Slamdance Film Festival, Park City!

Well aint be able to blog for a while, me and Nay have been busy with rewrites on Slaughter and we’ve now handed in our first re-write and the good news is that Greg liked it - although it does need a dialogue polish and a few minor changes.

But anyway going back from where I left off.

So January 20th 2007 it’s about 8:00pm and I get a phone call from John Stoddard, he’s one of the organisers of Slamdance and the horror competition. John informs us that we have won and he would very much like us to try and make it over to Utah for the festival and to meet the producers and accept our award! Great! So as quick as you can say “book me a flight” we we’re on a flight, 15hours in total… murder because I hate flying and this was Nays first time on a plane and it didn’t bother him one bit… So we fly to Utah, changing at LAX and then heading onto to Salt Lake City, Utah.

9:00pm 24th January we land at Salt Lake City, jump in a cab and head to the Holiday Inn – tired, jet lagged and starving.

The next morning we’re up bright and early and take a 45 minute cab ride to Park City and meet up with John Stoddard, Peter Baxter (who is a fellow Englishman) and the rest of the Slamdance crew at the Treasure Mountain Inn, Slamdance’s base camp. The day was spent watching movies at the festival – The Path of Most Resistance was cool and funny and the star of the movie, Spencer Grammer, was there, she’s hot (daughter of Kelsey). Slamdance is amazing with Sundance going on right across the street. For the duration of these two festivals Park City really comes alive - it's just packed out with movie fans with everynight a party, bars are packed with huge queues to get in the places!!

So it’s not till later that night at a Slamdance party that we meet Greg Segal and Cheri Wozniak, Slaughter’s producers. Greg has his own production company along with John Gallagher, Angel Baby Entertainment and Cheri works for Maverick. It was a pretty amazing thing to actually meet producers and talk about Slaughter. That night we were taken to a Thai restaurant, the meal was very nice, although the beer was pretty poor, no Fosters and no Vodka! So during the meal we talk movies and horror movies, discussing everything from The Sixth Sense to The Hills Have Eye’s remake to Wolf Creek – I’m a little surprised that one of the producers didn’t really think too much of Wolf Creek or The Hills Have Eye’s as I think they’re both amazing, especially if you look at the deeper issues and undertones within The Hills Have Eye’s and how it relates to 9/11 particularly how the US creates a monster it can’t control and the monster comes back to cause murder and chaos.

After the meal we head back to Cheri’s place and wow what a place it is, a three story house that she’s renting for the duration of Slamdance. Oh and MC Hammer is there having beers with a Eric Thompson (head of Maverick Red) and a few other guys. We talk more about Slaughter. Cheri likes the script but feels it needs something more added to the end in particular, something that would make audiences want to see a second movie. This is a good idea as originally when we wrote Slaughter we conceived it has a quick one off horror movie that pays homage to Japanese horror cinema. But adding a twist ending just for the sake of it is always horrible and as much as we liked the idea we knew that if it was going to be accepted by an audience then it would have to make sense and not just be tacked on. The movies that twists that I like are from movies like The Usual Suspects, The Sixth Sense, Haute Tension (Switchblade Romance) and Ringu (The Ring) So it’s like 4am and we’ve been drinking bud all night at Cheri’s place and Mathew St Patrick turns up (Keith from Six Feet Under) he’s a big guy he’s also starring in Rogue (War as it’s now known) along with Jet Li and Jason Statham, we tried to pick his brains about the movie, being Jet Li fans, but he didn’t give too much away.

Flash forward a couple of days and we’re at the Slamdances award ceremony where we get our Sparky award, the Sparky’s original design is actually designed by Shepherd! We’re told not to kiss them as it’s a tradition for the organisers of Slamdance to pee on the Sparky’s! Now I still don’t know how true this is, but I wasn’t taking any risks!

The after show party is cool and I’m drinking this Michael Collins whisky and red bull, it tastes horrible but I drink it anyway, it’s free! That night we head back to a house party with the Slamdance crew at Red Stone– where they have a lot of alcohol… a lot of Vodka and cranberry! Once at the party I have a pretty in depth conversation with John and a producer, Joey, about The Stone Roses and Oasis – see they are popular in the USA!!!!! Nay has disappeared somewhere with Erin! I suddenly feel like this is becoming more about the parties than the script and I like parties!

The next morning I wake up in a bed I don’t recognise with a killer hangover! Not good!

So Slamdance finishes as does Sundance, everyone leaves and we’re told by the producers that they’ll be in touch with script notes about the Slaughter re-write!

Park City suddenly becomes empty and we figure it times to get the hell outta here!