Brent Hoff, editor and co-founder of Wholphin, was our official Rumpus correspondent at The Sundance Film Festival. This is his final correspondence:
Hey! What happened? You thought we were hanging out?! I know I know! We were having so much fun sharing stories and then I sort of just disappeared from the party, like maybe you thought I met someone fancier to hang out with? No of course not!
I just had to go meet some producer friends real quick at the High West and then we ended up in a drinking competition! It was a business meeting/drinking competition! I have no idea! Nine of us drank fifty-four cocktails called “Dead Man’s Boots” and I’m sorry. I know this isn’t college. Don’t take it personally. This sort of thing happens all the time here. You make the plans with your friend and then one of you has to cancel because someone has to go party somewhere else with someone more important to their careers. There is no blame. It’s understood. This is a game of positioning! Even the self-righteous doc crowd understands this! It’s like my Hollywood swami said when I asked him if he thought I had to move to LA in order to have a career. “Film is a business of trust” he meditated, “In order for people to hire you they have to trust you, and in order for people to trust you they have to know you, and in order for them to know you they have to get fucking wasted partying with you. Understand? You need to move down here and fuck shit up!”
I have yet to take his advice but I know he’s right. The fun is business and the business is 16:9 anamorphic fun. And no one needs me to tell them that sex and various intoxicants are the harmonic oscillators that maintain the velocity of this perpetual emotion machine.
All my new successful friends out here seem to innately embody the spirit of my swami’s words. But unfortunately I suck at drinking. You know what anamorphic means? From the Greek word it means “formed again.” It was invented by the military to give tanks a wider view of the battlefield. My last 3 days of Sundance were shot with a decidedly non-anamorphic lens. I don’t remember shit. We were shot gunning beers on a balcony like a bunch of frat kids. I was talking to that actress from Crawdaddy. Then people were puking and laughing at the noises they made while they were puking! Or was that me? Followed by the drinking competition I told you about, followed by 18-year-old shots of Scotch. Followed by me tearing up talking to Paul Danno, then I sent a couple of texts I really really really shouldn’t have sent, which was allegedly followed by discussing the quantum mechanics of sending such drunken texts with Ricki Lake, allegedly, and then it gets dark… The last thing I remember is Harvey Weinstein sticking his finger in my chest at Club Tao saying “This guy’s not with me!”
And I tried to come back here to hang with you guys but I got dragged to this party with a friend of mine which we ended up not being able to get in to, even though it was her party!
“This is not a matter of coolness!” The doorwoman / policewoman yelled at the top of her lungs, filling the night with a frosty cloud of rage. It was insane. She’s an executive and she couldn’t get into her own party at Sundance! What more do you need to know about this place?
It’s a fucking shit show out here. But here’s what you need to understand. It was all business. All of it. I made all the connections and now many more people know me and trust me because they got wasted with me. So in other words, by being a shit-faced obnoxious mess, I played it exactly right. Jesus. I’m gonna be sick for two weeks. See you next year!
