Saturday’s Sundance adventures, featuring contributions from iklipz.com VP of Content and Acquisitions Seth Nagel, literary manager Sheri Fults of Elysian Entertainment and Echo Lake Productions VP Amotz Zakai.

Why is waking up so difficult?
TAMARA: Saturday was hit or miss for me.
Really wanted to get up for an 8:30am Snow Angels.
Didn’t happen.

Then thought I’d try to make it to Teeth at 11am.
But I got trapped in my hotel room on the phone and online setting up interviews and shoots for the next few days.

PlanetOut Brunch
TAMARA: Finally, I gave up on watching films (hey, it’s only a FILM festival) and stumbled out of my condo down to meet friends at the PlanetOut brunch at Ciseros. Unexpectedly bumped into Robin Neinstein, whose feature doc Souvenir of Canada we programmed at HBO’s Comedy Fest last year. That’s one of the things I love about festivals – the opportunity to meet and then stay in touch with filmmakers whose work I enjoy. I saw Souvenir at Toronto in 2005, then played it at the U.S. Comedy Arts Fest in 2006, and now we’re sharing eggs in Park City in 2007.

SHERI: The PlanetOut Queer Brunch kicks off the gay events in Park City and this year was especially exciting. PlanetOut gave away a $10,000 prize for best short film. I met an interesting collection of gay filmmakers, and sponsors, like Scion, who are committed to fostering new voices. And that makes my day. The film festival in the end, for me, is really about giving birth to new voices – new voices that now have the means to contribute meaningfully to the dialogue that is our culture. IIene Chaiken, co-creator and writer of THE L WORD, is at the brunch, and it makes me realize what an exciting a time it is to be in the march to equality, and how we are now powerfully shaping the dialogue. I look around and see that there are multiple channels for gay content -- Logo, Here!, Showtime -- along w/the industry veteran distributors like Wolfe Video who have tirelessly kept our stories alive. The proliferation of web opportunities is very exciting and I'm looking forward to the Queer Lounge panel tomorrow on online sites, featuring Ilene's newest venture -- OUR CHART -- along w/Fenton Bailey's WOW.tv, Logo and Glee's new site.

Grace Lee’s American Zombie
SHERI: I duck out of the brunch to go across the street and into the NY's Creative Coalition brunch, but I'm too late and the wait list is already long. I'm impatient so I head back up to Slamdance to talk w/John Stoddard about setting up filmmaker meetings. I see Grace Lee there and her film AMERICAN ZOMBIE is getting some strong early buzz. Grace is a superb marketer and I remember that early in the morning my email had a European Marketplace report that was showing Grace's film for sale. She knows her business and plays the creative and business roles very shrewdly.

SETH: Saturday was the day about getting ready for the rest of the festival. Since I didn’t make it into town until 4PM on Friday, I needed to start my hunt for tickets. I did get some and will be reporting back on what I will be seeing (first up will be Resurrecting the Champ). Once the mission was accomplished, I headed over to my first screening of the festival, American Zombie at Slamdance. Because the theater was packed, I actually had to sit on the floor. The film had some sound issues and they had to stop the screening for about 15 minutes. Directed by Grace Lee (of the Grace Lee Project fame) the movie had a decent number of laughs and might be the first time Jesus Christ has been described at the world’s first zombie.

Remembering Adrienne
AMOTZ: Had a very sad and surreal moment. I was with Andy Ostroy who is Adrienne Shelly's husband who, as you know, was murdered on November 1, 2006. Her film Waitress premieres on Sunday at the Eccles. We were walking together from the Java Cow when we met Gijs van de Westelaken who, as you know, is the producer of the Steve Buscemi and Sienna Miller Interview also premiering at Sundance.

What you may not know is that Gijs' director Theo Van Gough who directed the original Interview was murdered in Holland. Hard to comprehend that two films at Sundance this year have directors that are not with us anymore. I miss Adrienne very much and I like that Andy still calls me Adrienne's manager. Every person that met Adrienne can tell a story of how incredible she was. When my daughter was born, Adrienne helped my wife and I pick the proper diaper rash cream. She sent us socks that look like shoes for our baby. I was not that close to Theo Van Gough although he did teach me to say "ich how van yow" which in Dutch means "I love you."

Thomas Hobbes got it right with "life is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short." But let's end this entry positively. Adrienne Shelly's husband created the Adrienne Shelly Foundation which will support female filmmakers in the future and launches officially on Monday at Sundance. Mosaic Media Group is producing another script of Adrienne's called Serious Moonlight. Gijs is in the process of remaking all of Theo's films.

Did you ever see Saving Private Ryan? Remember what Captain Miller (Tom Hanks) said at the end to Private Ryan (Matt Damon)? He said "earn it." Life is too short for all of us so let’s earn it while we can. Oorah.

Traversing Park City
TAMARA: I thought I might actually get to see a movie this afternoon, but that plan was nixed when I found out last minute that we had gotten permission to shoot the Red Carpet for Zoe Cassavettes’ Broken English. We talked with the lovely Zoe, Drea DeMateo, indie queen Parker Posey & Justin Theroux. Video goodies coming soon!

My plan afterwards was to head over to the press office, but this was made slightly more difficult when our friends with the car who were coming to get us got stuck in traffic. One of the changes I’ve really noticed at the festival is how much more spread out it is, and the impossibility of getting around with anything resembling speed. I remember when you could dash from one screening to another, and easily fit in four or five movies in a day. Not so anymore. The combo of far too many cars on the road and more venues further away from one another means you really have to plan out your day in advance. Racquet Club to Egyptian back to Eccles…it’s like going from the Santa Monica to the Valley to Culver City…and it’s always rush hour.

After conquering the shuttle system and spending some quality time in the press office, I made it back to meet with Discovery Films to plan our coverage of their party on Sunday night. Astronaut Buzz Aldrin is supposed to be there and my internal science geek is ridiculously excited at the prospect of getting to interview him.

Evening Activities
SETH: After the screening of American Zombie, I headed to the Black House Cocktail Party with my friend Matt Wall, who is the VP of Production at IndieVest, a new film production and financing company. Matt took off to go to Chef Dance (an amazing dinner experience where a famous chef is flown in every night to cook). I stayed at the party for a while and met some really nice people. From there I ran back to the condo to get rid of my backpack and quickly ran back up to Main Street for the Bold Films/Bobby Party.

The party was packed but it was so cold outside that I stayed for a really long time and met a bunch of new people. My friend Nicolas Chartier showed up and after a second vodka tonic it was time to get out of there. We quickly stopped at the Good Magazine party, which was about to close. We ended up at their after-hours and when I got the opportunity to head home, I took it. I ended the night catching up with my Sundance roommate Glen Reynolds who is a producer (Conversations with Other Women, one of my favorites from last year) and producer’s rep. Sunday day is all about seeing some movies and there are a bunch of big parties on Sunday night so it was really nice to get a decent night’s sleep

SHERI: The evening party is the launch party at Queer Lounge, Silver King, and it is fun and steamy with cute boys in the hot tub and cute girls in fur and lipstick. I rode up the elevator with some young women from LA and asked them if they were filmmakers. They said no, but they were here to party and find filmmaker girlfriends. And there you have the tenor of the evening in one small elevator conversation. It was nearing my bedtime, and at my advanced age, I need all the sleep I can get. So, I made a brisk walk thru the crowd and headed home.

TAMARA: Spent a long time shivering in the cold waiting to get into the Filmmaker Magazine party, as it opened late due to the previous party running over. Once inside, we quickly warmed up with some cocktails and conversation. Then we moved onto a very civilized non-Sundance-ish dinner at Bacchus, where we had some fantastic wine & tapas. Was sorely tempted to go to another party afterwards, but the thought of standing out in the cold again was just too much for me. Was even more tempted to try to go to a movie, but feared I’d fall asleep in the theatre.

Instead, my cohorts and I decided to call it an early night. I was having a hard time dealing with the fact that I had been here for almost two full days and had still not actually seen a film. I was determined to wake up early the next morning and get my butt into a screening.