Director of Programming James McNally is attending this year’s Sundance Film Festival from January 16th to 28th.
Festival Day 9
On the penultimate day of the festival, I slept in until 9:00am, which felt like a luxury. My roommate Jake and I stayed up until 1:00am last night talking about the festival and filmmaking, which was nice since I hadn’t really seen him in a couple of days.
My office shift was uneventful, and I was able to leave at 5pm in order to get into the volunteer tickets line at the Eccles for Hearts Beat Loud. Luckily, I got a ticket and enjoyed the film a lot. It features Nick Offerman (pictured above) and Kiersey Clemons as father and daughter who form a band. It wasn’t particularly deep or innovative, but the story was sweet, the chemistry between the actors was great, and the music was just fantastic. Earlier, I’d invited people to our condo for a little get-together, and by the time I stopped at the liquor store and then took a Lyft home, there was already someone waiting for me.
From 9:00pm until around 2:30am, we hosted about 10 people at our place, and it turned out to be one of my favourite experiences of the festival. Some of the volunteers I met on my initial shuttle ride into Park City came, and invited a few others, so it was a perfect way to get to know some new people. We played some silly card games and even “Never Have I Ever” which was really funny.
Best of all, I avoided getting sick and so could look forward to the Awards ceremony again.