Everyone Has A Story: Four decades of the Sundance Film Festival in Utah

Photo: Eugene Hernandez opens Everyone Has A Story

PARK CITY, Utah — During the film festival, most opening screens displayed the quote by Robert Redford: “Everyone has a story.” Fittingly, this quote was the title of one of the final Sundance events in Park City.

The Marquis was chosen as the location for this event, primarily because during the early days of the festival the basement served as the press offices for the Sundance Film Festival. Heather Mason told me about working down there as a volunteer. While the programmers of the Sundance Film Festival do not consciously choose a theme for the year, many films this year seemed to focus on human relationships, an appropriate theme for the final year in Park City.

Eugene Hernandez started off the event, but Amy Redford set the tone with an origin story that her dad once told her “with great intention, as is the case in the lessons of oral tradition.”

The Marquis was packed with both people who had just experienced their first Sundance Film Festival and those who had been there from the early years, like the film critic Sean Means, who wore his beanie from the 2006 movie Half Nelson. Attendees heard stories of the disastrous attempt to use an empty bus as the box office in 1981, which resulted in the staff freezing; the doubling of attendance each year until the breakthrough with distributors; and exhibitors at the premiere of sex, lies and videotape in 1989.

The filmmakers and Sundance leaders also told of last-minute film deliveries, which happened despite birds flying into airplane windshields, blizzards, and runway pickups by volunteer drivers to get the film to the theater in time. They thanked their staff and Director, Emeritus of the Sundance Film Festival, John Cooper, and former Managing Director, Sarah Pearce. She echoed the sentiment heard from many in attendance, “I’m heartbroken.” She recalled a quote from Bob though, “When you have the good fortune to have success in your life, I’ve always thought, is precisely the time to go and reinvent yourself.”

John Cooper reminded everyone about the Women’s March, and all the theaters that were added over the years. They highlighted events such as the Eccles Center losing power on opening night, rows of seats collapsing in the Prospector Theater, and a large Mormon contingent walking out of the premiere of Four Weddings and a Funeral because they didn’t like the language in the opening scene.

They thanked local resident, Kevin Kane, who as Technical Production Manager for the Sundance Institute and Sundance Film Festival, has been pulling off miracles to keep the festival going for over a decade, including turning a box store, Sports Authority, into The Ray Theatre. For this year’s Award Ceremony, Kevin Kane turned the original lit up letters of Sports Authority into a continuously changing light show of letters and words that spelled Hot Artistry Soup. Other creations decorated The Marquis.

Everyone has a story and many more were shared as this final, big event of the Sundance Film Festival wrapped up on Main Street. Volunteers, staff, producers, actors, filmmakers, writers, composers, and moviegoers all chimed in, but the origin story told by Amy Redford was a great place to start and is a good way to end:

“When my dad was young, he cherished his time at his grandfather’s house in Austin, Texas. And that house was a feat of engineering. It stands to this day, built into the rock by the lake. A lot of that rock work you’ll see represented at the Sundance Mountain Resort. Tot did this with the help of one single man. And one day when my dad was about six years old, he walked out of the door, and this man was digging this trench outside of the house. And he looked at my dad and he called to him, and he said ‘Freeze.’

“Then, he said, ‘Bobby, we are going to play a game.’ My dad, being a playful soul from the beginning, was happy to play along, determined to win, and he froze. The man said, ‘In order to win the game, you’ll have to keep looking into my eyes and freeze like a statue. And if I reach you and you don’t move, you win. But you have to look into my eyes.’ When the man finally reached my dad, he took his shovel and severed a coral snake that was curled between my dad’s feet and about to spread. That man saved my dad’s life.

“Without that man there is no Dad. Without Dad there is no Sundance Resort or the Institute or any of the films he made that we’ve come to love that made his vision possible. That man was a Mexican immigrant.”

Her grandfather had been told to fire that man before that, but he refused. “That choice was a singular decision that helped my dad do his part to change the world, to protect the land, to amplify the storytellers who shared their work with us over the last 10 days,” Amy Redford continued. “That story of symbiosis is not only my dad’s story, but the story of the rich tapestry of this country. It is what made my dad such a passionate American. So many of us in this room make our voices heard through our work. It’s also time to call your tribe. It’s time for action to support the immigrant and refugee communities whose contributions will change our course for the better.”