By Ray Pride Pride@moviecitynews.com
Glimpsing morning in America: a Sundance inauguration-watching breakfast (content)
The producers of Dirt, with the collaboration of producer’s rep Jeff Dowd and publicist Mickey Cottrell and convened an inauguration-watching breakfast on Main Street near the Egyptian Theater. The streets of Park City have been uncommonly quiet this Sundance and never more so than this morning. Figures scurry toward the indoor glow of plasma screens. There’s a legend that when Little Ricky was born on “I Love Lucy” on January 19, 1953, cities came to a standstill. Traffic silent. And come the commercial break? America’s water systems collectively failed when everyone ran to the bathroom at the same time. Other waterworks expected today…
[MORE IMAGES AND STORIES FROM THE EVENT AT THE JUMP.]
Producer Albert Berger (Election, Little Miss Sunshine) takes questions from the New York Times’ David Carr…
… who remains the fierce ideal of an observant beat reporter. This is cherry atop topping: to glimpse a journalistic hero at stalk in the wild.
Taking a record of taking a picture while history is made.
And framing a frame of fame.
Come to think of it, Jeff Dowd (with his “better half” Julia Ransom) is a hero, too, for all his efforts to get independent filmmakers’ visions into the world. Then there’s The Big Lebowski…
And a nod to man of taste Mickey Cottrell and behind-the-scenes Sarah Eaton from Sundance Channel.
The room starts to clear. On the Capitol steps, the President and Vice-President await the departure of ex-president Bush’s helicopter. The wait goes on and on. When it takes to the sky, the shot choice is a jaw-dropper, the same sort of iconic image that is Roland Emmerich’s one great strength: a long shot that is horizontally composed; the helicopter moves behind the dome of the Capitol and emerges into the misty winter morning. Then: a cut to a camera on the Washington Monument. A veteran producer suggests that this moment feels like science fiction. The work begins. No, I have to say, science-fiction is Arnold Schwarzenegger as the incompetent governor of California; this is fact, one set of brutal facts exchanged for hopeful ones.
I, Barack Hussein Obama…
