As Hollywood decamps Thursday to snowy Park City, Utah, for 10 days of mountaintop dealmaking, John Cooper, a 20-year veteran of the Sundance Film Festival is anxious to see how the big changes he's implemented will play out.
Since Cooper took over as festival director from Geoffrey Gilmore last year, the former head of programming said he's been trying to broaden the types of films and platforms featured at Sundance.
Yes, there will still be the usual list of buzz films, including "Hesher," starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Natalie Portman" (pictured below) and "The Runaways" with "Twilight's" Kristen Stewart. And the closing night film is Joel Schumacher's "Twelve." (See accompanying slideshow for more buzz films.)
But gone is the opening-night gala, long a staple of the festival. Instead, a series of in-competition films will screen on Thursday night, including "Howl," the Allen Ginsburg biopic; "Restrepo," an Afghanistan war documentary; and a selection of short films.
Also on deck is Sundance Film Festival USA, which has filmmakers taking their movies on the road. Various selections from the festival will screen in theaters in eight cities, including Ann Arbor, Michigan; Brookline, Massachusetts; Brooklyn, New York; Chicago; and Los Angeles.
Another Cooper creation is the NEXT program, which will feature eight micro-budgeted movies that the director believes reflect the creative explosion taking place in independent film as low- or no-budget filmmakers use cheaper digital tools to shoot and distribute their movies.
Though many studios have shuttered their independent divisions and the cratering DVD market has put a financial strain on the industry, Cooper thinks that Hollywood is shaking off the torpor that overtook it in the aftermath of the credit markets' near collapse. (See accompanying list of 2009 Sundance films that got theatrical distribution.)
Below he talks to TheWrap's Brent Lang about the state of independent film, the challenges of tweaking the long running festival, and the promise and potential of digital distribution.
You've instituted a lot of changes in your first year. Are you trying to shake things up?
Whenever anybody leaves and a new person takes their place, it's always the right time to make some changes. Beyond that, we were just in the mood for this. The world changed, the financial picture changed, the country has a new president, it was time to say "let's re-evaluate everything we do." We still have our core, though. It's not like we threw out the competitions. We're just fine tuning.
The theme of the festival is cinematic rebellion, and rebellion takes a lot of forms, so that inspired us to play with different platforms and formats. When you have someone like [festival founder] Robert Redford in your corner, it's incredible. He wants you to be crazy and not rest on your laurels.
Are you worried that independent film could be a casualty of the industry's financial struggles?
Not at all. I'm optimistic that this can be a good time for small films.
