Main Street is chaotic as usual as we make our way to the midnight screening of The Perfect Host. The drunken masses are making their way to the first round of parties. “I hate Sundance,” the woman in front of us says to someone on her cell phone. Inside the Egyptian Theater, we are treated to cookies and coffee and everyone receives a The Perfect Host book of etiquette. This looks promising.
As the perfect host, David Hyde Pierce shines. When he welcomes a fugitive into his home, the tables turn quickly as Pierce is revealed to be more psychotic than the man who has threatened him. A “dinner party” full of imaginary guests and unusual torture emerges and the majority of the film is quite entertaining. Unfortunately, things take a rather disappointing turn and the ending is a bit baffling. Despite this, we enjoy the performances. David Hyde Pierce is friendly at the Q & A and even stays to shake hands with people in the audience. Another star of the evening: our bus driver, who rushes us back to our hotel in a record time of 10 minutes.
It’s Sunday and our first film, The Runaways, is not until the evening. It seems to be a popular choice with the crowds surrounding the Eccles Theatre, hoping to get a glimpse of Kristen Stewart, Dakota Fanning and Joan Jett. The film, based on the book by lead singer Cherie Currie, follows the brief career of the band. It is a standard rock biopic full of sex, drugs and well, you know the rest. The Q & A is more interesting than the film and we listen to Joan Jett talk about the difficulties that women in music are still facing. Cherie Currie breaks down crying and says that Dakota Fanning (who portrays her in the lead role) is the best actress she has ever seen. We like Joan Jett’s sparkly red pants and wish we could see her play at one of the parties later. But there is another film to catch.
We stay at Eccles for the world premier of The Killer Inside Me, starring Casey Affleck as a 1950s-era police officer with a murderous dark side. After a promising opening montage of 50’s Noir graphic treatment, it starts to become clear that the film is less about noir and kitsch, but instead focuses on ultra-violence and sex. One of the most disturbing parts of this film is seeing Affleck’s character beat the piss out of Kate Hudson and Jessica Alba in graphic detail. Also disturbing is Affleck’s performance, which lacks any depth – although some would argue that is par for the Affleck family course. The film is based on a novel and we think it is a remake of a previous version. However, during the Q & A, Director Michael Winterbottom, sets things straight by saying he never saw the first film. A woman breaks Sundance ass-kissing protocol by yelling out that the film is completely inappropriate with its violence toward woman and should have never been accepted into the festival. Winterbottom is a Sundance favorite, though, and he is also screening his film, The Shock Doctrine, a documentary about violence in our society. Coincidence? We think not. At the restrooms after the screening, someone says, “I think everyone is going in here to vomit.” Violence aside, The Killer Inside Me, is just not a great film, though it makes for some interesting discussion. We leave the theatre chatting with strangers, which is one of the fun parts of the festival. Everyone here loves film and can talk about it for hours.
This article appears in Jan 20-26, 2010.