Bill Richardson Reports from 08 Sundance
Bill Richardson in front of one of several Sundance theaters
Bill Richardson flew to Sundance recently to attend an event at Slamdance where one of his film scripts was a national finalist. Several years ago he directed his first feature film, editing scenes from the “Flash Gordon” TV series into his own film that he calls “Crash Gordon.” It had its world premiere at the 2005 WV Intl. Film Festival in downtown Charleston. Here is his report on some of his adventures at the world’s greatest film festival for independent filmmakers.
Quenton Tarantino with friend
I just got back from Sundance and two other film festivals (Slamdance and Troma Dance) which run concurrently in Park City. The highlight of my trip was that I got to meet Quentin Tarantino and give him a copy of my film Crash Gordon. He was on the Sundance awards jury and I got a chance to talk to him at the awards party. I’m still trying to find distribution for the film and he has a track record of helping out other filmmakers so I used the opportunity to give him a copy of Crash. I also got to see Morgan Spurlock at an industry mixer and he’s agreed to look at Crash Gordon and see if there is anyway he can help. Troma (which distributed two of Danny Boyd’s films) also does a small film festival during Sundance called Troma Dance.
Bill with great actress Karen Black
At that festival I got to talk with Karen Black for about half an hour. Karen is an Oscar nominated actress who’s been in nearly 200 films and TV shows including: Five Easy Pieces, Easy Rider, Airport 1975, Trilogy of Terror, House of a Thousand Corpses (directed by Rob Zombie) and Family Plot (Alfred Hitchcock’s last film). She’s recently directed a couple of short films and written two plays. We talked about trying to work on something together in the future.I also got stranded in the Salt Lake airport with Courtney Hunt. She was the winner of the biggest Sundance prize, the Grand Jury Award for Drama. Quentin Tarantino said her film, Frozen
River “…put his heart in a vice and just kept twisting.” We talked about the woes of low budget production and the cons of shooting on HD.I got to know Rosemary Rodriguez whose film, Acts of Worship, got into Sundance in 2001. She’s been directing a lot of TV (Law and Order, Third Watch etc.) and is trying to get another feature off the ground.Some other cool things were going to the premier of, The Year of Getting to Know You, and seeing Sharon Stone, Tom Arnold and Jimmy Fallon goofing around during the Q&A. Having lunch beside Kato Kalin. Listening to William H. Macy (
Fargo) and his wife Felicity Huffman (Desperate Housewives) chatting about their stresses at Sundance. Both had films at the festival and neither won any awards. And of course, I also got to watch most of the award winning films. Choke, was my favorite movie. It was based on a book by Chuck Palahniuk, who also wrote Fight Club.The biggest downer of the trip was that my screenplay didn’t win at Slamdance but I did get to talk to reps from the two production companies that sponsored the contest about making a film from the screenplay. This was my main reason for going toPark
City whether I won or lost the competition so I did achieve my goal. And who knows maybe Quentin or Morgan will be able to help me get Crash Gordon distributed. I’m really glad I went. It’s not an opportunity that comes along that often and you have to take advantage of it when it does. Hopefully it will result in something really positive, but only time will tell.
