News Feature - 2006 Sundance Film Festival: 25 Years of Independent Cinema

As the 2005 awards season grinds to a halt and moviegoers await the upcoming Academy Award nominations, Hollywood turns its eyes to the future as they celebrate the 25th anniversary of Sundance Film Festival.

Founded by Robert Redford in 1981, the Sundance Institute has been a driving force in American independent film and its annual Film Festival has emerged as the premiere showcase for new and emerging filmmakers. Though some have argued that the Festival hit its peak in the mid-1990s, the official Sundance website states that, "The original values of independence, creative risk-taking, and discovery continue to define and guide the work of Sundance Institute, both with US artists and, increasingly, with artists from other regions of the world."

This year's Sundance - situated, as always, on the snowy slopes of Park City, Utah - runs from January 19th to the 29th and features a wide range of original features, short films, and documentaries showing both in and out of competition. Though it's never guaranteed that a film that screens at Sundance will be picked up by a major studio, mainstream Hollywood seems particularly hungry for independent films this year, which should be no surprise after indie darlings like Brokeback Mountain, Transamerica, and Capote took home most of the 2005 Golden Globes.

In the words of New York Times film critic A.O. Scott, "To appreciate the Sundance Film Festival, 10 days winding up Sunday, as it is, you must embrace its contradictions. Here, the most high-minded artistic and moral aspirations coexist with hype, corporate self-congratulation and a ravening hunger for money and attention. All the values and pathologies that define the movie industry, - and perhaps American culture in general - are concentrated into a bitter, dizzying espresso shot."

The most buzzed about feature at the 2006 Festival looks to be Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris' Little Miss Sunshine, a dark comedy about a family traveling cross-country to a junior beauty pageant, which benefits greatly from its impressive ensemble cast - Steve Carell, Greg Kinnear, Toni Collette, Alan Arkin, and Signs' Abigail Breslin, among others. Fox Searchlight quickly snapped up rights for Sunshine and, according to The Hollywood Reporter, "Sources placed the deal at north of $10 million, the [Sundance] record set by Miramax Films' purchase of Happy, Texas in 1999."

Though Fox's deal seemed like a no-brainer, particularly due to Sunshine's warm critical reaction, Entertainment Weekly openly wondered, "why a distributor didn't just take it off the table and make it instead of risking losing the movie in a bidding war. There are two answers: Steve Carell, a member of its ensemble cast, became a serious headliner only after he hit it big with The 40-Year-Old Virgin. And distributors were afraid that the film was too execution-dependent: Why not let someone else take the risk and see how it turned out?"

One of the other big acquisitions at Sundance this year was Miramax's deal for North American rights to Patrick Stettner's The Night Listener, a brooding drama based on the Armistead Maupin novel, starring Robin Williams, Rory Culkin, and Toni Collette. Coming Soon quoted Miramax president Daniel Battsek as saying, "Night Listener is a smart thriller with commercial appeal that is both fascinating and topical and fits perfectly with Miramax's intention to distribute quality films. I am a huge fan of Patrick Stettner and we are thrilled to be work with such a talented filmmaker."

However, even with its high pedigree, Night Listener has not attracted the same nearly universal positive critical buzz that's followed Little Miss Sunshine. Variety characterized Night Listener as a "tediously solemn film," while Hollywood Elsewhere's Jeffrey Wells argued that, "watching it felt like being in a kind of prison...a windowless isolation cell in Iraq during the Hussein regime. It's a movie for dead people -- the whole thing is entombed. Almost every shot is enveloped in shadows and blackness, and your kindly torturer is a bearded and extremely old and withered-looking Robin Williams."

The studio buys kept coming fast and furious after distributors called dibs on Sunshine and Night Listener. Warner Independent Pictures paid $6 million for the North American and U.K. rights to The Science of Sleep, Michel Gondry's surrealistic follow-up to Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Dark Horizons is reporting that Warner "swiftly began talks to buy the visually dazzling fantasy starring Gael Garcia Bernal and Charlotte Gainsbourg just minutes after its screening at Sundance on Sunday night. They plan a platform release in the second half of the year." EW further noted that, "Warner Independent Pictures president Mark Gill (who learned the niceties of Sundance dealmaking from his old Miramax boss, Harvey Weinstein) landed Sleep because he stepped into the negotiation aggressively, laying down such a high bid that it drove the other bidders out of the game."

Meanwhile, Lionsgate paid $2-3 million for the distribution rights to Right At Your Door, a digitally-filmed terrorist drama about a dirty bomb exploding in Los Angeles. After paranoid Brad (Rory Cochrane) seals himself inside to protect from radioactive fallout, he's faced with the dilemma of whether or not to allow his possibly-infected wife (Mary McCormack) back into the house. Tom Ortenberg, president of theatrical films for Lionsgate, commented to Yahoo, "We think it will be highly controversial. Yet, it stands on its own merits as a well-made movie." IFC Films also made a $1 million Sundance distribution deal for Wordplay, a documentary about crossword fanatics, and acquired rights for Factotum, a drama based on the Charles Bukowski novel, starring Matt Dillon and Marisa Tomei.

While several other acquisition deals were pending as the Festival moves forward, expect more pick-ups announced after the annual awards presentation during the Sundance closing ceremonies. Likely contenders include This Film Is Not Yet Rated, Kirby Dick's documentary expose about the MPAA, Neil Burger's The Illusionist starring Edward Norton and Paul Giamatti, and the Al Gore-endorsed global warming documentary, An Inconvenient Truth.