I arrived in Park City, and from the very start, it was pretty clear to me that this was going to be one of my usual trips.  What I mean by that, is a trip full of vacation karma.  I don't know the hows and whys and wherefores of it all, unless it's just another case of Sagittarians believing in their own luck, but  I always seem to meet the nicest people when Î travel, and good luck is only just a step behind.   Met some of my best friends on a backpacking trip in Europe and was hooked up with places to stay almost everywhere I went, including Paris and Cannes--two of the most expensive places you can go in this world of ours. (Not that they've done too badly either, coming to visit me in LA several times since then!)  But on this particular trip, I did have a place to stay all set before I went, a condo on Empire Avenue that was rented out for the use of those of us from Filmmakers Alliance who had chosen to move home base to Utah for a week to 10 days.  What I didn't have was any clue about what came next, as I usually go for the play-it-by-ear approach to travel, and had not pre-ordered any of the Sundance packages that you can get from the festival offices.  Nor did I have a clue how I was going to get from Salt Lake City, which is where you fly into, to Park City, the actual festival locale, which is about a 40 minute drive from the airport. But then along came Taylor, part of the RKO contingent to the festival, a perfectly lovely woman whom I met in the airport when she was trying to sell a friend's ticket and hook someone up on a flight that was already way over-booked.  My friend who was flying free with me (Southwest) wasn't actually getting on the plane (had to work and delayed her trip to Thursday) but had already gotten her boarding number gave it to Taylor, who had actually been wait listed for our flight, so she got to go out early.  What goes around took all of three seconds to come around because sure enough, Taylor was renting a car in Salt Lake and driving to Park City.  So there was my ride.

Turned out she had a festival packet too, so I spent the entire plane ride figuring out my desired film schedule for the week.  When we got to town, I went with her to go register at the Main Tent; we stopped off at the hospitality area where I munched a whole lot of carrots and had the second instant of vacation karma when I literally bumped into one of the guys I was going to have to try to find that week, my friend Julie's friend Noah Stern, who I had met just a few weeks before at my Chanukah party when we discussed trying to hook up at Sundance.  His film "The Invisibles" was showing in competition that week and although I had left him a message in LA before I left, and had email for him, I assumed he was already gone.  Since I had no contact info for him at Sundance itself, I thought finding him might take a little effort.  One of those instances where it's nice to be wrong,.  So we agreed to hook up later--as his film was premiering that night--and exchanged cell  numbers (the real test of my luck will be to see how bad the roaming charges when the bill comes in a month from now!!).  Then Taylor and I (plus my friend Susan's friend Mary who also flew with us) went to the ritziest hotel in town so Taylor could pick up up a package of tickets someone had left for her (at 500 dollars a night, you can just imagine who stays in those hallowed halls), stopping at a grocery store on the way home to get a few essentials such as pasta and sauce because it was already 8 PM and I was starving!!

Back at the condo,  I ate, got my stuff semi-organized, decided I was way too tired to deal with the Soundman party which a friend was going to get me into (Guns and Roses reunion notwithstanding) and figured out the shuttle system enough to get me to Prospector Square for Noah's film at 11:30 PM.  Now, I have many friends who are filmmakers, and many screenings that I attend where I know the parties involved.  You always want to hope for the best, because they are your friends, but having had to sit through some clunkers, I always keep a little distance in my head just in case the film sucks, and then I can be pleasantly surprised when it doesn't.  In this case, Noah's film did not disappoint--not in the least.  Even though he had the suckiest screening time possible (11:30 PM on a Sunday evening after the first weekend of partying at the festival), the entire audience stayed awake for his film--and with good reason.  A black and white film set pretty much in a single room, about a model and a rock star finding it easier to face the issues and consequences of their screwed up lives and perceptions in the arms of another equally screwed up person, rather than alone, the film was well acted (starring Portia de Rossi, the new blonde lawyer from Ally MacBeal who I didn't even recognize until halfway through; that's how different her character was, and Michael Goorjian who some may know as Justin from Party of Five) and extremely well written.   Needless to say, I was very happy for Noah, happy for Michael Kastenbaum, who produced the film through Zero Pictures,(a friend to many indie filmmakers, including several from Filmmakers Alliance).  We all tried to go to a private condo party afterwards that was right up the street from my condo, but we had the address wrong, and since it was 2 AM, and I was right down the street from my bed, I opted out when it became pretty clear we had no idea where we were going, and everyone else, full from a big day, pretty much followed suit.