I would say that after doing the live SLC interview I felt like I had totally scored and succeeded at publicizing the presence of myself and my short film, but I felt a little cheesy too. It wasn’t until later that evening, at the Awards Gala (where I sat excitedly and patiently listening to all the filmmakers, and wishing that I could have been there to see all the films, and having my film not even place among the twelve runners up) that I felt I had earned my stripes as a real bona fide short film maker in attendance at the festival. 

I met two filmmakers right after the SLC interview, and I felt we had a really valid honest interaction: filmmaker to filmmaker. We all committed to seeing each others’ films and to talking to each other afterwards, so I look forward to that – it’s in the queues of things I want to do to track down their films and watch them and then send them a note telling them how I felt about what I saw. I suppose readers of this site can keep my feet to the fire and ask me exactly who these filmmakers are and what I think of their films once I've seen them.

Exactly the kind of typical Sundance interaction I was hoping to have: a chance encounter on the street with one of the great actors of our time, Philip Seymour Hoffman, whose work I find stunning every time I'm exposed to it.  We had a lovely exchange -- I was giddy with glee having just left "Roots" with what is commonly referred to as "swag" but I wasn't too busy to take a moment to expound on my feelings of great pleasure at meeting this talented artist.  He told me of some of his relatives who are fans of Lord of the Rings, so I'm forwarding some photos of me as "Sam" to them.  

Here's some of the "swag" referred to earlier.  That's a black leather bag with the word "Jamaica" written on it -- later on at the hotel I was given another bag with "Sundance 2003" on it.  Both these bags have become critical assets in my toolkit as a director/filmmaker -- as I go back and forth between my apartment, the set,  my dressing room and the production office for the episode I'm directing of Jeremiah -- and as I've gotten on airplanes to fly down to LA to shoot my short film, and back to Vancouver, those bags have come in extraordinarily handy. So this nice gentleman worked at Roots and couldn't have been more accommodating.  I must say I was filled with mixed feelings: slightly guilty because most people have to pay full retail for these items and here I was, wandering in, at the head of the Lord of the Rings publicity machine, and basically getting to walk out with a bunch of free merchandise; at the same time I felt like I was gonna try to do something good with them and, what the heck, if somebody's gonna have something good happen to them, why not me? 

You'll notice the red cap that I have on my head, another gift from the Roots folks: "1973" I guess it's the inception date of the Roots corporation and it happens to be the birth year of my brother Mackenzie, who is the second lead in the new short film that I'm doing.  So I wore that cap with great pride all that day and the next and I wore it on the day we shot the short film, and I continue to wear it occasionally when I'm directing in Vancouver -- to me it's a celebration of the birth year of my brother, and of the fact that I got some free Roots stuff!  Yet another chance encounter as I was walking out of Roots, Cindy Williams, of Laverne and Shirley fame, came in with a group of other folks.  We shared some stories, including the time when I went to her house as a child with my mother, who was then active in Screen Actors Guild politics.  The girl in the red coat and furry cap is the HP rep that we bumped into again in the store -- she was thrilled to see I was putting their camera to good use. 

We happened to bump into the assistant to Catherine Bell, who is one of the stars of the TV series JAG whom I happen to have met and have a great fondness for and lost touch with, so there I was bumping into these gals on the street and making sure I could get in touch with Catherine.  So this is what happens, I think officially, technically, aptly called networking.  I think I may have been networking, that's what happened out there on the streets of Sundance.

Everyone who came up and asked me for an autograph also then had to pose for a picture with me and I would get permission from them to put their image on my website.  This whole photo/diary project was conceived and executed within about 45 minutes.

Back up in the "Media Center" I was given a tour by this lovely young woman who presented me with my Sundance filmmaker's jacket which, to me, felt much like what Tiger Woods must feel when he puts the green jacket on at the Masters golf tournament.  It's a rare thing to be an invited and accepted filmmaker at Sundance.

I'm sitting here with Michael Gross, who approached us on the street after watching us for a while as we interacted with fans and passers-by because we had formed a kind of bulk on the street.  Michael introduced himself to Andrew as a writer for the New York Times working on a book about celebrities and their interactions with fans.  We invited him to jump in the car with us and he came back with us back to the hotel and up in the media relations room and here we are having our first of many chats about the nature of celebrities and fans.  Michael and I have agreed to work together and he's invited me to become a much larger part of the book he's writing about fans and celebrities and I'm excited to be doing that with him.  So yet another incredibly propitious and fortuitous encounter all in the course of wandering through 30 hours of the Sundance film festival.

continued . . .