There has to be a morning after

Exhaustion, altitude sickness and directional confusion seemed to set in for many last night, not least of all your humble correspondent. Sunday will be long remembered as the night a few cars of the  party train fell off their rails.

Started out at the "Smart People" screening and post-screening dinner. The story of an uptight college professor who makes his family miserable was by far the best received film I've attended yet.  Also, got to see for the first time the specter of a theater mob scene as half the crowd rose to its feet -- as if for the entrance of the queen -- when Dennis Quaid and Sarah Jessica Parker entered.

The dinner at an art gallery in town was festive if a bit overpacked. The circulating pizzas were much appreciated. However, the first signs of Sundance exhaustion were showing themselves, at least certainly in my body.  Somehow the commitment to line up 12 more parties for the night was lacking. My high point came when a former head of the Hollywood Foreign Press Assn. walked over to me,  grabbed the credentials hanging around my neck, pulled them up to his face to study them, dropped them, shook his head, turned and walked away without saying a word.

Went on to meet Chris Lee at the Be Kind, Rewind house off Main Street which has been made over as the video store in the film.  The house was hosting a small, impromptu tell-your-friends little event, where a few dozen people, including many Park City residents, chatted pleasantly. Chris and I talked with the founders of the Slamdance festival, whom I asked whether they considered Sundance their friend or their enemy.  The pair happily reported that after years of contentious relations, they had fallen into amicable frenemy status.  After three days of mega-events, the low-key get-together was the palate cleanser my life depended on.

Left around midnight into the rapidly falling snow.  Decided not to push my luck and quit while I was ahead for just one night.  On the bus, however, Chris Lee decided to join our colleague Sheigh Crabtree on one last push to Hyde nightclub.  Problem was, the bus that should've passed directly in front of the Hyde location seemed to be inventing a route of its own, and staring through the fogged windows into the dark night, we couldn't quite make out if that route was going toward the club or not. The driver called out the stop for my hotel and I stepped off the bus onto a dark road behind a supermarket  about four blocks from where the stop for the hotel usually is.  I looked back at the bus pulling away with Chris and Sheigh aboard as it made a turn, sending it in the exact opposite direction from the fabled Hyde nightclub.

-- Richard Rushfield

(Photo courtesy AP / Sundance)