Advertisement
Published: April 22nd 2007
The Wild West
the Wyoming frontier... I suppose this journey of mine started when I graduated from college. Like most before me, I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life. I did, however, know with a very strong conviction that I wanted to see what I could of the world before getting caught up a career, mortgage, real life, responsibility, etc etc etc. First thing was first, I had to go abroad. So I spent almost two months backpacking the continent of Europe. My experiences here were paramount and I learned so much about myself, the world, and how to say ‘cheers’ in like six different languages. I suppose posting a blog with pictures would be necessary to explain my trip but here were a few highlights anyways: World Cup 2006 in several German cities, 3 days of running with the bulls in Pamplona, Spain, the Mediterranean from the coast of Italy, Paris with Bruce relatives, and getting lost in the mountain villages of Austria by myself. Like I said: paramount experience.
So then I returned to my job in Athens, GA as a bartender with a broader look at the world, a valuable degree, and still no clue what to
On the Road
Dean and I head out west... do next. As fall progressed and the weather grew colder, I began to entertain the idea of becoming a ski bum. Hell, I was already a bum bartender in Athens so I figured I might as well be doing it somewhere cool and skiing all the time would be a huge plus. So as I was narrowing down ski towns and looking for jobs at all the options (Vail, Park City, Lake Tahoe, Breckenridge), I stumbled upon the Sundance Film Festival. They had seasonal positions that lasted between two and three months and the location was Park City, Utah. Perfect, I thought. I could even gain some great experience for my resume and get involved in a field other than Finance (which makes me gag when I think of a possible career path). I applied for a few coordinator positions such as corporate relations, press office, special events, and box office and had a few interviews and ended up landing a coordinator role in the Press Office! I was so pumped up! Utah here I come! So here are some pictures and details of my winter in Park City: Enjoy!
“Head west, young man…” On Wednesday
Home sweet home
my house in Park City, Utah November 29, 2006 I packed my life and dog Dean into my car and said goodbye to my hometown of 19 years, Athens, GA. On this day, I made it through the grasslands of Kentucky and passed the Arch of St. Louis before running into the first major cold front and ice storm (of historic proportions, I later came to find out) to sweep the midwest. Just shy of Kansas City, I pulled into a hotel parking lot and in true Jack Kerouac/Bill Bruce fashion I grabbed my sleeping bag and snuggled up in the back of my Chevy Blazer to weather the night and ensuing storm. Upon waking up I realized I was frozen into my own car!!! Took me a few minutes to kick my door open through a good half inch of ice that completely shelled my car! Predicting the worst once I hit the mountains, I decided to pick up some snow tires for my vehicle in Wichita, KS. No urban camping for me again…I stayed the night in Denver with a good friend from Athens who lives there. I made it over the treacherous continental divide and into Park City on the 1st of December.
Snow Control
imagine two wheel drive in this driveway??? A foot or so of snow already covered the ground. Oh boy!
I found a room for rent in house on Craigslist.com prior to arriving in Park City and it ended up being a perfect living situation for the winter. My one roommate who owned the house was in real estate in PC and had two dogs. She absolutely loved Dean and was great help for me in raising the pup and helping out when I couldn’t be home to take care of him. Like myself, my other roommate had just finished college and was just out for a season working as a ski instructor. He ended up helping me out with all my skiing questions and we skied together quite a bit. Our house was in a quiet, very dog friendly neighborhood about 12 miles from the heart of Park City. On the negative side, our area was very hilly and my 2wd SUV and lack of experience driving in snow made for an interesting winter. Needless to say, you would need more than two hands to count how many times I got stuck in my own neighborhood/driveway. One minor wreck, several feet of snow plowed, tire chains,
Ski bum atlast...
skiing at Park City Mountain Resort. December 2006. new parking strategies, and a few neighborly tow pulls later and I think I finally got the hang of it!
My second day in Park City I bought a season pass to Park City Mountain Resort and hit the slopes for only the fourth time in my life. It took me a while to grow into the 174cm expert level skis that I borrowed from my buddy who lived in Vail for a while, but after two straight weeks of skiing I had all the basics down to become a damn good skier by the end of winter. Don’t get me wrong, I was totally a beginner when I first got out there and had no idea how to ski moguls, black diamonds, powder, or even dare go into the trees. Practice and learning how to ski, nevertheless, was always a fun and a great way to get outside.
I started at Sundance on December 12 and was delighted to see that a lift to Park City Mountain Resort was literally 50 yards from my office chair. For those of you who don’t know, the Sundance Film Festival is the
Sundance
Sundance office in Park City. Check out the ski lift on the left!!! largest independent film festival in America (second in the world only to Cannes). It is the largest market for those films produced independently to become the next Little Miss Sunshine, Blarewitch Project, Napoleon Dynamite, Supersize Me etc. All of which premiered at Sundance and were made “independently” which means with very little cost and not paid for big Hollywood studios who interfere with the filmmakers creative process. OK, so at Sundance the Press Office is the department that generates all the publicity for the Festival as well as for the filmmakers who’s films are accepted the festival (around 200). Most employees in the press office are assigned a certain number of filmmakers which include directors and producers to work with and serve as an intermediary between them and the press, with the goal of producing as much positive publicity as possible. So my job in this office was to collect all the press materials from all the filmmakers and properly distribute them to the press. Examples of press materials are press notes (any notes written by the director about a film including the film synopsis, character bios, cast, etc), DVD copies of the film, photo stills, clip reels of the
Snowboarding
Burton snowboard lesson film that would be shown on the news or David Letterman for example, and movie posters to go at all the screening venues. So take the 193 films in this year’s festial and multiply that by all this crap and you can see how I had my work cut out for me.
It was a really great staff and the experience of working there just couldn’t be cooler. Daily topics in the press office included whether or not we would let Paris Hilton walk down a red carpet for a film she was not in, how Queen Latifa wouldn’t ride in a sponsored car that wasn’t as nice as Jamie Foxx’s, and whether or not Lindsay Lohan would make it out of rehab to attend the premiere of her movie. I had to call Crispin Glover (George McFly from Back to the Future) who directed a movie this year and get onto him about his delinquent press materials. “Hello McFlyyyyyyy!!!” And the perks of the job were awesome! PR firms from L.A would send our office gift baskets weekly with nuts and fruit and sweets and cakes and WINE (which we would open on Fridays around 4PM).
Festival
Famous Egyptian Theatre. We got a free personal snowboard lesson from the Burton snowboard company. I could ski on my lunch break!!! We had great employee parties. And we got to check out and watch all the Sundance movies we wanted to! And like I said, I made some really great friends who live all over (NY, LA, San Fran, Barcelona, Chicago) and live really cool lives. Truly a great experience!
And then there was the FESTIVAL!
At the beginning of every January, the small town of Park City becomes LA and NYC in all their glory. Celebrities, filmmakers, film buffs, film industry hopefuls, media outlets, and corporate sponsors galore descend upon the tiny ski village for ten whole days like a swarm of locusts. My roommate, a Park City local, refers to them as “PIBS”: the “people in black.” I only came across a few of these cell phone wielding socialites but I can totally see where she was coming from. They really take the town over. Every shop on Park City’s Main Street becomes a sponsored venue (ie the Delta Sky Lounge or the HP Cyber Café), the
Music on Main
Of Montreal concert during Sundance bus transit system changes into Sundance Shuttles that take movie goes from venue to venue, and all the hotels/ rental property are filled with PIBs. Needless to say, the ski slopes are entirely empty!!!…except for a few paparazzi photos I saw of Dakota Fanning learning how to ski.
So during these ten days I worked anywhere from 10-16 hours a day, saw as many films as I could, went to as many parties as I could, saw as many concerts as I could, drank and ate as much free stuff as I could, and, of course, slept as much as I could (which wasn’t much). Even though the hours were long, work was really fun. I was stationed at Festival Headquarters at a local hotel ballroom for the most part and I dealt with publicists, filmmakers, and journalists. HQ was really neat place because there were always celebrities walking around to do interviews or check in on their films or friends films. On the first day of the festival Steve Buscemi was by himself drinking coffee and reading the paper right by my desk. So cool. In addition to working the press materials section, as part of the Press
Eagle vs Shark
Shannon and I at a screening of Eagle Vs Shark at the Egyptian Theatre Office I had to help keep press lines for various high profile red carpet movie premieres at night. So basically I was just there to make sure Access Hollywood didn’t get in, let’s say, Terri Hatcher’s face too much. This was a lot of fun too ;-) About halfway through the festival my girlfriend, Shannon, came to visit for the remainder of the festival. This was great because I got to show her a great Sundance Festival experience and we could do a lot of things together. I think she saw like 9 films in only 4 days!!! A few of these we saw together, such as the film Eagle vs Shark which should be in theatres June 2007. To illustrate how cool film festivals are, I got these hats from the producer of the movie Eagle vs Shark that I met riding the Sundance Shuttle and Shannon sat next to the director(who’s very up and coming) at a different movie screening and got his autograph. We also went to a few swanky parties, saw a really great panel discussion, and saw one of our favorite bands from Athens perform LIVE at a Sundance event called Music on Main. What
Deer Valley II
Skiing at Deer Valley with my friends from Georgia during their spring break trip to Park City. March 15, 2007. a great way to end the festival!
Post-festival I worked with Sundance for about two weeks and then my job ended on the 9th of February. I quickly picked up a job at a 4 star restaurant called Café Terigo on Park City’s Main Street as a server and bartender. It was funny because the manager was a University of Georgia graduate and he didn’t even make it passed the education section on my resume before he looked up and said “you’re hired!” This turned out to be a great ski bum job: the money was good and the timing allowed for MUCH more skiing with only a 30 hour work week. On powder days if I had to work a lunch shift I would ski for an hour or so and ski down Town Lift runs where I could ski all the way down to Main Street a block away from work.
So now let’s flash forward to the grand finale of my winter! Caution: these pictures are a bit graphic. On what was supposed to be one of my last ski days of the year before I moved to Las Vegas (more on this
Crash II
the day after-- same clothes from accident. don't worry, all that blood just came from my nose. later) I got into a pretty bad skiing accident. So on Friday April 6th off the McConkeys Lift and down a double diamond area that was mostly steep chutes with trees, I lost control making a turn and (I’m not quite sure how) I ended up sliding down the run on my back and crashing into a tree. I was knocked unconscious for a few seconds and came to with my roommate, who I was skiing with, yelling for help. Ski patrol came and put me on a sled that took me to an ambulance and then to a hospital in Salt Lake City. I had MRI’s taken of my head and the doc examined me for head trauma and internal bleeding. Luckily, nothing serious like this was noticed. I did have a few fractures in my face that would need a second opinion and my eyelid had a tiny cut that needed to be stitched up. I was released shortly after and over the next week I met with an oculoplastic surgeon who was to determine whether or not surgery was needed to fix the fractures. The verdict: no medical reason to fix the fractures because my vision was
Crash I
close up of face the day after crash the same 20/20 and my jaw still closed normally which they were initially worried about. And what I was worried about, my precious looks, didn’t appear to be altered either. Horray! No surgery needed!
And how should one celebrate this fantastic news!?!? BY GOING SKIING!!!! Only 1 week and 1 day after impact, I hit the mean slopes at Snowbird Resort for another final rendezvous with the mountains. This time with a helmet!
So, back to Las Vegas, where I currently reside. Yes, that’s right, I am living in Las Vegas until the end of June. Just on a crazy hunch for excitement when the ski season ended I applied for a position at the Las Vegas film festival CineVegas about a month ago and I got the job!!! So here I am now. I live three miles from the heart of the strip and I can see the Wynn and Palms from my house. Crazy stuff. This time I’m working as the Asst. Corporate Relations Coordinator and handling corporate sponsor accounts. So basically I’ll be involved with this year’s sponsors like Cadillac, Vegas.com, Tiffany & Co,
Day 8!
what the hell! celebrating being ALIVE on the slopes of Snowbird!!! and The Hollywood Reporter for example and making sure they are happy with their investment as well as entertaining them and potential sponsors during the festival. This is a much smaller festival that Sundance but has a much more fun, sexy side. The slogan is “Nine days of film and nine nights of Vegas” with nine featured parties at the top venues and casinos across Las Vegas. And from what I hear, this Festival throws some incredible parties. It should be an awesome time and great Fest to work for. The perks will probably be amazing as well….just this week, on my third night in Vegas, my boss got me and some coworkers comped tickets to the World Premiere of Stomp Out Loud (basically, the broadway show Stomp) at the Planet Hollywood Casino followed by passes to the Premiere after party with the entire cast and other Vegas show celebs. It was a real A-List Vegas event with all the entertainment elite attending. Complete with prime rib, champaigne, and ice sculptors. Vegas, baby.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.089s; Tpl: 0.015s; cc: 5; qc: 44; dbt: 0.0367s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
