Customer Reviews

Sundancing: Hanging Out And Listening In At America's Most Important Film Festival

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A previous reviewer claimed author John Anderson was some kind of piteous wannabe. He didn't read this book very closely: it's not Anderson talking. The author almost completely relies on interviews with others; they make up 9/10ths of the book. It's an *oral history*, or maybe an oral snapshot, of the 1999 festival. I just got back from my first Sundance (2003) last month, and read this book afterwards. Very amusing, very "human-sized," as the back cover blurb puts it. Some movie suits are their own self-parodists; it's interesting to read about people who live in Park City, Utah all year and then get overrun for two weeks annually. This is not snobby at all, not whiny. It's fun and funny and true.

Far from informative, this book does nothing toward providing any sort of accurate rendition of the madness that has engulfed Sundance of late. Both the dashed dreams and the fulfilled hopes of the various players are often obscured by the author's tedious, hackneyed prose. Prose that is so cliche-ridden I wonder whether the esteemed Mr. Anderson actually wrote it himself or simply gave the book as an assignment to another drear film student, a pre-John Anderson in its larval stage if you will. On every page we learn not so much about the Sundance festival or its participants as we discover Anderson's yearnings to fit into that world, to find a place for himself among the glamor and achievement that only true creators attain. Sour grapes and misgivings on every page, it might more aptly be titled "Tales of a Film Critic Nothing."