Sundance Summary, pt. 3

Sunday morning, we drove out to Sundance Ranch, 45 minutes from Park City, for a screening of Reporter. It is just gorgeous up there in the mountains. Reporter was very moving, and we were fortunate to have an extensive Q&A with the director Eric Metzgar and producer, Steve Cantor. Read my review of Reporter here.

Sundance Ranch is a gorgeous ski resort, and they have one screening room there that screens films during the festival. During the summer, Sundance Ranch is where the Sundance Institute Labs are held. Aspiring young directors, screenwriters, film composers, and producers, come to Sundance Ranch and for a few intense weeks work on 4-6 scenes from their movie with small groups of their peers and creative advisors. The process is very intense, and real actors from LA are brought out to work out scenes from the movies with the young filmmakers. They rehearse the scenes, shoot them, and edit them under the mentorship of already accomplished directors, editors, and cinematographers. Money from the film festival goes towards supporting these labs. The Sundance Ranch buildings are covered with photographs from the labs, and you can see famous directors helping then young, but now famous filmmakers. It's also a kick seeing some of the actors who helped out at the labs years ago and later became famous, like James Gandolfini, for example.

We had an opportunity to hear Owen Glieberman, a film reviewer from Entertainment Weekly, speak, and he told us that his favorite film of the year is The Wrestler, but he thinks Slumdog Millionaire will win the Best Picture Oscar.

We then went to the premiere screening of I Love You Phillip Morris starring Jim Carrey, Ewan McGregor and Rodrigo Santoro (300).


I Love You, Phillip Morris is based on a true story of a gay romance between two men who meet in prison. Jim Carrey plays Steven Russell, a former cop who was married and had a daughter. He finally comes out as gay, vows to "never lie again" and becomes a con man. One of the funniest lines has Jim Carrey in Miami with his lover played by Rodrigo Santoro and his voice over is "This gay lifestyle is so expensive!" He turns to scamming and having multiple credit cards under different names to keep him and his lover in Rolexes.

After he's caught he tries to escape in several amusing ways. He meets Ewan McGregor's sweet Phillip Morris in prison, and it's love at first sight. Once they are both out of prison, Steven tells Phillip that he won't lie anymore, but cons his way into a CFO job where he embezzles his way to matching his and his Mercedes convertibles.

I don't have any problem with a gay romance film, and I do admire Jim Carrey for taking this risk. The man who rakes it in doing films like Liar, Liar doesn't have to do films like this, and he's trying to stretch. I thought Carrey was great as this incredible con man escape artist. The film is very in your face about their relationship, and the kissing and so on. That didn't bother me at all, and it was one of the more romantic films we saw at Sundance. If they film goes to wider release, they might want to skip one scene. Ewan McGregor and Jim Carrey are lying down in a boat, and Ewan gets up and spits over the side. I hope I would react with the same "Ewww" for a heterosexual romance depicted this way. That got more than a few gasps in our audience.

In the Q&A, Jim was asked how kissing Ewan was. Jim smiled and said "It was the highlight of my life. Just look at him!" Ewan McGregor talked about how weird it was to play a real contemporary person. He got to meet Phillip Morris in Arkansas and spend a couple days with him. The real Phillip Morris appears in one court room scene at the end of the movie. The real Steven Russell has a life sentence in prison in Texas. Jim Carrey said that he'd heard that Russell was getting a big kick out of a movie being made about him, but that he'll never be able to see it.

It's a very funny, and surprisingly touching film. You can't believe all these things happened, but it's a true story! Check out the trailer to see how crazy it is -- Steven Russell is a sociopath, but he really does love Phillip Morris. Jim Carrey and Ewan McGregor as gay prison lovers may be a difficult sell to the Ace Ventura crowd who would probably have a heart attack at some of the scenes!

Check out more pictures from my trip to Sundance on Flickr!

Echoes from the documentary film Reporter

This morning was strange. I was dozing through my alarm clock blasting NPR and my husband said, "Listen to this! It's that guy from the movie!" Rebel leader Laurent Nkunda had been arrested near the Congo Rwanda border. A week ago that name would have had no meaning for me, and I would have had no interest in that region. I was pyschically numbed hearing about stories from Africa. But Sunday at Sundance Ranch, I saw the documentary Reporter about the New York Times Pulitzer Prize winning reporter and op-ed columnist Nicholas Kristof. It was an excellent film and very moving.

The documentary is mostly about a trip that Kristof took to Rwanda and Congo with two young people. He felt that he was getting desensitized to these tragic stories, and held a contest to bring a young person with him to Africa. A young medical student and a teacher came with him and blogged about their experiences on the NY Times website. During the trip, they had a terrifying visit with Nkunda at his base in the jungle. The strange thing is that Nkunda was so charming, even though thousands of people have been killed or raped because of his men. It was like Last King of Scotland and Whitaker's portrayal of Idi Amin. That same charm of the sociopath. Nkunda even had grace said before their meal, and called himself a pastor. It was surreal, and you were afraid as Kristof dared to ask him questions like "Why do you think people call you a war lord?" And what do you do when a war lord invites you to stay for dinner?

Nicholas Kristof almost single handedly brought the genocide in Darfur to our attention. Mia Farrow became involved in the Darfur crisis because of Kristof's columns. He tries to tell the story of one individual in his columns to make you care about what is happening in these far away places. Kristof in the film talked about the research that shows if you are shown a picture of one African suffering child you will be more likely to donate more than if you are shown a picture with 2 children. It only decreases the more suffering children you see in the picture. Humans are wired to become psychically numb when the numbers become statistics. Kristof tries to break through that in his columns, and so does Eric Daniel Metzgar, the director of this documentary. After the screening, the producer and director even handed out buttons that were the red circle and line through the words "Psychic Numbing".

Metzgar filmed this himself in Congo following Kristof on his journey. He edited the film, as well. It is amazingly brave film making, and a film I urge everyone to see. Ben Affleck is an executive producer, and the film will be seen on HBO later this summer, I believe.

I was certainly changed by this film. I read this article this morning about Nkunda's arrest with new eyes, and heard the NPR report with new ears. I can't wait to read what Kristof has to say about what it means. I am no longer pyschically numbed.

Update: Kristof is running another contest to win a trip with him for American students over 18.