Traveling with all its quirks, white women in puffers behind large glasses, ski bums, a homeless man begging alongside the highway near Boston’s South Station as I head to Logan Airport, where a plane will take me to Salt Lake City. From there to Park City for the Sundance Film Festival.

In Logan all the early morning motions of taking off my shoes, security snapping my photo as they scan my ID, finally passing the Buffalo Wild Wings where above the slow bar of laptop workers CNN headlines read that 500+ illegals were arrested yesterday on a Thursday.

On the jet bridge, funneling onto the flight, an older Indian couple stops and the husband takes a photo of his wife in front of the window, in front of the plane that’ll take us two thousand miles away. I never talk with them, but when we arrive I see them embrace with a young man (a son, I think). It is a warm sight.

While in the air, headed to the home of the Mormons and the momentary heartbeat of indie film, I jot down the things I’m interested in: art, community, and presentation all within one place (a tiny ski town). I want to try and capture the width of this festival, not answer questions but instead explore what a festival like this is, what it means, and what its purpose may be. I did very little research on what the festival contains. Beyond its large billboard reputation, I’m going in with as blank of an opinion that I can maintain. I’m a truffle pig, snouting around the ground in pursuit of what matters.


I Uber to the Chateau Après Ski Lodge. 
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I am staying in their dorm room. 
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Beyond being cozy and warm the bunkroom was clean and windowless, with the doorless bathrooms a few steps away from my bunk. Though I only assume it in this moment, I will sleep very thinly this next week. I will learn to love ear plugs as I hear someone emptying their stomach in the bathroom at 1am. I’ll also meet lovely people, like my bunkmate above me, a kind man who’d lived across the world yet has now parked in Philadelphia. I’ll also meet characters, like Mike, the first person I speak to in the dormitory.

He seems to be in his early sixties. The top half of his head is swollen so one of his eyes is always partly squinting. He seems to be a veteran of the festival. And his outfits corroborate, he’s always in leather pants – I’ve never known someone who owns so many pairs of leather pants. He tells me he is from LA and that he dislikes digital magazines. So I pass him one of our stickers. Overall he’s nice, yet the moment he drops his fur coat, the dorm room is awash in pungent body odor. It makes conversing tough.

At night, I make my way to the nice hotel where the festival’s headquarters is located to purchase their printed catalog. I pass people chatting in the lobby beneath the TV showing migrants being loaded onto military planes to the gift store where I’m told that they didn’t print catalogs this year. I suppose I can’t blame them, print is expensive, digital cheap and less hassle, yet less fun too. I look at the forty-dollar t-shirts and the collectible poster priced at one hundred. I leave empty handed.

On the way back, I stop at a small brewery and overhear a group of LA skiers about to fly home. They are friends and they talk about their habits, work, and the wake of the LA fires. Their cadence reminds me of the Bay Area, of home.

Leaving there after a few beers, I swing by a ramen shop for dinner and am greeted with a short line. Instead of disgruntled waiting, I’m swept into conversation with two couples. Anthony and Shannon are actors from LA, here for the premiere of an episodic that Shannon acted in, Chasers. B and W are from Florida, yet also live in Hawaii. Shannon and B are from the same home town in Florida. A small world, we all agree.

Soon we are each ushered to our seats. We say goodbye. I’m seated last and I find out that we’ve all been seated beside each other. So, my dinner of one grows into a lively meal of five, full of stories in a warm packed ramen house. B and W met on eHarmony, Shannon and Anthony met over online acting classes during the pandemic, and I am just an individual. Conversation drifts from the tall tales that I never know if I should believe or not, but I always do because they’re so fun: leaving home at 13 with just clothes on back and a pocket of cash, owning twenty-six boats, having 100k cash for…purchases.

Beyond regaling, conversation stoops on tender subjects that I love: the value of our time, the worth of being genuine, the power of sobriety. Human interaction is highly valued, the table is alight with the simple joy of sharing and experiencing what one stranger can offer another.

I walk back with Shannon and Anthony until I peel off for my lodge. I mention that we should hangout over this week, while we’re all here. They agree, and I do catch up with them later on a busy morning in a café.

Late that night around the communal fireplace in the lodge, I meet a man from Germany named Long. He works in commercials and wants to break into feature films. To do so, he asked ChatGPT for a twelve-month guide to get into film. It told him to fly from Berlin to Utah for this festival. So, he did. I said it was nice to meet him because it was, and then I headed to bed.
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I wake up to heavy snow. Travel’s excitement stirs within me as I leave the lodge to get groceries.

As I walk, a Sundance volunteer walks beside me. He’s filming every step he takes on his phone. Waiting at a crosswalk, a car of two skiers goes by. One gives a thumbs up, the other yells, “STOP RECORDING!” The volunteer doesn’t react, maybe he doesn’t notice. The light changes and we walk.

I poke around and begin to recognize the overlapping communities within this town. Skiers sleep early and wake early. Movie heads stay up late and wake up late. They stick out in their own ways, skiers sometimes smug wrapped in snow appropriate gear. LA-ites, doe-eyed and often underdressed, noticeably cold. And in the mix of them all are the locals, who gaze upon with dismiss, boredom, or light disgust.

In Walgreens as I buy ear plugs to help sleep, I join the waitlist for a documentary about the Ukraine War, Mr. Nobody Against Putin, and it says I’m position 268. I give up hopes of seeing it and I prepare to head to Main Street.


Main Street is completely grayed in heavy snowfall yet still filled with smiling, chatting people. Yet an absurdity begins to rise between the string lights that sway over the streets and the squat frontier-like architecture. It’s something to do with the folk band playing under a small tent that’s been packed with portable heaters. I catch up with the manager there, and he says they’re local. They drove in from about an hour and a half away to play. They’re called The Last Wild Buffalo. They sound great. Sundance loves folk music, but I get distracted. Beside them is a new Acura with the Sundance logo and a sign that says, “Sundance Film Festival 2025, Acura Official Vehicle”. I find my eyes flicking between the two sights.
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I walk farther up Main Street and chat with a representative from an environmental organization that operates in the area. He’s cold on the street in the snowfall beneath an umbrella, seeking donations for their cause. A contingent of mounted Park City Police clop past us as we chat. He wants to stay anonymous, yet I ask him why he’s come to Sundance. He says he’s here, along with other organizations, due to the influx of people. He doesn’t have any interest in the festival, what he knows is that more people equal more donations. Yet, he’s wrong. He mentions their daily membership sales are below average, even with all these people. He suspects everyone’s guard is up since everyone is trying to sell things. I agree and I give him an UDD3R sticker and thank him for his time.

I make another round on Main Street, before meeting some friends. I notice that huge companies have arrived alongside all the festival goers. Beyond strategically placed Acuras, there is the Adobe Acrobat House, United Bar, a Dropbox Lounge, an Audible building. These companies have transformed local establishments, masking over the exterior and interior and becoming hubs for informative yet inherently promotional events. At the end of the block, I find The Chase Sapphire Lounge – a completely cocooned building, clad in crystalline sapphire plastic, alight in blue light.

I approach the door on the coattails of a film team being funneled inside, yet I freeze before just brushing past. The security asks me if I’m part of the team, I say no. They say I can’t get in, and I ask if they would’ve let me in if I said yes. They tell me no, but to come back for a party at eight. In moments like this, I wish that I’m a better liar. I leave.

I find our columnist Joel and friend and screenwriter Jacob in the basement of Flannagan’s Pub. A small 3-piece slow rock band, Please Ask for Paul, plays in the corner. We get a round and nestle onto the end of the unfortunately closed shuffleboard. The place is buzzing, red-faced skiers and chatting movie heads. A pack of bros beside us swipe on dating apps. We listen to the music for some time, it’s pleasant and people seem excited to be here. Supposedly Conan had a recent pint in this basement pub. We move along for an early dinner and shortly after call it a night.

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The crowd is packed in, and people chatter in the buzzing morning energy of loving movies – there’s a genuine want to be here. We watch a feature film, Sunfish (& Other Stories on Green Lake). It is a pleasant movie about a lake in northern Michigan, and the memories and moments people have tied to it. It leaves me with a warm feeling. The director, Sierra Falconer, mentions that it was her master’s thesis project. Largely a labor of love, it was seemingly shot with a skeleton crew and ambition. And it worked, here they were showcasing it at Sundance.

After the film, we eat lunch in the deli of a grocery store and talk about our Letterboxd reviews for the film. We’re among the first 10 people to review it, it feels fun to be part of something new. We part ways and I return to Main Street to walk about.

Though I don’t know it at the moment, Hal & Harper, a television series, is premiering as I walk to Main Street. A few days after the festival I catch up with the show’s Producer, Clementine Quittner, and chat with her about her experience at Sundance. Here’s our conversation:
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Arriving on Main Street, the thin ski town avenue is again clamored by festival goers. Someone passing me says, “I heard United has the best bar.”
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Women glammed up and in small dresses cross the street in subfreezing weather. A man passes me with a dog on his shoulder. Someone promotes a movie by passing off a foam tooth with a QR code on it. I ask them, is the movie about teeth? They say, yes.

I get in line for a back-to-back panel with the Onyx Collective and Questlove, about his new documentary, Sly Lives (AKA the Burden of Black Genius). This is followed by the writer and cast of a new show Deli Boys. Both are airing on Hulu, who also moderates the panels.

The lobby is a cozy café. The mounted head of an elk sits above couches and tables and an old wooden bar that sells five-dollar coffee and seven-dollar croissants. Some people work on laptops, other sit legs crossed with two phones, some chat, one lady is asleep on the couch. Over a shoulder, I see someone post an Instagram story of themselves in the Chase Sapphire Lounge, the caption: it’s going off in the Chase Sapphire Lounge.

I mosey around and start chatting with people. I meet actors who love the environment and cinema, I meet people who both love their work in the industry and rounding the conversation back to themselves. I connect on Instagram with someone and they pass me their phone, their For You page is open and full of oiled-up, bikini-clad muscle mommies. It’s reassuring that I’m in a room of just people.

The panel itself is fun, set on a stage to look sleek techy, that quasi-industrial café minimalism. There’s a TV where an AI transcribes the live speech into text. It gets most right but a good sum wrong, it like us is always learning. Questlove and Joseph Patel have interesting remarks about their creative process, yet behind it all I can’t get past this being a needed PR hoop. I try to imagine the quantity of these events someone like Questlove has attended. Is there true joy in discussing creative process to a Hulu sponsored interviewer, or is this stale and needed?

Further, there’s a palpable difference when Questlove leaves, and half the room does, and the second panel follows in. It’s the writer and cast of an upcoming show, Deli Boys. They are through the roof to be here, they mention it frequently as they riff between each other, laughing and telling stories on stage. I recognize this is still a PR hoop that must be leapt through, yet their chemistry and seeming genuine joy make me interested in their show. I imagine this is one of their first panels like this, especially at a renowned event like Sundance. Does that joy end up wearing off? At what point does this truly become a dry PR repetition? I assume many in this room would want to know the stale feeling of being asked too many questions about their art on stage. The panel ends, I say goodbye to the people I met, and I move along.

Strolling Main Street, I feel much more of LA. There aren’t folk bands playing, but instead on the balcony of Annex Burger, a buffalo burger shop, there is a DJ playing house music to a lightly fist pumping passing crowd. An art studio is selling large mural-esque paintings of Kobe with angel wings, others with Tupac Shakur. They face the street on a low patio, beckoning customers. I break off onto a side street and find a large tented long hall: The Acura Energy House.

I get ID’d and wristbanded then I step into an unheated dancefloor. A folk rock duo is playing and my eyes are drawn away from the stage to a large chrome Acura. It’s the centerpiece of the room. I chat with a woman in an equally chrome jacket beside the car. I find out she has no relation to the car but is solely cold and moving to stay warm. I go to the bar and smile as I review the menu. Every drink’s name is related to Acura. Yet the cocktails are five dollars, so I decide on a whiskey-based drink, the Acura V-Tech Smash. When I order, the bartender yells “SMASH” and she flips the device toward me to pay. I laugh, unsure if she chose to yell that or if she has to. I pay and then mosey around the venue as the folk duo plays a cover of “One of Us”.
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This is meant to be a fun place, it’s clear. Some furniture is white blocks and ice themed. There’s a diorama dedicated to an animation studio that Acura opened, their bid into the film world. People seem happy. Everywhere I look I see the Acura logo. There are large screens showcasing Acuras, their love for film, and all the previous musical artists that have played at the Acura Energy House. Is this article any different? Where is the line between product and advertisement? As I’m taking notes, a rep leads a small group of people through the space, informing them how they’ll transform the Acura Energy House tonight for their private event. More bars for more drinks seems to be the gist of the change.

I finish my Acura V-Tech Smash and head out. I pass the Chase Sapphire Lounge, and it’s closed. I gaze longingly through the window.
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I spend time in the morning at the continental breakfast, which boils down to PB&Js, peaches, and orange juice, looking out the window and listening to people talk. Outside, there’s a snowed over dog park, which is shockingly active. Beside a Great Dane in a sweater is a Corgi bursting across the snow playing catch. A dad airs out his toddler’s bare ass after I assume he changed his diaper. I check the weather and its 16 degrees outside, but the kid looks happy.

Multiple people come in late for breakfast and the old kind host, who will eat lunch and watch Fox News in the lobby throughout the day, reluctantly supplies them with food. A group of white people from Brooklyn beside me compare rich people to Alzheimer’s patients. A friend of mine Leo stops in for a quick cup of coffee, he says this place is like Disneyland for filmmakers as he paws through a recently cracked book. He leaves.

I meander across the street to the Library Venue. The dog park is beside it and there’s a small hill where a bin of city owned sleds sits. Kids and adults are sledding down the hill. There are lots of smiles. I join and remember why sledding is such simple fun as I skid across the snow.
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Beside the entrance is a white sedan Acura, stamped with Official Vehicle decal. I mull around and start to talk to people. I meet a representative from the Chase Sapphire Lounge, he’s excited to see an upcoming movie. He tells me to come by the lounge tomorrow and he can show me around and give me a custom cowboy hat that has Chase Sapphire Lounge embroidered on the side. It’s for a promotional event they’re having. I mention that I’m very interested, yet after we exchange info I realize I can’t make the time. I lament, the Chase Sapphire Lounge escapes me again.
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That night I meet up with some friends and we attend a dumpling party. There are free dumplings and drinks, though they’ve ran out of beer. There are long tables and a large dance floor where one tall sweating man cuts it up consistently for the entire time that we’re attending. I wonder if he’s paid to be out there dancing, or if he just loves getting down.

After, we walk to MainStreet and pit stop at 7-11 for cigarettes before slipping into the Adobe House. They’re having a farewell party though the festival is only halfway over. The corporate party is three stories. It has free drinks, promotional thermoses and t-shirts, and is blaring rap music as waiters work the floor passing out shrimp, chicken, and cookies. I scoop up everything I can, and even cut a rug on the dance floor, yet at 10pm the lights promptly flood on.

Minutes later as we gather our belongings and begin to head for the door, waiting to funnel down the steps, we’re informed that Adobe’s graciousness does not extend beyond 10:03PM. We’re approached by staff and told, “Thank you for coming, but you absolutely have to leave now.”
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We look around at the other party guests who pick up their things, chatting and lingering. We wonder why we made such deplorable guests.
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Over breakfast out the window in the dawn light, someone across the street at the Library Venue cleans off the sponsored Acura. They warm it up and eventually drive it away. I finish my coffee and then catch up with my friend, Long. He’s returning to Berlin today, and I want to know his thoughts on the festival.
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After, I strike off for Main Street. I’m meeting up with Shannon and Anthony. Days, which felt like weeks, have passed since we’d met in line for ramen. How has the festival treated them?

Moving up Main Street, the once-lively avenue is now washed out by the wide white sides of lorry vans. Car traffic has returned. Inside the United Bar, a sizable crew is dismantling bars, tables, lights, and sound systems. The plastered United sign that had shaded the windows is halfway torn off. The street, while still busy, is exhausting the footprint of these companies, swiftly and with nearly half the festival remaining.
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I find Shannon and Anthony in a busy café. We sit down to talk. The audio in this interview is noisy, yet their voices are clear. It gives a good impression of the buzz in this small ski town.
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Friends and I see Atropia in the morning. It’s a satire about American militarism and entertainment, and it’s done quite well.
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I talk with the security at the venue. A local company does the security for the whole festival, and people have driven in from Idaho for the gig. They each work ten days straight, sixteen to nineteen hours a day. The security guard mentions that he likes the work and that the pay isn’t bad. He’s come back for multiple years now.

As I’m there a towny brushes past and asks the security guard, when is this over? Sunday, he says. She leaves and he remarks with a smile that some people just don’t like this.

I return to Main Street and the energy has noticeably simmered. The Chase Sapphire Lounge is gone. The exterior of a cozy almost Bavarian like hall has returned. The interior of the restaurant, now largely visible through uncovered windows, needs to be cleaned and furniture rearranged.
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Yet even with the cooling energy, a Sundance volunteer remarks to me that he thinks it’s wonderful how many people come from all over the country, even the world to this event. I agree, it truly is. The multicultural presence is palpable looking around the street, talking with people in lines. It’s warming that cinema can bring people together like this.

But, it can also be felt spreading thin. This is still a small town tucked away in Utah that the film industry impresses itself upon. And this culture leaves its marks – there are multiple framed Banksys around the town on the sides of buildings and in alleys. At the same time, the art studio that sold paintings of an angelic Kobe Bryant on their front patio has replaced him with equally grand paintings of Trump standing, fist raised post-assassination attempt. How this town actually exists seems to be bubbling back up, as the flash dominance of film and money slips away.
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I spend my morning at a panel. It’s a live podcast recording for Visitations hosted by Elijah Wood and Daniel Noah. They’re chatting with Celine Song, who wrote and directed Past Lives.

Some ideas really resonate with me. Song mentions that everything she writes, a wooden donkey must understand commenting on the often-thin value of writing that sounds or acts smart. She talks of Camus and says, “Every day you choose to be alive, you choose to be alive.” She strikes that up as profound. Every day we choose to be alive. We should love that.

Elijah Wood has an endearing genuine laugh as Song explains her theory of movies being like food. Sometimes a movie is vegetables, it’s technically good for you as an artist but not that wowing. Sometimes they’re candy, hollow on nutrients yet popping. Sometimes they’re steak and potatoes, hearty and resting with you for a while. It’s an interesting way to classify movies beyond genre or director or any more familiar avenue.

Around sunset I go for a run. I follow the snowed over trail alongside the river and am soon leaving town. The tough desert land is wrapped in winter, comfortably resting until Spring’s heat. It’s dim, as I run in the shadow of the mountain behind me. Far ahead, beyond the shadow, is peak after peak, blanketed in the soft sunset red that I always wish would linger longer. Already the color fades as I stare into the rolling landscape, farther than I could ever run. The world feels massive yet inviting. Its frozen openness beckons possibility. As I hoof along, I’m filled with that rare fleeting feeling, what can’t I do?
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I see a movie with my friend and bunkmate that night. Dead Lover is absurd and fresh, a wonderfully unique, weird watch. I end the night at a bar with friends, we talk. Some of us knew each other before coming here, some of us met here. Yet, it’s clear that we’re happy to be together.
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The festival has two quiet days remaining and I’m leaving today. A drifter checks into the ski lodge and starts chatting me up after breakfast. He talks at me a lot, and I love to listen when people open up, so I nod him on and throw in short responses here or there.

He says everyone always asks him what he wants to do with his life, and that he doesn’t know. He works at a grocery store, and he likes warehouse work because he doesn’t have to speak to people. Yet, here is chatting my ear off. He bought 10 movie tickets for the next two days ($350) and he plans to watch movies back-to-back-to-back. I say it’s a good plan. He nods, then he tells me he took a limo here not knowing how expensive it would be. It put him back $150 and he asked the driver if it was okay that he didn’t tip since it was so expensive, supposedly the driver said yes. He takes a moment and looks out the window at the frozen dog park, he says he’s going to report the limo as bank fraud because it was too damn expensive.

After a pause, he says he wants to see a Jazz game in Salt Lake City while he’s here. And that he was recently in New Orleans seeing a Pelicans game. We remark how funny it is that Salt Lake got New Orleans’ old Jazz team and decided to keep the name; there’s no jazz in Utah.

I can’t help but wonder why this man is here. Yet, is his aimlessness any different from my interest? Everyone here is looking for something. Is it worse to be looking without something in mind? He tells me he’s going to play chess, and he leaves.

Soon I’m out the door, I Uber to Salt Lake, get In&Out with a few friends and marvel at the vacuous layout of Salt Lake, a true American city of five lane avenues, made by cars made for cars. Before long, I’m in the airport for my redeye to Boston wearing my In&Out hat. And then I’m in the air. I fall asleep somewhere in the cold wind above the Rockies.
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