Escaping Sundance
PACKING FOR SUNDANCE each year, I tote along a valuable guidebook about the history of the Sundance Festival's hometown, called "Park City Underfoot." I leave it on the coffee table of the condo, and no one ever consults it. The first draft of history is more urgent. Who needs backstory when there's a hailstorm of privileged moments. Still, there's a wealth of backstory in this mining town, not limited to the past 25 years of the festival or the last decade or so of exurban sprawl. Whenever I pass this cemetery on the edge of town, which is largely populated by children, I think of the movies and hopes and careers that have been interred at festivals past: call this portrait "Sundance Class of '96."
Joseph Smith's wilderness is easier to escape than it once was, especially on Sunday morning on the way to the Salt Lake City airport (SLC, tagged on luggage parked in foyers, mud rooms and basements nationwide).
And it's especially easy if you're being ferried by Town Car.
The largest venue, The Eccles, is also a high school auditorium. You can't smoke and you can't see the racier movies there.
The packs thin toward the last several days of the festival. Still, writers and reviewers gather in flocks to fashion consensus.
The swag shacks up and down Main Street are shuttered, the freshly stenciled logos freshly scraped off, such as Hollywood Life(less) House.
Lush, fluffy snow fell for a few hours on Saturday, as this view from inside the press office's hospitality suite.
But inside hospitality, interviews still. I have no idea who's parked in the Cowboy Seat.
A presentation for alternative distribution for Slamdance 2005's Four Eyed Monsters, with an evangelist from GenArts and a camerawoman in chiarascuro.
Earlier, I saw a satisfying composition of a newshen and her camerabear against the backdrop of the nearby hills, but didn't catch them in time: quickly, he turned his bright light on my oh-just-taking-shots-of-the-sky-doh! act.
If Hollywood is a place where you can die of encouragement, is Park City where you can languish from detours?
Or to die from a simple YOU DO NOT BELONG HERE?
Utah's not another country: the Burger King stars-'n'-stripes droop and drape here as well.
From the multiple screens of the "anterior" press tent during the closing night awards, Terrence Howard (not yet Oscar-nominated) is natty, speaking fluent Howardese.
And Chuck & Buck director and juror Miguel Arteta wears a goofy t-shirt and goofier grin.
In the din of the underpopulated after-party, critical colleague Robert Koehler and I are shouting about So Yong Kim's prize-winning mood gem In Between Days and move on to Claire Denis' L'intrus and Hou Hsiao-hsien's underrated mood piece, Millennium Mambo, when a quartet of women schooled in twirling light up one of the party's favors, streaking Hou-like neon colors across the drab confines of the tent.
Outside, across the hills, into the sky, the night is timeless.
More photos here.
Nancy Princenthal's Art in America article on the crisis in art criticism is a must-read!
For all my other activities, (the two new symphonic works I am composing, my new book and appearances at all kinds of events) you can check out my webpage www.davidamram.com under Upcoming Events and then Personal Appearances) I'll be working on my "Symphonic Variations on a Theme by Woody Guthrie" as well as planning future programs for the Renaissance Classical Orchestra, completing my new book "Nine Lives of a Musical Cat" , creating a score for a major film, as well as a bunch of other projects and appearances, and planning a series of events at Denver University, where I am Distinguished Visiting Professor, from April 11-June 4th, which will be documented by BBC in London and broadcast in English speaking countries around the world. And during my two months in Denver, I will still be able to fly to all my concerts from Denver. 
Since my insane (but joyous) schedule doesn't include enough spare time to allow me to age properly, I realize the truth in the old adage from Uzbekistan, where people often live to be 110 years old.......
My first musical mentor, Dimitri Mitropoulos, the great conductor to whose memory this concert is dedicated, always treasured his Greek heritage. 
mountain that we must climb in order to see, when we reached the top, that all these kinds of heartfelt music would make a more beautiful world for ourselves and our children.
Living in New York City I sometimes feel like I’ve lost touch with what author Greil Marcus called that “Old Weird America.” I’m thousands of miles from Wall Drug. Haven’t seen a Jackalope in well over a decade. Snipes can’t handle TV sets and boom boxes.
I wondered what you were all doing here! -Just stay away from me with your sick zoophilia- we sharks are not a bunch of perverts like you humans-
.
.
Oh, come off it you big apes. I’ve seen a lot of best of lists for 2005 movies and I have to say I’m a little shocked to see King Kong on many of them. Unless you only saw ten movies this year I can’t imagine this three hour chest thump taking the place of smaller, better films like Phil Morrison’s “Junebug” or Werner Herzog’s “Grizzly Man”.
“So then it could be a bowling ball,” I said. “I mean, wouldn’t you consider a bunch of guys who get together every Tuesday night at the local bowling alley ‘totemists?’ They cherish their bowling balls and wear matching windbreakers with their names and little bowling pins embroidered on them. Sounds like a cult to me…”
Not since chocolate and peanut butter collided to make the Reese’s Cup has a flavor combo been so highly anticipated as the Tortoise/ Bonny Prince Billy recording, The Brave and the Bold.
The overall effect of Azerrad’s meticulous attention to detail is to thoroughly document the slow, painful creation of what was once a thriving counter-cultural underground music “scene” (although I hate that word “scene” I find there is no other). This is the club circuit that sprang up in the wake of the original mid-70’s punks; a loose affiliation of gay clubs, biker bars, youth centers, art galleries, coffee shops and roadhouses that opened their doors to the likes of Sonic Youth, Big Black, Die Kruezen, Squirrel Bait, Yo La Tengo, Fugazi, 
Uncle Tupelo and many others. Anyone who did anything musically speaking on the road during the ‘80’s or ‘90’s owes a huge debt to everyone in this book. Indeed, plenty of readers will find many of their friends’ name prominently mentioned.
“Well, good talking to you pal. Here’s where I get off,” I said, pointing at the door to my apartment building. Suddenly he made a fist and held it right up to my face. “You see that ring?” he growled. 
.
I ended up at a place called the Midtown Hotel, an anonymous and deceptively humble name for a structure grandly erected in the 1920's before the Depression and occupying a lordly overview of an upper middle class neighborhood hard on the heels of the corporate headquarters of America's largest and greatest firm. It was once a midwestern jewel, that neighborhood. That hotel was once comparable to the Commodore or the Stanhope or the Drake. It was still quite nice, at least on the outside
Returning from dinner and remanding my fresh take-home loaf of Greek bread to the tiny
In retrospect it was the lack of police concern that unnerved me and sent me running. That and the rats. I made a pretty good haul, all told, and so did Joe Sampson. On the plane out a beautiful black woman sat next to me while I shivered and sniffled. "You must be doin' somethin'," she said, "that don't sound like allergies to me." Indeed. The hotel's owner, Goldie, was found dead a few weeks later, stabbed two dozen times. Her gay 'husband,' Bob, immediately turned up missing. The money was great but it only lasted a few months. Robbing banks is a tough way to make a living.
I tried to explain my theory that the Museum of Contemporary Art might wish to consider positioning itself within the notion of contemporary art as an endeavor to which one must devote a great deal of time and energy, true, but an endeavor that was pretty much guaranteed to offer inestimable rewards. I understood this was not entirely in line with the notions of egalitarianism that were increasingly coloring American cultural life. But, I argued, this was the notion that had been behind the founding of the Art Institute in the 19th century and was part and parcel of the peculiar nature of Chicago as it developed into a major city, this emphasis on social uplift, not merely in the arts, but in all realms of urban life. I mean, the Jane Adams Hull House…I desperately cast about to better express myself. In this state of desperation I cited the Marine Corps slogan of that particular era as an example of “positive elitism” — “We are looking for a few good men!” But in uttering this slogan, my passionate speech sputtered to an inelegant close. It wasn't, I felt, so much that my ideas were disagreed with, but that I had couched them badly. The word elite, well, it just wasn't going to fly.
I showed up at 9:45 in the morning at the station, fifteen minutes before the very prompt Mr. Guy walked through the door. As it turned out, all my worries were for naught. Buddy was as kind and polite a man as anyone I've ever talked to. His life was an open book full of insider stories on those early days of Chicago blues as well as his growing up in the poor and often cruel South of the last mid-century. This is neither a man basking in his own good fortune of recent years nor a bitter warrior of the unheralded past. He is the last great ambassador of a historic time and place in our American history and has accepted the role of setting the record straight with truth and generosity. His stories were funny, tough, to the point, and sometimes a little sad.
Brandl and Bullock in Europe
This entry: “Faster Painting! Move! Move!” Part 2.
(Mark Staff Brandl and Leonard Bullock continue their debate about contemporary painting, as seen in a brace of shows in Basel, Switzerland and nearby locales in Europe.)
......
