Movies

Sundance Boycott: See What the Boys in the Back Room Will Have

As David Poland reports at The Hot Blog, John Aravosis, the blogger behind the misguided movement to boycott the Sundance Film Festival, is now targeting the Holiday Village Cinemas in Park City. This triplex — two screens are used for public screenings, and the other is devoted to press screenings during Sundance — is operated by the Cinemark Chain. And Cinemark’s CEO donated $9,999 toward the successful campaign for California’s hateful Proposition 8, which overturned gay marriage. What would the festival do without these three screens in a town where there is only one other actual movie theater, the Egyptian? (All of the other venues are makeshift to varying degrees, including the flagship Eccles Theater, which Tom Hanks joked reminded him of his high-school auditorium when he premiered a movie there this year). Back in 2002, the Holiday Village was unavailable because renovations there ran over schedule. So their public screenings were moved into the two ballrooms at the Yarrow Hotel that are normally converted into press screening rooms. And the press screenings were moved into (a) an old garage and (b) the back room of a bar on Main Street. Filmmakers, who are upset enough about the awful acoustics at the Eccles — designed for live performances, not movies — were justifiably horrified. I vividly remember having to sit on the floor to watch “Tadpole” badly digitally projected at the back-room venue.