Daily
It’s 2 p.m. and we’re surveying the loot. Allison
has a new pair of cordourys as well as a skirt, jeans, shoes
(groovy canvas converse) and glasses. The ladies at Miller
Beer gave her one of the leather belts to finish off the outfit.
Shelby has a vintage jacket, a skirt, some jeans, glasses,
shoes and the belt. Before leaving we all grab a Miller bottle
opener and lighter. Some great ‘swag’ as they call
it. Smart branding, it’s jam packed – Tracy Edmonds
is there, the cast of some film none of us have seen, the Wire
Image photographer is doing photos outside in the snow with
all the celebs, and I manage to take a shot of Eddie George
and Allison Moorer by the Millers bar before we leave.
We make it to the Wire Image office at 2:30. They have rented
out the bottom floor of a building nad turned it into
a photo studio. MAC is doing makeup there, there’s a
dj, an arcade game, some Diet Coke with Lime bags as well as
a Wire Image goodie bag the celebs are getting on the way out.
Allison has finished her photos and Shelby is just in the midst
of hers. Randall Michaelson is doing the portraits and they
look stunning. There are actors I can’t place out in
the lobby and it’s moving at a steady clip in there.
I am imagining that by the time the festival is over the Wire
Image photographers will have taken at least a million frames
this week. I don’t even see where they’re tech
guys are who actually download and post the photos on their
website. It’s a pretty polished organization. At night
they’re doing parties in the studio. We’re coming
back tonight for one.
BMI’s Dave Bills and Tracie Verlinde are at the venue – which
is across the street from Wire Image’s studio. They already
have soundcheck going, banners hung, beer being put out. We
got another shipment of Stella, thank goodness. Stella, Turning
Leaf and Diet Coke are our beverage sponsors tonight – and
were on Monday night. We have Stella mints to hand out tonight – saving
the Balance bars for Thursday. We have a gift bag for the artists
on the show tonight – Nokia cellphones, Sirius radios,
Balance bars, Mac and Cheese, Joico haircare, Levis discount
cards, Benefit cosmetics, FCUK bags, MAC product, Jaguar clocks
and hats, and much more. We can’t fit everything in the
BMI backpacks they’re getting so we have to use Albertson’s
bags to put the overflow in.
Posted by BMI's Hanna Pantle on Jan 20, 04
| 2:00 pm MST
Arrive at Park City TV, Allison Moorer is there and ready
to go. I can’t get over how in the past 8 years I’ve
been coming to Sundance how Park City TV has grown. Every year
their studio gets better and better. PCTV is the local cable
news channel that really is geared to sports and nightlife
there. A great channel, everyone at the festival watches it,
and they’re great to work with. Sacha Stroebel has been
my contact there as well as the producer and cohost of “Good
Morning Park City” since I’ve been coming. It’s
great to see her year in and out. Allison performs and sounds
amazing, nice little interview re. her performance at the BMI
Songwriters Snowball tonight. She, Shelby, Will Calhoun, Nathan
Larson and Nina Persson are all on the bill. I hope we have
a packed house – haven’t gotten as many rsvps as
we have since we brought DEVO to the festival five or six years
ago or more.
Shelby Lynne arrives with her manager and the fantastic Judi
Kerr from Capitol in tow. It’s 8 a.m. and an early morning
for everyone. We can always blame on the altitude. J
Shelby’s performance is great as well as her interview.
Afterwards we all agree to meet at 11 to start our day of visiting
some of the houses that companies have taken out, the WireImage
photo shoot then soundcheck.
By noon we’re headed to the Levis house to get the ladies
decked out for their photo shoot. Shawna from Fox news in Salt
Lake City is meeting us there to follow them around for the
9 p.m. news and also check out the house. We arrive and Shelby
and Allison go upstairs to get a quick face massage – Zirh
cosmetics is there giving them out to celebs. You can also
get a facial is you want or hand massage. I think I’d
fall asleep if I had one.
We head downstairs to the basement which is where Levis, Rayban,
Miller and Converse are at. Sheri at Levis gets the girls a
room and Mariah from Levis starts getting them outfitted. It’s
a pretty amazing sight. Two seamstresses altering jeans, making
denim skirts, adding flowers to skirts, customfitting tshirts,
putting Shelby’s name on a vintage denim jacket. It’s
a flurry of activity. I’m imagining it’s like this
at fashion shows. Mark McGrath from Sugar Ray is there as well
as a friend of his who I’ve seen in LA getting a bagful
of new clothes and shoes. I think one of the bachelors is there – although
I really don’t know why he’s at Sundance, don’t
think he has a film going and his family winery isn’t
the winery of the festival. I’m excited because Eddie
George from the Tennessee Titans just walked in sporting an
Oklahoma jersey – go Sooners – and I think of Caroline
in our Nashville office. I have to get a photo of him for her.
Shoes, jeans and sunglasses are flying around the room.
Peggy from Rayban gets Allison lined up with a great pair
of glasses before her interview with Fox, then it’s Shelby’s
turn. She must see it all up here at this house. At night they’re
having parties for films, artists, etc… There is a surprise
birthday party for ?uestlove from The Roots tonight. They’re
playing Wednesday night at a private party.
Posted by BMI's Hanna Pantle on Jan 20, 04
| 11:35 am MST
We arrive at Linda Livingston and Doreen Ringer Ross’s
condo early to help out. Balance bars in tow. Tracie Verlinde,
David Bills, Alison Smith and I put them out and help Linda
arrange food. There is so much Stella beer outside on the patio
don’t know how we’ll go through it all. Linda and
I share a Diet Coke with Lime – pretty good, much better
than I thought it’d be. Guests arrive at 8 p.m. on the
dot – when it starts. We have a great crowd formed quickly.
Kevin Everson, a director at the festival, arrives as does
the cinematographer, editor and more from “September
Tapes.” It’s a great mix of composers, musicians
and filmmakers and industry folks. The band D.O.R.K.
from Denver come only to inform me they have to change their
name – someone is claiming ownership to it. Met a bunch
of BMI composers who didn’t know anyone at BMI – that’s
the best party of this party. Qasim Ali Naqvi who did the film “Sangam,” Gunnard
Doboze who did “September Tapes” and more. Thomas
Golubic is djing and pretty soon the crew from “Born
Into The Brothels” are there and one of the women with
them is dancing. It’s a packed party – Wendy Goodman
from Roots, a man from Delta who I can’t remember his
name, George S. Clinton, Rolfe Kent, John Temperau, the drummer
from Love & Rockets who is scoring films, Jon Paul DiGoria
the haircare guru who owns Paul Mitchell and his gorgeous wife
who’s in all their commercials, actor James Wilder, a
ton of music publishers, Peter Golub who is both the head of
the Sundance Composers Lab and a composer, folks I don’t
know and folks I meet. Even the snowboarding crew from Park
City Mountain resort are there. By the end of the night the
balance bars are gone, we only have one case of beer left,
one case of wine and three cases of Diet Coke. And, a lot of
empty bottles/cans ready to go to the recycling place. Great
party, totally exhausted, and tomorrow morning I am meeting
Shelby Lynne and Allison Moorer at Park City TV for some morning
tv action. Good night.
Posted by BMI's Hanna Pantle on Jan 19, 04
| 7:00 pm MST
Tonight is the BMI condo party. Saundra Sapperstein from Stella
Artois is providing the beer, so have to coordinate with her
people re. the delivery. We are also getting Diet Coke with
Lime which is new, will be interesting to see how it tastes.
We have about 800 Balance Bars in our condo to pass out tonight
and put into goodie bags for our show and dinner later this
week. In fact, we have about 50 boxes in our condo full of
goodie bag items ranging from clocks from Jaguar to Macaroni
and Cheese by Kraft to coffee from Badass Coffee to tons of
haircare product by Joico to Benefit cosmetics.
I am having lunjch with Hilary Reiter from the Park City Chamber
of Commerce who has been a saviour in helping us connect with
local merchants. She’s been great and used to work for
the festival press office. We go to the Hotel Park City – which
is gorgeous and and much more subdued than main street. It’s
a nice way break. We’ll be here doing an interview on
Wednesdsay with our composer Jeff Beal and Peter Rosen from
KUT so it’s nice to see the layout. Gorgeous hotel, amazing
lobby with a roaring fireplace. This makes you feel like you’re
in a ski town.
After lunch Hilary and I go off to the Levis/Rayban/Miller
Beer house. They have rented a house and have celebrities come
in to get outfitted with their clothes/products. We are bringing
Shelby Lynne and Allison Moorer by tomorrow. The Levis ladies
are amazing – really courteous and welcoming. They are
giving us some items for our goodie bags. It’s really
impressive. They’ve got a seamstress custom-fitting clothes
to folks for Levis – the mini-skirts they’re making
on the spot out of jeans look adorable. It reminds me of the
San Francisco Levis store where they can add flowers, lace,
etc… to your jeans. Rayban has some amazing new sunglasses
that are just coming out and there is a table of Converse shoes
as well. Andrew and his crew from Miller Beer are there with
some really cool looking puffy vests as well as these retro
leather belts that say ‘high life’ on the back.
I grab a sticky Miller patch for my husband as I know he’ll
want it. Shelby Lynne and Allison are going to flip when they
see this house. Fader magazine has a dj in the living room
as well as their magazines. There’s chefs in the kitchen
making lunch and Vitamin Water in addition to Miller and a
bar. The orange Vitamin Water is pretty good I discover. We’ll
be back tomorrow.
Posted by BMI's Hanna Pantle on Jan 19, 04
| 4:19 pm MST
Dave Bills, Hal Bringman and Phil McGovern and I all meet
up at our condos – the lovely Park avenue condos. Hal
and Phil are covering the festival for Sony Ericsson’s “On” magazine.
Haven’t seen it but hear it looks fantastic. They covered
a party by Intel the night before and have already stopped
by the digitial center. We head up to main street to try to
catch Dave and Tim Robbins – the Robbins brothers – for
a quick photo and interview at soundcheck. They’re playing
that night for Sundance. Unfortunately, after walking up to
Plan B nightclub – by the way it’s about 10 degrees – the
doorman won’t let us in because we don’t have credentials.
We can hear them soundchecking and while I call Dave on his
cell, don’t expect him to answer. Instead we walk back
down the street to the David LaChapelle party at the Buddha
Lounge which should be in full gear. The first rule of Sundance
greets us – don’t expect it to be on time. There’s
already a line formed and those folks have been informed they’re
not ready to open the doors yet. It’s pretty cold – while
us Southern Californians do dress for the cold we’re
really not used to it. I’m noticing that while there’s
a lot of people walking the street, but I’m not seeing
the usual deluge of Slamdance filmmakers passing out flyers,
the Troma film crew doing street theater, or folks putting
up posters/hawking their film. I do see a ton of 20somethings
dressed to go dancing, a few women in miniskirts with no hose – which
I wonder how they can do it since I’m freezing and I’m
bundled up in wool, parkas, etc… I guess it’s
more about fashion for them. Don’t know who all these
folks are…
After people watching for about 15 minutes – ducking
in and out of the tshirt store next to the lounge, we head
off to dinner. Dinner at Sundance can be a feat. We hit two
restaurants who inform us it’s an hour and a half wait – it
is 7:30 at this point – and one informs us they are charging
$65 per person for dinner. Another rule at Sundance, make reservations
looonnnnggggg in advance, and get ready to pay out the nose
for a good meal.
We head over to a Mexican restaurant who can seat us in about
15 minutes, don’t charge a fixed price and seem to have
a number of very jolly filmgoers inside boisterously talking
about the films they saw.
First day at Sundance complete. No major starsightings. Macy
Gray is playing a benefit show at Harry O’s and the Robbins
Brothers are up the street at 11:30. First night at Sundance
and already it feels a little different.
Posted by BMI's Hanna Pantle on Jan 18, 04
| 6:35 pm MST
Arrived into Park City on a full flight with the majority
of folks heading to Park City. Conversations on who’s
bringing banners, which parties they’re going to, when
their film screens, what agents are at the festival could be
overheard along with the chirping of cellphones after we touched
down and reached the gate.
A few years ago the term PIB was coined at Sundance – people
in black – to refer to the large industry crowd at the
festival. They stood out amidst the skiers, snowboarders, etc… who
sported colors. I guess it’s a LA/NYC thing to wear black,
am wondering this year if it’s going to be PIU – people
in Uggs – Ugg boots that is.
Posted by BMI's Hanna Pantle on Jan 18, 04
| 3:29 pm MST
Arrival!
We've arrived in Park City. Tonight we'll be going to see
SASHA, an extremely talented DJ, at the Premier Magazine Film & Music
Lounge. His concept DJ mix CD is part of a unique album series
for the acclaimed Global Underground label.
Posted by BMI's
David F. Bills on Jan 17, 04 | 5:29 pm MST
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