For those who suspected Sundance of "selling out"...

January 28, 2005

REPORTER'S NOTEBOOK

Forget About All Those Films, This Year It's the Sundance Free Stuff Festival

By SHARON WAXMAN

PARK CITY, Utah, Jan. 27 - The director David Slade, who is British but lives in Hollywood, learned a new word at this year's Sundance Film Festival.

"Do you want to be gifted?" he was asked on one of his first days here, where he has a film, "Hard Candy," in competition. The debt-laden director soon learned that one of the latest rituals of attending Sundance is being showered with free stuff, a practice known as gifting.

"There's cellphones, hair dryers, jewelry, jeans, makeup," Mr. Slade marveled. "You feel a mountain of guilt. You feel immoral."

"Then it's, 'Sure, I'll take it!' " he added. "And the joke of it is, I walked away with more money than I got paid for the movie."

The festival created to celebrate independent, seat-of-the-pants filmmaking has been invaded by corporate America, which sees an irresistible marketing opportunity in the confluence of talent, celebrity and world media gathered here. And while the invasion isn't entirely new and hasn't quite eclipsed the movies themselves, the corporate presence at this year's Sundance Festival goes far beyond that of previous years.

An entire area on Main Street is now devoted to giving away goods that companies hope to establish as brands among celebrities, while numerous storefronts and chalets have been commandeered by companies promoting (and sometimes gifting) cars, cellphones, fur-lined boots, fur-trimmed parkas and cameras. Companies like Philips, Fred Segal, Motorola, Sony, Kenneth Cole and Yahoo are represented.

The gimme culture of Hollywood - where celebrities commonly expect and get things free - has morphed and spread at this quintessentially low-budget festival, taking guilt-tinged greed to an altogether new level. During the festival it has become common to see not just celebrities, but also agents, directors, producers and even members of the news media walking around with huge bags of free items. People line up at the post office to ship large, identical gifting boxes home.

On the first day of the festival, the William Morris agent Cassian Elwes could be seen with several bags stuffed with free merchandise at the entrance to the main gifting complex, called the Village at the Lift. This week cast members from the HBO series "Entourage" toured the Fred Segal "store" (nothing there is for sale), collecting jeans, shoes and whatever else struck their fancy, while the rap star Ludacris stopped by the William Morris chalet to get his free boots and cellphone.

"People who are coming to the store are being introduced to the brand," said Mary Filar, marketing director for the upscale Fred Segal department store, which is here for the second year in a row. "It's not about the swag, it's about education."

Companies hope the giveaway will help them establish relationships with celebrities and influential tastemakers, though the broad swath of people being gifted at Sundance made it impossible for representatives to say whether the practice was having the desired effect.

"Pamela Anderson, she picked G-strings; Carmen Electra preferred lace bras," said Heather Patt, a spokeswoman for Le Mystere lingerie at the Fred Segal store, when asked about the ploy. Near her booth, another stylist was giving away $600 Walter tweed overcoats. "Everyone is very appreciative, though I'm sure it's a little overwhelming," Ms. Patt said. "For us it's great brand exposure."

Nonetheless, walking off with a haul of free stuff has made some people feel uncomfortable. "It's like nothing I've ever seen," said an entertainment editor for a women's magazine, who declined to be identified because she was embarrassed by having taken the gifts. "I've seen it for celebrities, but I've never seen it for lowly members of the press. You're greeted by a 24-year-old saying, 'Hi, what's your bra size?' It made me feel revolting."

Not everyone felt such pangs, however, particularly celebrities accustomed to the freebie culture. "We've had a lot of people come in and say, 'I want a plasma,' " said Nichole Woodcock, a representative for the Philips lounge at the festival, referring to the flat-screen plasma television sets that adorn the suite. "But we're used to it. It's our second year here, so we're used to people expecting a lot." She paused, then added: "Sometimes people expect a little much. But that's what Sundance is all about."

As is usually the case, by midweek a number of movies had been bought for distribution. After the bidding war over "Hustle and Flow," which sold for $9 million to Paramount, several other films sparked strong bids.

Harvey Weinstein, the co-chairman of Miramax Films, flew into town on Sunday and quickly closed a $7.5 million deal for "The Matador," which stars Pierce Brosnan as a hired killer. The studio chief had bid on "Hustle and Flow" and lost, but seemed determined to be part of the Sundance action. Mr. Weinstein also pre-emptively bought a horror film called "Wolf Creek" for $3 million just ahead of the festival. Many wondered how Mr. Weinstein, who is in final negotiations to terminate his contract with the Walt Disney Company, could be bidding on movies if he were leaving Miramax, which is owned by Disney. A company spokesman declined to comment, but a Miramax executive said that Mr. Weinstein would try to take the Sundance movies with him if and when he leaves the company.

Warner Independent Pictures, the art-house arm of the major studio, bought "The Emperor's Journey," an emotional documentary about emperor penguins fighting their way through ice to their breeding ground, for about $1 million. Some audience members said the film moved them to tears.

Universal's specialty arm, Focus Features, paid $1.5 million for the heart-warming drama "On a Clear Day," about an unemployed Scottish shipyard worker who decides to swim the English Channel. Meanwhile, Lions Gate bought Mr. Slade's "Hard Candy," a taut thriller about a young girl who tortures a suspected child molester, for $2 million. It features a castration scene that had people buzzing. The company also bought "Rize," a documentary about youths in South Central Los Angeles and their latest form of exuberant street dancing, called krumping. The studio paid about $500,000, an executive said.

Paramount Classics acquired a movie from the rival Slamdance Festival, "Mad Hot Ballroom," a documentary about New York adolescents learning ballroom dancing, for $2.7 million.

Another movie attracting interest from distributors and enthusiasm from audiences is "The Squid and the Whale," a wry, touching story about a family of intellectuals in Park Slope, Brooklyn, going through divorce in the 1980's. Jeff Daniels plays the writing-professor father, Laura Linney is the writer-mother, and Jesse Eisenberg and Owen Kline are sons buffeted by the painful split.

The writer-director Noah Baumbach, 35, based the film on his own experience of his parents' divorce. He said that he had struggled for years to find his voice as a filmmaker after making "Kicking and Screaming" in 1995 but had an epiphany at a screening of the Louis Malle classic "Murmur of the Heart," organized by his friend Wes Anderson (a "Squid" producer).

"I thought I should deal with this moment in my life," he said after an early morning screening on Wednesday. "But it's why it took me a long time to get it done. There was a censor in me, not in a literal way, more in general, wondering what people might think and who would care - it's only my story. Letting go of that censor was really important; personally, it was a breakthrough."

Mr. Baumbach's mother, Georgia Brown, was a film critic for The Village Voice, and his father, Jonathan, is a film critic and novelist who teaches at Brooklyn College. Neither parent, as portrayed in the film, is particularly sympathetic. Mr. Baumbach said it was all right with his real-life parents "because they're writers."

The director had Mr. Daniels borrow some of Jonathan Baumbach's clothes for his wardrobe. "I liked to use things that connected me to that time, in a Proustian way," he said.

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"You feel a mountain of guilt. You feel immoral."

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It made me feel revolting."

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