Great films, surprise screenings and Kristen Stewart make Sundance a magical place

PARK CITY, Utah

Everything I knew about attending Sundance I learned from watching “Entourage.”

So far, though, I’ve yet to be offered the lead role in a James Cameron movie. I haven’t taken part in a topless hot tub party. Nor have I been assigned a hot, blonde Peace Corps volunteer as my personal driver.

But, hey, it’s still early.

What I have done is stand for more than an hour in a cramped room in the back of the Prospector Square Theatre, which is really just some meeting space in a condo/hotel that’s been converted into a screening room, waiting to talk to the notoriously press-shy Kristen Stewart about her writing-directing debut. She sneaked in through a back door, after the press line had officially ended, posed for a few photos and spoke, briefly, only when cornered by camera crews like a wounded animal.

No one would ever mistake HBO’s “Entourage” for a documentary — many viewers wouldn’t even mistake it for a comedy — but unless you’re among the rich and/or famous, attending Sundance involves an awful lot of standing around in the cold.

I waited so long for Stewart to arrive that I missed the chance to see Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power.” I couldn’t even sweet talk my way in to watch the short-film block that was premiering Stewart’s movie just a few feet away.

But Sundance can be a magical land where things just fall into place.

With nearly four hours to kill until the next movie and my hotel a 30-minute Uber ride away, I received a last-minute email inviting me to The MARC to cover the press line for “The Little Hours,” the raunchy, bizarro comedy based on Giovanni Boccaccio’s 14th-century masterpiece “The Decameron.”

It turns out that The MARC is the Park City Municipal Athletic and Recreation Center, whose website notes that the basketball courts will be closed until Feb. 1 while “the gymnasium is turned into one of the largest film venues of the festival.”

Members of “The Little Hours” cast, which represented some of the top comedic talent at Sundance — including Aubrey Plaza, Nick Offerman, Alison Brie, Molly Shannon, Dave Franco and Adam Pally — held court inside a cold, glorified tent.

It was magnificent.

But since the gymnasium wasn’t quite big enough to squeeze me into the “Little Hours” screening that followed, I hopped onto a shuttle for the press and industry screening at The Yarrow, which, after I waited in another glorified tent for a half-hour, turned out to be a ballroom inside a Doubletree.

“The Little Hours” was amazing — more on that in a few days — and upon leaving a little after 11 p.m., attendees were greeted with the Doubletree’s signature chocolate chip cookies.

Like I said, Sundance can be a magical land.

There are actual movie theaters at Sundance. The historic Egyptian Theatre opened in 1926, and most of the press and industry screenings take place in the four-screen Holiday Village Cinemas.

But movies also are screened at the Park City Library and the Temple Theater, which, when it isn’t playing host to a slate heavy on documentaries and foreign films, is the Reform synagogue Temple Har Shalom.

It’s been referred to during Sundance as the synaplex.

Contact Christopher Lawrence at clawrence@reviewjournal.com. On Twitter: @life_onthecouch.