THE 25th Sundance Film Festival faced a few big obstacles this year. Due to the crashing currency, corporate sponsorship was down. Fewer films sold, fewer parties were held. The festival ran January 15–25, and Obama’s inauguration on January 20 had most of the city’s occupants focused on reality TV of the highest order, not independent cinema, for much of the day. Since the festival is held in Utah, the center of the Mormon Church, many people announced that they would boycott the state in protest over the Church’s support of California’s Prop. 8, a measure passed in November banning same-sex marriages in California. Thus it was a silver anniversary that could have gone sour, but Sundance 2009 managed to keep the seats filled. The streets may have seemed empty, but the theaters saw an increase in ticket sales over last year.
For John Cooper, director of programming for the festival, it was a triumph against the economics of the times. Cooper, who is also the creative director at the Sundance Institute, has seen a lot of changes in Sundance over his nineteen years with the festival. Among these changes has been a gradual growth in the contribution of GLBT filmmakers who’ve come through the festival over the years. Cooper, who is an out gay man, would occasionally be blamed for queer favoritism in the programming, though there was never any evidence of this. Now, with the sudden departure of Geoffrey Gilmore as the director of Sundance (he moved to Tribeca Enterprises in February), second-in-command Cooper has become the head of the most important film festival in the country.
I interviewed Cooper face-to-face at the Sundance Film Festival last January.
Gay & Lesbian Review: You receive thousands of submissions annually. How do you decide which films get in? G&LR: So you spend many days watching a lot of good films! G&LR: You and others on senior Sundance staff downplay the idea that Sundance is a “political” event. Could you elaborate? G&LR: There’s no way to have a discussion about Sundance without talking about GLBT cinema. How has GLBT cinema benefited from Sundance and vice versa? G&LR: What’s been your response? G&LR: Do you have any Sundance favorites from years past? G&LR: In the 25 years of Sundance, where do you think 2009 ranks? G&LR: How did the inauguration affect the festival this year? G&LR: Did Proposition 8 influence Sundance this year, given the involvement of the Mormon Church and the threat of a boycott? G&LR: Which raises the question, why are you still in Utah? G&LR: What can we expect from 2010?
John Cooper: We have a first watching stage where there is close to forty people participating. Ethically, we feel every film should be watched all the way through by at least one person. It’s really a cream-will-rise system where films are rated, then they go up to my programming staff. Then we put together a finalist list. A lot of days I don’t even come to the office. I stay at home and watch films. I start watching at around 5:30 a.m. until about 9:00 p.m. In those final weeks before selection, it’s like every single day, all day long, all weekend. The thing about a film is that you really can’t talk about it unless you’ve seen it. That takes at least ninety minutes. There’s no speeding up the process
JC: Right, which actually makes it harder. I sort of miss the days when I watched a lot of bad films. You can move through them quicker. Every film has an argument. When we go into the final programming of the festival, there are usually ten to fifteen more films in each category than we need. So you know a lot of them are going to end up on the floor, but you have a good experience with all those films. You don’t go in there to argue to be right. When I didn’t get a film, I’m dying to know why somebody else responded to it. It’s hard to find 100 to 125 feature films that you love. You want to make sure there will be films for everyone to find.
JC: I don’t think it’s our job to have a political agenda and show moves to support that. If it’s a bad gay movie, I’m not going to show it. As a nonprofit organization, we’re not really supposed to be promoting a political view. Fortunately, most independent filmmakers are on the liberal side of things. It’s not like I have to sit through and listen to a bunch of right-wing Christian films. They don’t submit to Sundance. [But] if I found a film with right-wing Christian values and I still thought it was a great film, I would show it. I’m not here to be the arbiter of political correctness; I’m here to find art. I can’t force films into the festival just because they’re GLBT. They still have to have the quality or I’m not doing my job. We’re a cultural arts organization first.
JC: We benefit by looking progressive and by showing some of the coolest art. We look for originality of story and we look for originality in how the story is told. This community has presented Todd Haynes, Gus Van Sant, Lisa Cholodenko, and Tom Kalin. They knew this was a great place to come; we didn’t have to go out and convince them that it’s a safe place. We never ghettoized the GLBT films. There were no special sidebars of GLBT film. We always held them to the same standards. Because of my background and who I am, I’ve been charged with being partial to GLBT film—not so much in public, but in letters. I’ve gotten some hate mail.
JC: I kind of laugh it off. We’ve shown some pretty crazy stuff. We’ve shown Bruce LaBruce’s films, which tend to get pretty pornographic. In a way, somebody could easily walk in and say, “This is just pornographic.” I say, “Yes, but is it a good film? It is, and that’s why we’re showing it.” There’s hardly been a gay director who hasn’t come through Sundance in some way.
JC: High Art, Poison, Edward II, You Can Count on Me, The Squid and the Whale, Little Miss Sunshine, Motorcycle Diaries, Napoleon Dynamite, The Big Lebowski, and Run, Lola Run. I remember when Longtime Companion won the Audience Award [in 1990]during the AIDS crisis and being very blown away by that. This year, Push [Sundance Jury Award winner] was so raw and real. When you can shock me, I know it’s something special.
JC: It’s going to be considered a watershed year. Even with the economy, our ticket sales were actually up this year. There was less of that hoopla of people just coming to Sundance not really for the right reasons. I’m fine with that. I’m sort of over the hype, the marketing people who have no real interest in Sundance other than peddling their products.
JC: The only time we ever changed our dates in a drastic way was when the Olympics were in Salt Lake City [in 2002]. There have been inaugurations going on during the festival that nobody paid any attention to at all. One night we opened during the beginning of Desert Storm [Jan. 16, 1991]. That was really shocking, not a very fun opening night.
JC: It made us worry coming into it, but there wasn’t a lot we could do. People wanted us to change venues. We would have dropped Holiday Cinemas, which is what everybody wanted us to do. It’s four theaters. Two of the theaters are press and industry screenings. It probably would have cost us $250,000. There was talk of a boycott, but I don’t think there really was a boycott. You’re only hurting two people by not having an audience: Sundance and the filmmakers. I do believe people should call attention to [Prop 8]. A boycott calls attention to an issue. Then you hurt them financially—that’s the whole point of it.
JC: I like the subversive nature of showing Bruce LaBruce there. There’s a whole group of cool kids growing up in this repressive society, and Sundance is the only thing there for them in a year.
JC: That we’ll be there. It’s very scary for the arts right now. Sponsorship is not looking good; companies have cut back. Funding for the arts has always been tough. It’s a hard sell, because we’re not saving lives or solving hunger or a medical crisis. We really need patrons of the arts. Our country pays nothing for this. In Europe there’s government funding for this kind of stuff. Cannes and Berlin get a lot of government money for the culture that they’re bringing to the place. That’s unheard of in America. It’s so sad.
