Sundance Day 5: Kirsten Dunst, Another Premiere, an NPR Wet Dream, and more

Come on – I had to.

By day 5 I was more into the swing of things. One constant in my Sundance experience is that I usually had no prior knowledge of what I would be shooting from day to day. Once you know this, you accept it, and it doesn’t stress you out anymore. The first assignment of day 5 was to follow my already familiar video crew on another “My Premiere” shoot – this time with brother directing team of David and Nathan Zellner. The Austin-based brothers were premiering their new movie KID-THING (their second at Sundance), starring first-timer 12-year-old actress Sydney Aguirre. Instead of meeting the directors at a restaurant or a condo, this time the filmmakers came to the Sundance Channel HQ to do some interviews before we would give them a ride to the premiere. Just that morning, the New York Times ran a piece on the brothers, and they were both excited and nervous to present their new feature at the festival. In many ways, they personify what Sundance is meant to be about – even after some initial success they didn’t head off to Hollywood but instead chose to stay in their native Austin and keep producing shorts and features locally, often with the help of their father, who provided garage space and set construction skills.

The directors David Zellner (left), Nathan Zellner, and their star, Sydney Aguirre

Yep, she's a kid 🙂

By this time I’d met my share of actors/filmmakers who’d been on the film festival ride a few times – a little jaded, a little too cool for school. So it was refreshing to meet Sydney, a kid who not only attending a film festival for the first time, but acting in a feature for the first time – a film that features her pretty exclusively. She was enjoying everything — the travel, the celebrities, the interviews, the swag — in a wide-eyed way. She’s also just getting into photography, so I let her try out my Fuji X100. And struck a flattering pose:

Mac and cheese was for lunch.

There was some time to kill before we would head off to the premiere, so I went next door to see what was up in the studio. Oh, it was just Kirsten Dunst and Lizzy Caplan, talking about their Sundance feature, The Bachelorette.

LLLLLLLLLLLLLAAAAADIES.

Before too long it was time to head to the premiere, at the Prospetor Square Theater.

David and Nathan’s dad was there to greet us with tickets.

It’s a funny transition – hanging out with people for an hour and getting to know them in a rather casual environment, taking some candid photos, and then a few minutes later getting to the theater and suddenly doing the whole red carpet thing.

Sydney, who has a Hispanic background but doesn’t speak much Spanish, was interviewed by a hilarious mugging Univision reporter who asked every question in a rapid-fire way, first in Spanish then immediately in English.

Once again, I would have loved to stay and watch the film but as usual the theater was completely sold out. So we headed back to HQ for a quick break before returning to cover the aftermath. The film seemed pretty well-received, and even the the Q and A was enjoyable, largely because it was unexpectedly dominated by a 6 year-old boy in the audience who kept asking about the character’s motivations, with many follow-ups.

Here’s the final My Premiere video piece from this day:

Back to HQ, which was hosting it’s daily happy hour.

And, for some reason, David Blaine was doing card tricks at the bar.

I was a foot away and still didn’t see when he stole a woman’s watch. Seriously amazing.

So by early evening, it had already been a pretty solid day. Then I got my next assignment – covering the premiere party for the cast and producers of “Sleepwalk With Me”, the film version of the one man show by Mike Birbiglia, whom I’d heard many times on This American Life. The party was being held at Bing Bar, a Main St locale distinguished by having about 10 burly bouncers outside seemingly at all times. For the first time in my life, I was “on the list.” Joining me at the party was Celia, a Sundance web producer who normally didn’t get to venture out on these events, who tonight was tasked with grabbing a video interview with Birbiglia. After breaching the phalanx of bouncers, we were pleased to find Bing Bar to be pleasant, non-douchey, and rather empty.

By this point I was pretty inured to the initial shock of seeing famous people all over (having been thrown into the deep end with Redford on my frist day), but when Marc Maron and Ira Glass walked in, I had my first and only geek-out fan moment of the week.

Ira Glass arrives. I poop my pants a little.

Ira Glass, Marc Maron, and Mike Birbiglia

Marc Maron. Check the "WTF" ring!

So after doing my duty with the “red carpet” shots, I put on my fan-hat, handed my camera to Celia and got these all-important souvenirs.

Thanks to Celia, my photog-on-the-spot.

As you can see by now, this party was a public radio listener’s wet dream, attended by the kind of people who get really excited when Alia Shawkat shows up.