Sundance Film Festival 2011: Dispatch Two

Even in Utah, the freaks come out at night. After a late-night screening at Holiday Village Cinemas on Friday, I decided to hoof it back to my condo on foot rather than wait for a shuttle bus. The temperature had dropped to about ten degrees, and within seconds I was skittering down the icy sidewalk like a two-legged beetle, trying to stay upright. Out of nowhere a wild-haired, goateed local screeched to a halt on Kearns Boulevard and asked if I wanted a ride. Actually, what he said was, “Get in! Get in!” My gut instinct as a New Yorker told me to demur and keep moving. But it was frigid. And I was in Utah. The passenger side door was frozen shut, so my new pal—who looked like a blond brother to meth-addled John Hawkes from Winter’s Bone—politely kicked it open after having what looked like a Tourette’s fit behind the wheel. “Fuck, dude,” he said, grinning madly. “NOW YOU’RE MINE. Haha. Where’s my hatchet?” He offered me some pills. Then a Heineken. “I used to work for Redford,” he boasted, launching into a rant about how they used to project films on white sheets up and down Main Street back in the day. Now he works construction, which is “sweet” because the guy who hired him likes to party. (Miming his boss: “Have you ever been brought up on drug- or alcohol-related charges? Because if you haven’t, I ain’t gonna hire you!”) A few blocks later, still talking a blue streak about his preferred mood enhancers, he pulled into the parking lot of my hotel. As I exited his battered Honda Civic, trying to not to let on how much I wanted to be on the other side of the door, he asked me for a Sundance film recommendation. I told him about Project NIM, thinking he might find common cause with a casualty of scientific experimentation.