Saturday started with the Writer’s Guild of America hosting a brunch. We boarded an inbound shuttle that slowly wound its way through suburbia toward Park City. We arrived a half hour late. By that time, all the food was gone. But we ended up sitting across from Stephen Shiel whose disturbing horror and gore movie, Mum and Dad supposedly gives a whole new twist to “family values.”
A filmmaker from the UK, Stephen’s sales rep happens to be one of the agencies that have contacted us, a group that handles edgy content. However, because of the new law that is supposed to take effect on the 26th of January in the UK, we’re not sure our movie would be legal in England. It is a law designed to limit content on the internet in the UK. It targets the type of material that PD created at Insex, where sexual content, bondage, and sado-masochism are mixed together. I remember reading about the law a year ago. Sexual content by itself is permissible. And horrific and violent content is permissible. But the mixing of the two would be illegal. A recent article in the Daily Telegraph quotes the Culture Secretary as saying, “There is content that should just not be available to be viewed. That is my view. Absolutely categorical. This is not a campaign against free speech, far from it; it is simply there is a wider public interest at stake when it involves harm to other people. We have got to get better at defining where the public interest lies and being clear about it.”

After the brunch concluded (without having eaten breakfast), I donned our Graphic Sexual Horror strait jacket and walked up and down Main Street with Atom, advertising our movie. It was a difficult experience. The staff at Slamdance promotes public displays and we discussed this with them. They seemed to think that the crowd would be fine with the promotional walk down Main Street. And many people did enjoy the stunt and had their picture taken with us. However, many filmgoers could not even look at us, sometimes a look of shame in their faces. For my part, I relish anonymity. Being a writer, I love to stay in the background and watch others. So the stunt was a huge stretch for me. The lack of food and sleep combined with the strain of the public display completely drained me of energy. So I skipped the panel on Media Distribution and bussed back to the hotel to eat a decent meal and crash.

Anna and I arrived back in Park City to attend a Sundance Party for the Swedish director of the film “The Queen and I.” Far too many people crowded into the Absolut Lounge. Not even standing room if you ask me. These attendees were much more sedate and reserved than any we’ve seen at the Slamdance parties. Anna and I had inched our way back toward the exit, looking for escape when we literally bumped into a group of journalists from American Cinematographer who were hyped for our premier screening on Sunday evening. Then we met up with two journalists from Slug, an underground Salt Lake City publication.
These two also hold tickets to our screening and are jazzed to get their hands on a screening copy. We suddenly realize that Donna (Princess Donna) is due in from the airport very soon and we need to meet her at our hotel. So we hop into a taxi and get back just ahead of her. She and Atom head out to the Glamdance Party at the Queer Lounge. Partied out, Anna and I crash, hoping for some sleep before our big day.