Robert Redford, described once by a local newspaper man as a “leathery midget”, founded the Sundance Institute back in 1981. That institute brings us the Sundance Film Festival, which takes place every January in Park City, Utah. Park City was chosen because it’s the most debaucherous city in the state and home to only three Mormons, all of whom are named Jack.

The festival is known for its second-tier celebrity sightings, its wild evening parties and its countless films about lesbians. For all of those reasons, and also because I believe that the market has a way of weeding out mediocre (read: independent) films, I had avoided ever attending the event. Curiosity, or perhaps my longstanding philosophy that places become real only insofar as I’ve visited them, delivered me among the other miserable people suffering in the cold experiencing the famed festival first hand on Saturday.

For your information, Sundance does exist, but, at least for us peasants, it has mostly to do about standing in very, very long lines for the slim chance of being afforded the privilege of paying ten dollars to watch a movie which in all likelihood is extremely low-budget, extremely bizarre and extremely not worth either the wait or the ten dollars.

In fact, the lines are so long and so legendary that this year there were even filmmakers doing a documentary on people waiting in the said lines. Was I captured on film several times for that documentary as I stood in the queue? Yes. That should come as no surprise given I’m very telegenic. Ha!

And so I wasted the better part of an afternoon freezing to the core in the blustery Artic that is that Gomorrahic city. I’d tell you which movie we ended up watching, but I’d rather not give it the honor of mention, as it was incredibly deranged and no doubt produced under the influence of both banned substances and the devil himself. So, no, I won’t be writing about it. And yes, I’m a bit bitter about the waste of time.

But at least I got a blog entry out of it…