Entertainment
96 Hours At The Sundance Film Festival
Complete with a Real Housewives of Salt Lake City spotting, some premiere hopping, and far too much Entourage nostalgia.
Like so much in my life, I can thank Entourage for my obsession with Hollywood. It all began in 2005, when I — freshly bat mitzvahed, and officially a woman — began following the exploits of Vincent Chase (Adrian Grenier), the show’s fictional superstar. I fell for the industry machinations (feuding studio execs! shattered box office records! agent hijinks!) almost as hard as I fell for Chase himself. (I mean, there’s a reason Ari Gold signed him off of a Mentos commercial...) And after the series set an entire episode at Sundance, the film festival became one of my chief interests, too.
In the two decades years since, I’ve played armchair Sundance participant. From the sidelines, I’ve coveted all the wintry fashion, and watched as festival premieres catapulted stars like Jennifer Lawrence into the spotlight. When festival favorites like The Wackness (2008) finally came out in theaters, I was first in line to see them.
So when Chase Sapphire invited me to attend the festival — 20 years after I saw the (not-at-all real, but totally real-to-me) movie Queens Boulevard premiere there on Entourage — I couldn’t wait to make my 12-year-old self’s dreams come true. Below, the highlights from my time in Park City.
Thursday, January 23
To kick things off, I attended the first premiere of the festival: Twinless. The film follows new friends Roman (Dylan O’Brien) and Dennis (the film’s writer and director, James Sweeney), who meet in a twin-loss bereavement group. While I’ll spare any further details — trust me, you’ll want to go in blind — suffice to say it’s a twisty, thoughtful meditation on isolation and grief, anchored by a career-best performance from O’Brien.
After the screening, I headed over to the Chase Sapphire Lounge on Main Street to celebrate with the cast. There, I found O’Brien and Sweeney rubbing shoulders with the film’s producers, Lauren Graham (who plays O’Brien’s mother in the film) hanging on a couch, and the supporting cast taking in the success of the premiere. But, for me, the real success was making it back to the hotel before midnight, which gave me plenty of time to rest up for the the next day’s events.
Friday, January 24
Trying to maintain a schedule at Sundance is a lot like playing a game of Jenga: If even one piece slides a touch out of place, all your carefully-laid plans may come tumbling down. On day two, I experienced this firsthand, when I booked a lunch too close to a screening of If I Had Legs, I’d Kick You, and missed my chance to see it. (A particular bummer, given how glowing the reviews have been for the Rose Byrne-starring, A24-produced indie.)
Luckily, things turned around when — after a few extra hours at my hotel, The St. Regis Deer Valley — I headed into town to check another item off my bucket list: meeting none other than Queen of Sundance herself, Lisa Barlow. Real Housewives of Salt Lake City fans know that, in some circles, there’s nobody more ubiquitous at Sundance than Barlow. Throughout her tenure on the show, Barlow’s made it clear there’s three things she loves more than all else: fast food, the festival, and herself. So when she invited me to come check out her Vida Tequila lounge, I felt like I’d been granted access her royal court. Once inside, Barlow and I spoke about the most recent Salt Lake City reunion (all off the record, I’m sorry to report) and chatted with John Barlow (her husband, and biggest fan).
After a half hour of basking in the glow of Baby Gorgeous (IYKYK), I headed back to the Chase Sapphire Lounge to attend the after party for Bubble & Squeak, ready to dance off my Vida Tequila shots.
Saturday, January 25
I’ve been a fan of Rachel Sennott’s ever since Shiva Baby. (No, not the 2021 feature that made her a star — the short version that premiered at SXSW in 2018.) So when I saw that she was coming to Sundance to debut Bunnylovr — Katarina Zhu’s directorial debut, which Sennott co-stars in and produced — I knew I had to make it to the premiere. And while I found the film to be one of the festival’s more polarizing offerings, everyone agreed on one thing: The snow bunny look Sennott wore to the after party was incredible, and very on-theme.
Sunday, January 26
Sunday was far and away my busiest day at the festival. I started early, with a breakfast at the UTA House, followed by another stop at the Chase Sapphire Lounge, where I decorated a cowboy hat at their “brim bar.” (“When in Rome” was my motto for the day, which also fueled my purchase of a cow hide rug later that afternoon.) After lunch, I went to a panel put on by the Onyx Collective in support of their upcoming Hulu show, Deli Boys. And between star Poorna Jagannathan’s gangster-inspired suiting, the show’s Pakistani mobster premise, and a surprise appearance from Tan France — who makes his scripted television debut in the series — the panel was one of the most rollicking half hours I spent in Utah.
The rest of my evening unfolded in a similarly high-octane fashion. I stopped by a Bookmarc pop-up (my favorite West Village bookstore, temporarily transported to Park City’s Main St.), attended a dinner at Tavernetta (yet another pop-up experience), and even managed to get in some dancing at the Sundance Kiki party (I’d say more, but what happens at the Kiki stays at the Kiki).
The most surreal moment of my night, though, was a tipsy moment of solitude in the hotel’s furnicular. Sitting alone in the glass car, being transported hundreds of feet above the snow-covered property, I felt my Entourage dreams had finally come true.
