PARK CITY — Just a year ago, Randy Barton was hanging out in the lobby of the iconic Egyptian Theatre with Bill and Hillary Clinton and Bill Gates, waiting for the start of a Sundance movie premiere.
This year?
Well …
If anything illustrates the difference between then and now, between having 100,000 people in black invade Main Street and having none, it is here, at ground zero, as it were.
Nothing, other than Robert Redford, says Sundance Film Festival quite like the Egyptian.
It was the first venue used by the 2-year-old U.S. Film and Video Festival when it relocated from Salt Lake City to Park City in January of 1981.
In the 40 years since, it has been the festival’s signature locale.
It’s where Redford gives his opening day state-of-the-film-world press briefing.
It’s where people stand under the marquee and take pictures to prove they were here.
It’s where celebrities go to be seen and not seen.
But not this year. Not in the year when a villain virus wiped out moviegoing, along with everything else.
The Egyptian’s marquee tells the sad tale. On one side it reads: “Sundance Film Festival.” On the other side: “Online at Sundance.org.”
English translation: You can watch it on your phone, but you can’t watch it here.
Longtime relationship with festival
No one knows the Egyptian’s relationship with Sundance better than Randy Barton, a well-known Park City radio and TV personality for the past 45 years.
These days, Randy is director/manager of the Egyptian, a position he’s held since 2009. He oversees the day-to-day operation of the historic showhouse for Park City Performances, the nonprofit group that programs the Egyptian, and for the Save Our Show Foundation, the organization that owns the building.
But his relationship with the Egyptian and Sundance stretches much further than that. Back in 1981, when Sundance first came to town, he was part of the acting company that sold concessions and assisted with house management at the Egyptian. He was there for the first Sundance movie shown in Park City.
In the four decades since, he’s been part of every Sundance that’s come to town.
He’s part of this year’s Sundance, too. It was Randy who got out a ladder and changed the marquee.
Just days before the opening of Virtual Sundance 2021, Randy is standing in front of the historic Egyptian, calmly answering a reporter’s questions while posing for a photo. He appears about as busy as the fabled Maytag repairman.
What a difference a year makes
Normally, he’d be up to here with managing the theater and nailing down a million details.
This year, he says, inventing a new word while he adjusts his face mask, “I’m pandemicking.”
He laments the loss of the real Sundance — the buzz, the crowds, the excitement. Can it only have been a year ago, he muses with some wonder, that he was standing in the lobby when he turned around and almost bumped into the Clintons, and then turned around and almost bumped into Bill Gates?
He laments the loss of the perk that goes to members of the Pharaoh Club — the numerous civic-minded lovers of the arts who pay annual tax-deductible subscriptions to keep the Egyptian afloat. In exchange for their donations, their reward package includes tickets to Sundance films.
What he most laments is the 95-year-old Egyptian not getting to show off.
“I love buildings as much as I love people,” he says, “and I especially love this building. What I’ll miss most is just not having it be the artistic, cultural capital of the world for 10 days.”
But he does his best to shrug it all off. He’s confident the pandemic will end. He’s confident the physical Sundance will return. He’s confident the Egyptian will again be the artistic, cultural capital of the world.
“This is not nearly as hard to deal with as when the theater was almost lost to foreclosure,” he says, referencing the early 1990s when Save Our Show came to the rescue. “It’s not as hard as the 2008 financial meltdown, it’s not as hard as the ghost town days (in the 1950s), it’s not as hard as the Great Depression. I could go on and on. This COVID is not the biggest thing, not even close. This is just the next one to get over.”
from Deseret News https://ift.tt/2Yr9Ors
No hay comentarios:
Publicar un comentario