Swag for Short Term 12 to distribute at Sundance (Destin Cretton)
We flew into Salt Lake City, Utah at 8:15pm Wednesday. It was my first time on Jet Blue Airlines, which I highly recommend. Every seat has it's own screen with a hundred cable channels to choose from, and they give every person two bags of chips. I deplaned, grabbed my bags, hopped in a rented Corolla with Ryan Gordon (our publicist) and Bekah Macias (our production coordinator), and we drove the 45-minutes to Park City.
One of the most difficult things about coming here is finding an affordable place to stay (and affordable to me is embarrassingly cheap). We were really lucky to find a room on Craigslist from an extremely nice couple named Michael and Kathryn, who had water bottles and feet-warmers laid out for us when we arrived. Michael kindly walked us down the street to show us where the bus stop was that would take us into town tomorrow. We met two guys and a girl there who flew up from San Diego to watch some movies. They had tickets to the Friday screening of "Short Term 12," so I was relieved to know there would be at least three people in the audience.
We had dinner at The Red Rock, which happened to have the most incredible coleslaw on the planet. Our server's name was River. When he found out we had a film in the festival, he started pitching us his ideas for movies he'd always wanted to make (and they were actually really cool). He asked if there were some screenwriting books he could read and was just really excited about the idea of making a movie. "I'm glad you guys didn't say you're some big-time actors," he said. "The locals up here don't really care about famous people." I gave him a high-five for that one. We handed him a "Short Term 12" pin and he promised to wear it all week. We told him we'd try to get him into a filmmakers' party one of these nights. And with that, we ordered a beer, which they limit to 3.2 percent alcohol here (a law my mother would appreciate), and toasted to the beginning of an exciting week ahead. Here's to people who love movies and don't care about celebrities. Cheers.
Destin Cretton is a San Diego-based filmmaker whose short film Short Term 12 was selected to screen at this year's Sundance Film Festival. He will be guest blogging about his experiences there.
