The Road to Sundance is Difficult — Literally

”Storytelling needs a sense of place.”
—Robert Redford

The road to Sundance is difficult. Especially in a two-wheel drive car at wintertime. Because of snow, chains on your tires are often required if you’re not in an all-wheel drive or four wheel drive vehicle.

I’m speaking of the literal road to Sundance, Utah. Of course, the Sundance Film Festival (which starts today) is a difficult place for filmmakers to get their films shown. Because of the high volume of films submitted for relatively few spots, the acceptance rate I’ve read is less than 2%. But we’re going back to the roots today. Long before I started this blog Screenwriting from Iowa …and Other Unlikely Places in 2008, and before what would become known as the Sundance Film Festival, and I think even before there was a place known as Sundance, Utah. Back to the early ’60s when actor/director Robert Redford took a drive into Provo Canyon and up Route 92 toward Mount Timpanogos and ended up buying two acres of land (because that’s all he could afford).

But in 1969, on the success of his roles in Barefoot in the Park and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Redford was able to purchase an additional 500 acres. That is where the Sundance Mountain Resort is located. I’m actually not 100% sure, but I think the seeds of the Sundance Film Festival were birthed at the Sundance Institute started in Sundance in 1981. I think back then, Utah would officially have qualifed as an unlikely place to be a future Mecca for independent filmmakers. This year due to COVID the festival is online (and select theaters around the country), but Park City is normally the main hub for the festival (with many of the films shown in Salt Lake City). Both of those areas are about an hour north of Sundance.

My wife and I were fortunate enough to make a stop at the Sundance Resort in December. I took the photos on this post and soaked in what drew Redford to the area. I’ve been a fan of Redford’s since I was ten years old and saw a re-release of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid in theaters. “Think you used enough dynamite there Butch?” In high school I did a report on old west ghost towns and remember reading a book by Redford called The Outlaw Trail. For a kid growing up in a cement block home in the suburbs of Orlando, that old west stuff was (and still is) fascinating.

I always thought of the Old West as places like Colorado, Wyoming and Montana—but Utah is where many of the great old westerns were shot including Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and Stagecoach. The book When Hollywood Came to Utah by James D’Arc covers that history well. After I graduated from film school back in the ’80s one of my stops was the Utah Shakespeare Festival in Cedar City. It only took me a few more decades to make it up the road to Sundance. Hope I can make it in person to the Sundance Film Festival one of these days. But, hey, this is a reminder that there are all kinds of things happening in unlikely places.

P.S. Even if you can’t make it Utah—and even if you don’t have a car—there are online ways for you to learn from the Sundance Institute through their Sundance co//ab website where you can pay for classes and even watch some free videos on the filmmaking process.

Scott W. Smith is the author of Screenwriting with Brass Knuckles