Burrows, Blunt, and GLAAD at the Queer Lounge

Hi, it's Anne.  Here's how things have changed since I was here two years ago.  This morning I tried to get a taxi to a screening and it was Out of the Question.  The size of the festival crowd has blown right past the taxi population. But after a high-altitude sprint, I caught the Red One bus to Prospector Square, where I flew in, grabbed my press credentials, and hit the next bus headed for Eccles Theater, the biggest venue at the festival. 

The first film of my day was The Guitar, directed by Amy Redford (daughter of Robert, who's also the father of Sundance).  Redford's first film stars the tall, gorgeous bisexual Brit Saffron Burrows as a repressed woman who learns she has two months to live, rents a ritzy Manhattan loft, and goes on a credit card spree that includes a stack of Marshall amps and a Fender Stratocaster (as a little girl, she wanted one).  Frankly, Redford's first-time filmmaking foibles were obvious.  But Burrows, a thinking-woman's sex symbol, was fun to watch anyway, especially in her love scenes with Paz de la Huerta, unconvincing as a pizza delivery girl but more at ease in bed; and with dIsaach De Bankole as a deliveryman whose biceps are as appealing as his smile. 

When Redford brought the cast and crew up for Q&A, she credited Burrows, her star, with a lack of vanity very unusual in an actress who's "so stunning."

Burrows, up next, did that unnerving British thing of being not just stunning but witty as well.  If rumors are true, the London-born actress has excellent taste in real-life romance.  For a long time she was in a relationship with gifted British director Mike Figgis; since then she's said to have been linked to classical actress Fiona Shaw.  (Actually, the very classy Shaw also plays the class-challenged Aunt Petunia in the Harry Potter movies.)  If you don't remember Burrows from any of those associations, you might just remember her being felt up under the table in a restaurant booth by Salma Hayek in Frida. If you don't remember that, you may not be gay after all.

MAIN STREET!

With the sun sinking and the temperature dropping, I was carried along in a mass of people toward Park City's Main Street, where the parties--at least the first round of parties--were getting underway. 

Everybody on the bus!   (Traffic was so heavy that this bus couldn't get to the station.  The driver let us all out two blocks away.)  Incidentally, the bus is a great place to hear juicy conversations about deals in progress and so on. 

My destination: The Queer Lounge, bigger than ever, with a great big shingle hanging out over Main Street.  Inside, it's great as well, with a quiet(er) downstairs with couches and a cool display of vintage queer film posters curated by Jenni Olson.  Upstairs is the DJ and dance floor and...

A great view of the Main Street scene from the Queer Lounge's smoking balcony.  It's cold out there, though, so I zipped inside to chat up our hosts for this particular Queer Lounge reception…

The guys from GLAAD:  Entertainment Director Damon Romine and President Neil Giuliano.  That's me in the middle.

Also in the house are our compadres from Out magazine, Matt Breen and Bill Keith.  Hard to feel competitive with guys you like so much, but we try.  Whoops, check the watch, and it's time to head for the Racquet Club, for the world premiere of Sunshine Cleaning, starring red-hot Amy Adams and today's second disturbingly smart Brit, Emily Blunt, as sisters breaking out of their little-money, less-hope lives by opening a cleaning service that specializes in mopping up the gore after murders and suicides and such. 

You can tell this is one of the festival's buzzed-about films.  As the bus crawls its way toward the Racquet Club, passengers count down the minutes...six, five, four...till the standby tickets are released.  As we pull up, hopeful moviegoers blast out of all the doors, running on the icy pavement in the parking lot.  Meanwhile, a dozen figures, men and women, walk up and down the lines, looking for an extra ticket.

The excitement continues inside, for me at least, because I get to see Quentin Tarantino stopped cold by a festival volunteer who won't let him out of the theater to go to the men's room without his ticket stub.   To his credit, he doesn't pull a "don't you know who I am"; he just lumbers off in search of the ticket.

The film itself is highly charming, even if it doesn't entirely come together.  With Adams and Blunt supported by an ace cast including Alan Arkin and eight-year-old Jason Spevack, the acting is a pleasure. 

Afterward, as the cast and crew head up for the Q&A, there are few questions from the audience.   They clearly liked the movie, so why not speak up and discuss it?  One audience member gets it right:  People weren't asking questions because we were too tired.  What can I say?  It's been a long day.  And Emily Blunt (above center, flanked on the right by director Christine Jeffs and screenwriter Megan Holley) leaves the crowd in a great mood as she describes forming a sisterly bond with Amy Adams during the location shoot in Albuquerque, NM.  "We cooked for each other," Blunt says, talking about visits to one another's rental houses.  "When you're in Albuquerque…"  Her eyes roll up, and we understand the rest of the sentence: "You're all you've got."  She also does a mean impersonation of Alan Arkin fending off his hero-worshiping young leading ladies:  "Get OFFA me!"

As I write this, the late-night parties are going on all over the snow-covered landscape.  As for me, thought, I headed back home.  I knew I'd never top Emily Blunt channeling Alan Arkin. 

More tomorrow.  Meanwhile, stay warm!