Quotes About Sundance

It took Cianfrance 12 years to bring 'Blue Valentine' to the screen after he first conceived it. He found Gosling and Williams early on, and they hung in there with him. The film finally premiered at Sundance 2010, then screened at Cannes and the Toronto Film Festival before landing in theaters in December.

The film's success so far involves winning a couple of prizes at Cannes and Sundance, and getting some very nice reviews in newspapers and magazines. That hasn't had a big impact on my life yet.

I see a lot of art; we see a lot of music, films at Sundance... that influences me and informs me more than theater just because I make a bigger effort to see other art forms.

When I was working for Miramax, before Sundance, a videotape of 'The Blair Witch Project' - of the full, completed movie - went to a lot of the buyers. And so we all saw it before the festival, and I passed, a bunch of people passed... Then I watched the movie marching toward success, and was reminded by my bosses what a dope I was.

I'm also on the Board at Sundance, so I've seen witnessed first hand the power of independent storytelling.

I saw 'Birth' at the Sundance Film Festival with a thousand other strangers, and I couldn't believe that was me in the film. I didn't recognize myself.

With 'Poison,' I'm sure some people just hated the movie, but it also got caught up into a debate about arts funding because it was a film that received a National Endowment for the Arts Public Grant, and it won the prize at the Sundance Film Festival.

Sundance is incredible and has been very important for my career as a filmmaker, but it's also not the only route to success. There are a ton of great movies that don't get in and go on and do wonderfully.

I met Evan Rachel Wood, James Woods, Kevin Bacon at Sundance. Steve Buscemi is pretty laid-back. I met Judy Greer in Vegas, and she was cool.

Getting into Sundance is a certain sort of passport to a level of anxiety I've never experienced, even having had a baby in the NICU for a week. For about ten minutes, you're a world-class director. Then you become an entry-level, harried, low level concierge with absolutely no juice.

When I went to Sundance back in 1998, indie film was all the rage, and Miramax was throwing down five or six million dollars for several films each year. Those were the salad days of indie film, and those days are over. I'm not out there worrying too much about it.

I was shooting a mini-series for Sundance/BBC, called 'Top of the Lake,' that was shot by Jane Campion, who's a beautiful native New Zealander and famous film director. The role I was playing was very intense, and they shaved half my hair off. So, I looked like this post-apocalyptic character.

I'm not good at watching stuff that I'm in at all. I should stop. I shouldn't watch something for the first time with a room full of people at Sundance. It's not a good idea.

A definite highlight was doing 'The Brothers McMullen.' Shooting that movie was such a joy - and then we wound up winning the Sundance Film Festival. That big-break moment is visceral. It happens once in a decade, maybe once in a lifetime.

Sundance felt like a natural fit. I love coming here, and I do think that this festival suits my films rather than most of the festivals I've been to. I'm not going to Cannes, you know.

What's so great about Sundance is that they only accept such a small handful of films per year for dramatic competition, so you know when you're going to Sundance that you're going to see top-quality projects.

I took all my TV experience and what I learned about - by writing and directing and bringing a movie to Sundance - about the realities of the independent film market: 'Transparent' is the marriage of those two situations.

I met Jill Soloway at Sundance a couple years ago. I was there for 'Crystal Fairy', and she was there for 'Afternoon Delight'. She reached out and wanted to get together.

There is nothing I can do about this stuff and I am pretty well ok with the fact that I think Sundance is not going to be stopped by it, because he Festival is itself now, and doesn't need me out there to talk about it like I did years ago.

I'll just say it: I love Sundance; my very first film won Sundance.

Sundance is weird. The movies are weird - you actually have to think about them when you watch them.

I'm so critical of myself. I'm actually really, really proud of the film. It's really cool to see a movie at Sundance because everybody is so supportive.

There's a big difference between the independent film world and the Hollywood film world, and I don't know that I understood that until I got into certain rooms, and people's faces go blank when you talk about Sundance.

I've been to Sundance eight times as a publicist and thought I was very prepared. I mean, who could've been more prepared for me? A publicist who's been there eight times. Getting there as a filmmaker was a completely surreal, different, unexpected experience.