Deseret News | 4 festival films have local ties

4 festival films have local ties

By Jeff Vice
Deseret Morning News

Published: Thursday, Jan. 18, 2007 12:12 a.m. MST

RELATED CONTENT | E-MAIL | PRINT | FONT + -

The Sundance Film Festival is looking a lot like Utah this year — and not just because of its Park City and Salt Lake City screening venues (as well as those in a handful of other communities).

Three films featured in the 2007 edition of Sundance — the features "Dark Matter" and "It is fine! EVERYTHING IS FINE.," and the short documentary "Mother Superior" — were shot in Utah and have strong local ties.

And so does a fourth film, "American Fork," which has been selected to play in the competing Slamdance Film Festival.

MERYL STREEP stars in "Dark Matter," a drama based on the real-life story of a Chinese astronomy scholar who encountered racial discrimination while pursuing his doctorate studies in America. (Streep plays a university patron who befriends the student, played by Liu Ye, who is also in the current "Curse of the Golden Flower.")

Aside from some second-unit photography and one sequence filmed in China, the movie was shot entirely in Utah during June and early July. Utah Valley State College in Orem housed much of the production, as did areas of Federal Heights and a neighborhood near Trolley Square mall.

The production also boasted nearly 60 Utah crew members, including Jeff Miller, who worked as the line producer, or unit-production manager, which is essentially the troubleshooter of movie productions.

Story continues below

Miller reported that the film was relatively trouble-free, however. "It went fairly smoothly, and the other producers were genuinely pleased by the professionalism of the local crews, as well as the variety of shooting locations."

In fact, Miller says the film's other producers lobbied to shoot in Utah after making another movie here, the yet-to-be-released drama "Bonneville."

He said he's "thrilled" that the film got into Sundance. It is being shown in the Spectrum section, one of the noncompetitive categories.

"I'm proud to have been associated with the film, and even prouder that it's being included at Sundance, where, hopefully, it will find a receptive audience," said Miller, who also works with film veteran Scott Swofford's Vineyard Productions locally.

"MOTHER SUPERIOR" being selected by the 2007 Sundance Film Festival is by far the biggest feather-in-the-cap so far for Spy Hop Productions, a local nonprofit media center for youth.

An examination of local methamphetamine use, "Mother Superior," went into production two years ago, when filmmakers Alex Mack and Diana Montero were high school students (at West High School and Hillcrest High School, respectively), and the two were paired up at Spy Hop.

According to Mack, now a student at the University of Utah, she had a personal investment in the story. "I was having a hard time coming up with an idea for a project. But I knew that some of my relatives had struggled with meth addiction."

Jack Allred, a documentary-arts instructor with Spy Hop, encouraged her to explore the idea with Montero's help. And a "Pitch-Nic" fund-raising program helped the students come up with $12,000 to make the movie.

Exhibition at a major film festival is a dream come true for Mack and Montero, both of whom said they have future filmmaking ambitions. "Never, ever did I believe that I could get a movie into Sundance so soon," said Montero. "I keep pinching myself to see if this is all real."

Allred said "Mother Superior" has also screened at other festivals around the country, though none are on the scale of Sundance. And he said this is an important step for the 7-year-old Spy Hop program. "It's nice to see our programs and students finally getting some of the recognition and attention they deserve. Of course, it helps that this is a terrific piece of filmmaking."

HUBBEL PALMER is a native Salt Laker, and his offbeat comedy "American Fork" is as personal as filmmaking gets.

"It's all I've thought about for years. Pieces of it have been in my mind since high school," said Palmer, who wrote the film and stars as Tracy Orbison, a character described as "a grocery clerk with the mind of a dreamer, the soul of a poet and the body of a really fat man."

He insisted, however, that the film is not autobiographical.

The film, which co-stars William Baldwin and Mary Lynn Rajskub (who plays Chloe on "24"), was selected as one of 10 films competing in Slamdance's Narrative Feature category.

"I'm excited to show it to people, but a little nervous," Hubbel said. "A friend of mine told me about a life workshop from the '70s, where part of the training was to stand on a stage naked while the rest of the group applauded you. While there's no nudity in the film, I think that's a little what this will feel like. Minus the applause."

Equally excited about its prospects is Brigham Young University graduate Jeremy Coon, who produced the film and has been to Slamdance twice — in 2003, with "Peluca," a short film that served as the basis for the 2004 hit "Napoleon Dynamite," and last year with the Audience Award-winning comedy "The Sasquatch Dumping Gang."

"(It's) the third film I've been lucky enough to have premiere at Slamdance," Coon said, adding that he "couldn't be happier to be a part of a festival" where filmmakers Christopher Nolan ("Batman Begins") and Marc Forster ("Finding Neverland") were first discovered."

If you go