Singled Out: Chronicles of a Nobody Out and About in Los Angeles!

It’s that time of the year again! No I’m not talking about Christmas, Hanukah, or Kwanzaa, but about the other kind of Season’s greetings celebration half of this town religiously awaits and readies for at the end of every calendar year, namely Sundance. This general eagerness to go hang out in Mormon land for a few days and unnecessarily endure the ice cold, windy and snowy weather for the sake of filmmaking is not only mind-boggling but royally useless to me.

Yet, every January people from across this great country and as far as overseas massively flock to Park City, Utah – hub of the world-renowned festival – as if some kind of messiah was about to appear to reveal the ultimate prophecy. Infallibly, I always get that one dreaded phone call that asks the exact same questions in the exact same sequence: “are you going to Sundance this year? Do you know anyone who’s going and with whom I could crash? Can you get me in some of the parties?” Unless I am commissioned – meaning, all expenses paid -- by a client to fly to Park City to go sundancing, predictably, my answer to all of the above is immutably the same: NO, NO and NO.

While the festival has seemingly become a Mecca for the myriad wannabes who unanimously fool themselves into believing that some Jesus Christ will jump start their pending fabulously famous acting career, for the likes of MOI – slightly sarcastic entertainment publicist -- it is as hellishly painful as Jesus’ own crucifixion.

To put it mildly, Sundance is, figuratively speaking, the menstruation – that not so fresh feeling time of the year -- of my otherwise cramp free profession. Call me jaded or blasé but there is absolutely nothing sophisticatedly fancy about joining a circus full of clowns synchronously engaged in the same pathetic show-off and kissing ass routine. This miniature version of LA’s Third Street Promenade also known as Park City Main Street single-handedly turns into a digital battlefield with cell phones, I-phones, Blackberries and all other wireless gimmicks annoyingly echoing all across town.

It’s nothing less than a brouhaha of meaningless social exchanges and business transactions that somehow all die as fast as the plane that flies all these bozos back to La La Land –or wherever they came from -- where they all resume their grandiose place in obscure anonymity. Ok, I am known to exaggerate a bit, but I’m not talking out of my ass here. I already have under my belt a total of four Sundance experiences. The last time I trekked to Park City was a couple of years ago with a very talented client of mine who was attending the festival to promote the star-studded movie in which she was co-starring. We had effortlessly been invited to all the must-seen and must be seen at events, premieres and parties that infest the festival – including, of course, the overrated Beauty Lodges.

Here’s the scenario: event coordinators are hired to set up a suite in some decadent condo up in the mountains or the canyons where fashion designers cater to A-list celebrities. Ironic that the people who can actually afford to disburse such colossal amount of money on such colloquial items are getting them for free! Meanwhile, the rest of the crop who, mind you, have officially been invited to visit these exuberant swags, were denied the luxury of these freebies with the polite rejection line disguised as a consolation: “Have your publicist email me your size and will ship you a pair.” I don’t have to tell you that this promissory note expired as soon as the business card – for follow up purposes – was dropped in the publicist’s hand.

Sadly that was exactly the predicament my client went through the very same day her movie was premiering. Luckily for us and for the reputation of the festival there are some genuine talents that at the most inopportune moment do make a difference and literally come save your day. And I am not talking about the David Schwimmers who found it necessary to walk back and forth for a solid 15 minutes in front of the same coffee shop in a screamingly desperate “have you seen me, I am the idiot in Friends” cry for attention; nor I am referring to has-been “Party of Five” Scott Wolf who conducted the most annoyingly loud phone conversation in the lobby of a sports club pretending to seal a movie deal when everybody else perfectly knew that not only was there no one on the end of the line, but there was absolutely no reception in that area.

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