My Sundance Video Diary

As Sundance says goodbye to Park City, a look back at the moment my life changed.

This year’s Sundance Film Festival marks the last time in Park City, Utah. And it got me nostalgic to write about my journey to that hallowed ground. At the bottom of this post is a vintage short doc “diary” I made during those joyous times, as part of my day job at Indy Mogul.

The film was TUB. A short I wrote/directed as my thesis for Columbia University’s MFA program. If you don’t know what that short was about, this poster I made might sum it up best:

You can now watch the film with over 30 minutes of bonus content on Substack TV:

In film school, I had tried for years to get student grant money for it, but one day, a beloved professor pulled me aside and said,

“Bobby — you know I get what you’re trying to do, but a lot of professors don’t. I don’t think you’re going to get a grant.”

Message received.

All of this over a SHORT?

After several years of trying to get this thing made with my school’s financial support, I knew what I had to do.

Take out another student loan and make it myself.

By that point, I had so much student debt that it felt like Monopoly money. I thought, “What’s another 10K?”

My sensibilities weren’t really aligned with “Columbia Film” at the time, and after the first semester, I called my mom about dropping out. I stayed and was eventually rescued by a trio of wonderful professors: Katherine Dieckmann, Andy Bienen, and Tom Kalin. They understood my comic sensibility and nourished it.

But despite using my own money for TUB, I still faced an uphill climb. During one screenplay review session at Columbia, a professor called me “a pervert.” And couldn’t imagine “how I could balance such disparate tones in one short.”

It stung a little, but at that point, nothing could hurt me. I had fantasized about the tone of the movie for years, had already taken out a loan, and had my eyes on the prize.

(After it got into Sundance, I heard the “pervert” professor screened it for students multiple times.)

We made the movie passionately with friends and a great crew. But after we finished, I believed I had failed. I could see all the compromises, could “feel” the weight of the production still on my shoulders.

For a while, I did not submit to film festivals.

I was still in NYC at the time, but Eric Levy, TUB’s lead actor, had moved to LA. After he watched the film, he said,

“Dude. It’s great. Upload the film, and I’ll burn a DVD and drop it off at the Sundance office. It’s literally the last day of submissions.”

It’s a cliche, but I’ll never forget getting the call. I was back home in NJ during Thanksgiving, making a pumpkin pie…and boom. My life changed.

The festival experience was pure magic. At that point at Sundance, there was no “midnight shorts” program. So, TUB played alongside dramas and low-key comedies.

The beauty of those Sundance screenings is that no one fucking saw us coming.

Before getting to the festival, I realized the biggest theater we’d be screening in was The Library Center. So, I highlighted it in red on my business card and told everyone to go to that screening.

(If you’ve been to Sundance, you know that one doesn’t need to do that. Every screening, even for shorts, is packed.)

That first screening had the usual bag of nerves, but once I heard the first guffaw from the crowd, I turned to Matthew Sanchez, my soft-spoken director of photography, and smiled.

We had done it.

I know this sounds like exaggeration, but by the time we got to our biggest screening, people were falling out of the aisles with laughter. On the street, I was stopped several times for autographs.

This was all over a short film.

It was a magical time, and the short would become my calling card for years later, an asset absolutely integral to getting my first feature, The Cleanse, financed.

Instead of babbling any more, check out this video below, which couldn’t be more open-hearted about my Sundance experience.

Thank you, Park City, for the memories!