The Secret World of a Sundance Volunteer

Film Festival Volunteers: Most people only know them as the folks who take your ticket at the door. But, they have an insider view of festival workings that is unique among the louder, more visible insiders like filmmakers or press agents. What useful secrets do they have for filmmakers and festival goers? I sat down with a three time volunteer at the 800 pound gorilla of American film festivals, Sundance, who has also done unpaid time at South by Southwest and the Sydney Film Festival, to find out.

Letsschmooze: How did you get started as a volunteer?

Volunteer: I had these two friends of mine, one of them who had a family friend who knew Redford, or Redford knew him somehow, so they got him into volunteering and this other buddy of mine from high school. So the two of them had been volunteering for a couple years, and they kept saying to me you gotta come, you gotta come, but it’s always right at the beginning of the school semester, you know, so you miss the first two weeks of school. So I was like, I can’t do it, can’t do it. But then I planned my schedule around basicaly, so all my teachers were film teachers. I’d tell them ahead of time, I’m not going to be here, don’t throw me out of class, I gotta go to Sundance. So I guess I’ve been doing Sundance for three years now. And the last year I went, I’d just finished school, so I didn’t have anything else to do afterwards, and I just had such a blast there, I was like, I gotta do more festivals. So I just researched to see what festivals were coming up soon, and South by Southwest was coming up, and I had friends who lived in Austin that I knew I could stay with. So I went down there and did that, and that was really fun too, because it’s a music and film festival. And it’s huge. The music part’s much bigger than the film part, but it’s growing. It’s not as big into the parties as Sundance is. Park City’s a small town, you know, so everyone’s really close knit. There’s always parties going on, you always know about all the parties. But Austin’s so spread out. And later in that same summer I did Sydney Film Festival, so I just kind of went bang, bang, bang. After spreading out Sundance over a couple of years, I just kind of went festival after festival.

Letsschmooze: As a volunteer, what do you do?

Volunteer: At Sundance I was mostly doing, I was what they called a crowd liaison. So I’d be in this big tent next to the theater helping people get numbers to hold their place in line, facilitating selling the tickets and stuff like that, just answering questions, helping pick up a little, you know, and guarding doors sometimes. People were going to go on breaks, I’d guard the door, make sure no one got in. In fact this year I was working the front door at Sundance for this one film, it was crazy. All these people were going in and I was supposed to look at their hands to see if they had tickets in their hands but not actually tear them or anything. So I would be looking at people’s hands as they go by, it’s this big crowd and I don’t have time to look at their faces or anything. And this one guy walks up, he doesn’t have anything in his hand. So I’m like, “excuse me sir, can I see your ticket?” And I look up and it’s Robert Redford. And I’m like, “uh…oh, go ahead, go ahead, sorry.” So, he was really cool about it, he patted me on the back. He’s a funny guy. I haven’t really hung out with him or anything, but he seemed real nice.

Letsschmooze: What do you get as a volunteer?

Volunteer: At Sundance they put you up. They used to put up all the volunteers, now they only put up alumni volunteers. And they put us up in condos, like really nice condos with hot tubs and steam rooms and everything. It’s sweet. And the night before the festival starts they have a volunteer screening which is, one of the filmmakers offers to show his film before they show it on the regular panel to just the volunteers. That’s usually a double feature. The last couple of years it’s been a double feature. And then they’ll have a big party for us the first night, too, with all the volunteers, free food and free booze. And while you’re working sometimes you’ll get some free food. Every year it’s like, less and less food, less and less parties. And then there are all these other sponsored parties that we’re allowed to go to as well where they have free food and booze, as long as it lasts. And last year - not last year, year before last - you know, you help people out, you let people in when the theaters packed and some guy's like, “let me in and I’ll invite you to my party.” So this one guy did that to a buddy of ours and gave him this Warner Brothers party pass, but he just had one of them and there were five of us. So he takes it down to Kinkos down the street, and copies it, laminates it, makes five more. So we had all these Warner Brothers party passes so we were going into all these great parties, and like Carmen Electra, and all these stars were there and everything and great bands. It’s exhausting though, you know. ‘Cause you have to work at seven in the morning and you’re partying ‘til like three in the morning, you know. So by the end of the festival you’re like, “I don’t want to watch anymore movies, I don’t want…” I mean in the beginning I’m doing four movies a day.

Letsschmooze: So how much time out of the day do you spend doing volunteer work versus other things?

Volunteer: At Sundance it’s two movies, so it’s like a six hour shift. Then after that you’re free. You can just watch movies the whole rest of the day. And they have movies going from 8 in the morning until midnight is when their last screening starts. So there’s so many flicks you can see there.

Letsschmooze: And how did South by Southwest and Sydney compare to Sundance?

Volunteer: South by Southwest they have a gold pass or a silver pass or a platinum pass. Gold is music, silver is movies and platinum is both. And you can’t get the platinum unless you are an alumni volunteer, unless you volunteered before, so I could only go see the movies, I couldn’t go see any of the music. Which is cool, you know, but I don’t think they had as many screens as Sundance. And they’re more spread out, too, so you had to drive around Austin, whereas at Park City they have this great public transportation. Although everything is really close, there are free busses running all the time. But there were a couple parties and I think we got some food, too. And South by Southwest has lots of little trinkets and stuff. Sundance is the same way. You get tote bags and hats and shit. All kinds of crap, magazines and whatever. Oh, and they have this hospitality suite at Sundance too that’s really nice. You go in there any time and get coffee, read magazines, get little pastries and stuff. So that’s cool. Sydney, I think it was basically just, again, T-shirt I got, and you know, free movies. You get to go see as many movies as you want.

Letsschmooze: Do you have any advice for someone who is going to be a volunteer?

Volunteer: Yeah, just, you know, do favors for people. You look out for people and they’ll look out for you. There are so many parties and stuff. The best parties to go to are just in people’s condos and stuff, not the sponsored parties. Just the ones where like you screwed over Roger Ebert and let somebody else in and he’s like, “thanks dude. Here, come to our party tonight.” Just help people out. If you have a car there, that’s helpful ‘cause people need to get places like five minutes ago. Everyone’s always running late, trying to pack in a bunch of movies. And of course they’re nuts there, they’ll just kill each other to get in to see movies so you just kind of have to have this laid back attitude where you just don’t really care about it because if you stress out the people you’re dealing with are going to stress out even more. It can be overwhelming because you’re not getting paid so sometimes you’re dealing with a group of fifty people who are all trying to get past you at a door and it’s like what am I doing this for? But it’s fun, it’s fun. You got to kind of enjoy the power it gives you, too. Like, I let Robert Redford in, but I could have stopped him. Well, probably not him… Last year Patrick Swayze was really late for his movie, he was like ten minutes late. And the theater was full because we’ll fill every seat because people stand in line for hours ahead of time. So Patrick Swayze shows up, and he’s like, “I gotta get in there, I gotta get in there” and just starts to push his way past the guy at the door, and, that was my buddy, he’s like, “no, you have to wait. You have to just hang on there Mr. Swayze and let me follow up and make sure we can find a space for you before we let you in.” He was pissed. He didn’t like that. But they understand we’re just doing our job. We’re just trying to make sure that everything goes smoothly at the festival. Geoff Gilmore and all the guys, they really appreciate the volunteers and they always thank us at their ceremony. They have this big awards ceremony at the end of Sundance where they always thank the volunteers, but we can’t get into it. None of us are invited to it. It’s nice that we watch it on a little T.V.

Letsschmooze: Do you see a lot of wheeling and dealing at the parties, or is it just social?

Volunteer: It’s pretty social I think, yeah. I mean there’s lots of talk, but it’s just talk, you know what I mean? Air. And most of that stuff I think will happen behind closed doors, I assume. That’s what I hear. But the parties are key for networking. I feel like so much connecting is going on there. Lots of cards exchanging. Lots of people trying to have sex, too, like any party.

Letsschmooze: Do you interact with the filmmakers?

Volunteer: Yeah. Oh yeah, that’s the best thing about the film festival is that you always have an in to start talking to somebody. You’re sitting next to somebody and you’re just like, “what have you seen, what’s good here, what are you excited to see, where you from?” The first film I saw this year was a documentary about Wanda Jean, this woman who was executed in Texas. It was a 9 a.m. show, and I sit down next to this guy and I was like, “how’s it going, why are you here? Are you here with a film?” and it turns out he was the director of this film called Secretary which won I think a grand prize that year. It was really well received and it was a great, great film. I loved it a lot. And I got to talk to him. I got to talk to him about working with Maggie Gyllenhaal and he just had great things to say about her. It was just really exciting talking to him about the whole process of the short story he found and developed into a screenplay with somebody else. It was just great. So then I’d see him later, like his screening would be at our theater and I’d be like, “hey, what’s going on.” So that was really cool. I just met so many great people there. I met more people there than I have in five years of college in two weeks of Sundance.

Letsschmooze: It's a pretty stressful environment for filmmakers. Have you seen any filmmakers really lose their cool?

Volunteer: Well I didn’t see this, but before I was there, David Lynch came to Sundance with Lost Highway. Apparently he stormed out of the theater saying the sound was like an insult to his artistic integrity. He was so pissed. But, let’s see. I don’t know. You know, so many of the filmmakers, especially at Sundance, are young filmmakers starting out and they’re just so happy to be there, so happy to get a screening. I mean, they care very much about having a good print quality and good theater environment and all that. So, I don’t know, Sundance is a pretty well run show. Whereas, South by Southwest is more of a laid back, country kind of rock-and-roll sort of festival. So people are just like, fuck it, whatever, I’m here, I’m having fun. They try not to take themselves too seriously. Whereas at Sundance it’s mostly just pretentiousness is the problem you get there. People are just like, “Don’t you know who I am?” At Sundance now they hire real projectionists. They used to just use volunteers. I think the David Lynch incident was one of the things that made them hire actual projectionists. And their work is all day long. They don’t ever get a break. They work from eight in the morning until two in the morning.

Letsschmooze: And they get paid to do that.

Volunteer: They get paid really well, they get nice housing, and everyone tries to take care of the projectionists a lot. And you know, they get a lot of down time, too. Two hours at a stretch they’re just kind of sitting there. But now they’ve been doing all this digital projection and everything, so these guys know their shit, you know. They’re fucking, pretty smart guys. They’re on top of it.

Letsschmooze: Have you talked to filmmakers after their screenings where it went well or didn’t go well?

Volunteer: Yeah, most of the people are just happy to be there, just happy to have made it in time. Jodie Foster’s last movie was supposed to be at Sundance last year. It was in the catalog and everything, but they didn’t finish…there was this animation element of it that they just didn’t finish in time. They showed a rough cut of it to Geoff Gilmore the festival director and he accepted it for the festival, but then they didn’t finish it in time. That Patrick Swayze movie, the one he was all pissed about getting into, was scratched. There was some problem with the projector and it scratched it all to hell while it was being screened. That really sucked. The thing that really upsets me about the screenings is that you see these films that are so brilliant and so different than anything you see in the multiplexes. In the Bedroom was an amazing film. But when it gets to the theater, it’s different from that. It’s edited a little different. Some scenes are taken out, some scenes are replaced and it always seems worse. It always seems worse. Donnie Darko was one of my favorite films of all time. I saw it at Sundance and it was brilliant. And then it came out in the theaters here and I said to all my friends we got to go see Donnie Darko, it’s great. And we go to see it and it’s not that good anymore. They had changed some of the songs, the music, which was a key element in contextualizing the piece in its historical era, the 80’s. They changed the music around, there was this scene at the end that had no voice over in the Sundance print and did when we saw it in the theater, it had this voice over that explained everything, that just came right out and laid everything on the table and I just thought really fucked it all up, really screwed everything up for it. So I was embarrassed. I had recommended this film to so many people. And I felt really bad for the filmmaker too. He’s from Virginia where I’m from too, so that’s really cool. He was this guy who wrote this script, I think it was his first script…maybe not his first, but an early script definitely, he’s a young guy. He’s my age. And he got an agent, by showing people the script and everything, and they wanted to sell it, and he was like, “no, I don’t want to sell it unless you get a contract where I can direct it as well.” Because he cared so much about the piece, he wanted to really guard it and really control it. And I really appreciated that. And then he finally, everyone was like, it’s never going to happen, it’s never going to happen. Finally he gets his first directing gig off his first script. So he’s able to direct this script he really cares about and makes this wonderful film, very carefully guarding it the whole time. And then, what happens? He gets into Sundance and he sells it at Sundance, and they’re like, “Oh, we love your movie, we got to change this. We got to put a voice over here at the end because people won’t understand what’s happening. We got to change these songs around.” And it was just so frustrating to me how he could retain his integrity throughout so many steps in the process, and right before it gets to the mass audience, he loses control. It was upsetting.

Letsschmooze: Do you see much of a class system at Sundance?

Volunteer: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, Sundance has this real, it’s kind of like the independent royalty or something. They kind of treat them like, Christina Ricci was there last year and they’re like, “she’s the indie queen” and all. For like marketing purposes they look at these people like independent superstars. Which is cool. But yeah, there’s definitely kind of a class system. Well there’s just, like the masses, people all waiting in line to get into the movie, and there’s everybody else. The people that come in and walk by the paparazzi, like Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston were there this year. And that pissed off everyone who was waiting out in the cold for hours seeing them just cruise on by. So the class issues there, they’re there. They’re everywhere. But it’s fun to…you know, I’m kind of more like shy guy who would just stay out there in the cold and say, “oh well, I’ll just hang out out here” but all my friends I go with, they’re all about subverting that. They’re all about getting the fake laminated passes going and sneaking in the back door to the parties and everything, and sweet talking the bouncers. We’d cruise out to these ranches. I think there was like a Playboy mansion house or something out in Park City, a Playboy party. And we drive all the way out there just to stand at the driveway and these guys are like, “Nope, can’t get in, can’t get in.” And this one buddy of mine just walks right past them and he’s like, “I just left my wallet inside. I just gotta go grab it.” And they’re like, “oh, okay, whatever.” He calls us up from inside and is like, “What are you guys doing out there? You can’t get in?”

Letsschmooze: How does the market aspect impact the festival?

Volunteer: Yeah, every year they say the marketing gets more and more and the filmmaking gets less and less. But you know, it’s a symbiotic relationship. You can’t really have one without the other. So I feel like it’s kind of pointless to try and fight the marketing aspects of it, which a lot of people…people don’t fight it but they bad mouth it a lot, you know. But God bless these people who are out there making a living doing their marketing thing. They seem happy. I don’t know, it’s crazy. The whole town is just so taken over, especially Park City. At the Sydney Film Festival it’s really, it was really more artistic I felt like. Very little marketing. It was hard to find shpiels, like little rave reviews or one liners about certain films, buzz, that sort of thing. It’s hard to find it. You had to seek it out in Sydney. Really it’s more just about going to the film and sitting around afterwards and having a cup of coffee. Here it’s more like going to the film and then just wondering about, at Sundance it’s like wondering about, well I wonder what the bargaining’s going on like right now. And then the next morning you always get the reports about, “Yeah we were up ‘til three in the morning dealing with Lion’s Gate or whoever, trying to cut some crazy deal.

Letsschmooze: So as a volunteer, do you become kind of an arbiter of buzz?

Volunteer: Yeah, well, yeah, tons of people will ask our opinion. There are all kinds of producers and distributor who will come down to tents and to places where the volunteers are working and where the not so famous, the not upper class people are hanging out and try to get the public reaction to films and see what people have liked, see what people are thinking is hot. Like Michael Stipe was hanging out down in the tent with us, and a bunch of little, well not little, lesser known producers and stuff like that. And it’s great. I try to really, I try to help them out. I try to…it’s like this whole pipeline of gossip that’s constantly flowing. Like when you’re changing shifts you’re like, all right, so what’s going on, what’s the gossip? What’s the hot movie? What happened? What director blew up trying to get his fifty person entourage into the film or whatever. And what movie sucked and what movie didn’t. Like everyone said that Gerry, Gus Van Sant’s film was awful this year. They said it’s just really boring, it’s an experimental film, it’s really an exercise in tedium, an exercise in patience. But all the press on it was like, “it’s brilliant! It’s a wonderful masterpiece and it’s going to change the face of independent cinema! And it’s an important work and everyone’s going to go see it!” And I think they tried to distribute it in theaters here. I don’t know if anybody went to see it.

Letsschmooze: Are you around the press at all?

Volunteer: Yeah, yeah, because we distribute the press tickets at Sundance. So the people with press badges have to come down to us and get tickets. There are only a limited amount of them, you know. We’re only allowed, we can’t give them out until an hour before the show, so. You know, we’ll have some problems with the press. People will flip. Usually people will just say, ah we’ll just find the publicist at the film. And the publicist will try to get as many people from the press in as possible because that’s all they live for. So we just hand it off to the publicist and it’s not problem. But some of the press guys…well, the press guys aren’t as bad as some of the foreign distributors. They can be assholes sometimes. Like, “I’m the leading distributor in Italy" or some shit. We don’t know you, who cares.

Letsschmooze: What advice would you have for filmmakers going to a festival?

Volunteer: Take care of the volunteers. We really like the guys who bring their films to the volunteer screenings. And attitude can really make a big difference. Whether you come to us with, “hey I need fifty tickets, give them to me” or “hey man, could you help me out, I could use some extra tickets.” Makes all the difference in the world.