Submitted by Tim Barrus aka Cinematheque Films, Jan 8, 2008 10:34

I don't know how anyone can come away from having rubbed shoulders with Hollywood -- whether that's Hollywood, California, or the Sundance Film Festival which let's face it is also Hollywood, California -- and not have eaten vast amounts of indifference, sheer arrogance, and a breathtaking cynacism as a steady diet for breakfast, lunch, and dinner where they'll starve you out, fence you out, keep you out, marginalize you out, push you out, lie about you to drag out kicking and screaming out, and BEING out is the status quo norm of existence. Not even artistic existence (such a thing in American film is a complete accident) but just existence. The stories that come out of this pampered group are as contrived as Hollywood is a contrived tinsel of a ugly place that in the long run over time is ephemeral. Sundance and Hollywood might be self-important, and the rented white Rolls Royces of Beverley and her Hills ubiquitous, which doesn't mean that a group of prostitutes fathoms anything outside the context of giving "them," the le public, whatever bizarre thing it is (this year) that this esteemed mole hill of "production artists" thinks the public wants. They haven't had an original idea since 1911 and Lilian Gish knew how to pander to the camera and faint dead away. Journalists love looking into shadows and corners for any small shred of evidence that Sundance remains an alternative. An alternative to what. Greed. Idiocy. Relevance. Park City needs to simply rename their streets: Wilshire, Sunset might be where they could begin. The values of Hollywood and the values of Sundance dance a tango of disingenuous intimacy. Cultural relevance does not exist by the grace of arrogance alone. Nor is it usually found anywhere near a black hole or submolecular vacuum. Spiderman doesn't need Sundance. But Sundance would take Spiderman on as enthusiastically as it can be bribed all the way to the le bank. New York remains the financial heart of all of this retooling of originality where originality is the deal and not the film.

Note: Comments are screened, and in some cases edited, before posting. We reserve the right to reject anything we find objectionable.