January 24, 2012

The Sundance Festival continues, and Canadian filmmaker Jamie Travis continues to bring us updates on his time there. Looks like Jamie received some excellent news today: according to Deadline.com, Focus Features just acquired Jamie's feature debut, 'For A Good Time Call', for a little over $2 million.

On his travels, he ran into director Philippe Falardeau, who will be in the red chair talking to George tomorrow night at 11:05 pm. Philippe's 'Monsieur Lazhar' did get an Oscar nod this morning. Here's how the rest of Jamie's Saturday went:

SATURDAY, JAN 21

After a treacherous drive from Park City to the Sundance Resort, I ran into my favourite Canadian director, Philippe Falardeau. His film 'Monsier Lazhar' might be nominated for the foreign language Oscar! We'll find out on Tuesday. Fingers crossed.

This is as close as I got to Robert Redford. Even from distance, I could tell he's a good-looking man. And inspiring to boot!



On the treacherous ride home with Philippe, this caught my eye. I don't mean to condone taking pictures while driving.

Later I had a lovely dinner with Ari Graynor and her wonderful mother (A parenting expert! That's why Ari is so great!) and Justin Long.

And at the late night WME party - the most raging house party I have ever seen - I met up with the wonderful James Wolk, one of the stars of my movie and a future movie star, I assure you.

Jamie Travis's Sundance Diary - January 21, 2012

Jamie Travis is an award-winning Canadian short film director who's been a regular at TIFF and Sundance in past years with films like 'The Saddest Boy in the World', the 'Patterns' trilogy, and 'The Armoire'. This year, Jamie is at the Sundance Festival with his first feature film, 'For a Good Time Call'. The movie is getting a lot of buzz - it's a female-driven comedy about two college acquaintances who move in together, only for one girl to discover that her new roommate has an unexpected second job...

Jamie's in Park City, Utah at Sundance right now, and he's been kind enough to share his experiences with us in a series of blog posts. Here's how Jamie's first two days went:

FRIDAY, JAN 20

Highlight of Day 2: the Filmmakers Party at the St. Regis Hotel. My new favourite word is "funicular." It also happens to be my new favourite mode of transport. With Katie Anne Naylon in tow (she's the co-writer and producer of For a Good Time, Call...), we rode the St. Regis funicular to the St. Regis Hotel. As it turns out, a furnicular is a gondola that rides up a mountain. 

The party was full of fabulous people, and with these people we enjoyed throwing around the word "funicular" in any way we could. Others shared our passion. Then we put our rogue promotional strategy into effect: the clandestine placement of cocktail napkins with our stunt phone number included: 1-855-5MMM-HMMM. Too many digits, but it's all we could get. And people were calling the number! We were quite proud of ourselves. Could this be the beginning of our Sundance buzz? Also, I have a new passion for food in cones, of which there was plenty. I made a drunk proclamation that from now on, I would only eat food from cones. My self-consciously regal tone was mildly humourous to a few.

The closest thing I had to a celebrity sighting was meeting the guys behind IMDB. The guy on the left is a friendly Brit and also the CEO and co-founder. I asked him if he could increase my IMDB star meter by 10 000 points and he gave me a polite smile. When I invited him to our Sunday screening, he said he was having dinner with Rebecca Hall. I would miss my own screening for dinner with Rebecca Hall.

THURSDAY, JAN 19

My first night in Park City, I noticed a trend: steak and sushi in one restaurant. Why is this not everywhere? My friend Sarah and I passed by two such restaurants (see photos) before settling on Blind Dog, Park City's premier purveyor of steak and sushi. I took no photos there but noticed another trend: bulky, red-headed, jovial waiters. I like this Park City. Then I went to bed.