The Hot Button by David Poland

For those of you who are not Hot Button regulars, Wednesdays are Rant and Rave days every week. That's my chance to spout off in-depth on whatever subject takes me. I've gone nine days of Sundance without ranting and raving. So, here it is. It's 3:00 a.m. on Super Bowl Sunday, I don't expect many of you to read this and I am feeling a little emotional. So indulge me. The "real" Day 10 will go up, along with photos from the award ceremony, on Monday, as will a brand new Monday Weekend Review. Also next week, transcripts of all the live Sundance chats go up. And the week after, a new Working Hollywood, wrapping up the festival in full.

Enough excuse making.

Who'd have thought that Ally Sheedy could change my life? OK, so she wasn't alone in doing it. But somehow, she feels like the catalyst. For a woman who has been through the ringer, there is a magical sense of just doing it that I had kind of forgotten about. I created The Hot Button 18 months ago as a way of allowing me to do entertainment journalism the way I wanted to do it, as an intelligent conversation about whatever is going on in the business between me and each reader. It's been a great joy. TNT and editor Andy Jones have allowed me to have my head. The Hot Button gives me as much as it takes from me in its daily demand.

Sundance ë99 was another great leap forward for The Hot Button. Telling the story every day, as truthfully as possible, from wherever the story is. I couldn't ask for a greater opportunity. Yet, being here kind of demands that I look even further into the future. What do I want The Hot Button to be when it grows up? What do I want to be? Do I want to be Roger Ebert, a media star at a festival that doesn't exhibit his art? Do I want more money to do the same thing I do now? Television? Radio? WHAT?!?!?

Well, when I met Ally and her "sisters" (Marlene Hugot and Marla Sucharetza) from The Autumn Heart along with her "brother," writer/actor Davidlee Willson, it reminded me that there was a family of artists in this business that I just don't spend enough time with. And then, when I watched Ally and Marlene and Marla at the awards ceremony tonight, there was joy and a "let's play" feel that my colleagues in the journalism game can't or won't rise to. Even later, in a stupor, Ally forced me, grabbing me up from the table at which I sat, to dance. And I could. I wasn't too tired. I was just too busy working. But the work should be the dance. The work should wallow in the taste for life. Much as I love doing this each day, maybe The Hot Button is a place for me to hide. It's so demanding that I can have no other artistic mistress. Though when push comes to shove, this work is still a form of commerce, more so than art.

What's the point of having conversations with other people who are also not doing the work on which I focus each day? Why not talk to the people who actually do the work? And once you are asking questions, why not just do the work? Why not risk the pain of art once more?

I was really impressed by the four women who star in Jawbreaker. They aren't the women who inhabit the L.A. party scene. They are too busy working to play all the time. They are smart, serious and funny women who work hard. Tim Roth is forever a revelation. He seems to secrete truth and a gentle insight by his very nature. And the work he did at this festival with The War Zone still ranks at the top of my "Best of" list. The actors in Praise, Sacha Horler and John Curran are putting it all out there, fearlessly. And God, the list goes on. Susan Traylor, Jay Underwood, David Riker, Audrey Wells, Janet McTeer, Sarah Polley, Robert Altman, Paul and Aidan Quinn, Robert Carlyle, Guy Pearce, Antonia Bird, the gang from Slamdance's Dill Scallion and dozens of filmmakers I met in buses, bars, restaurants and lobbies. I'm sure I'm leaving people out, but that's not the point. The point is, I love this world and yet, I've chosen a life as a judgmental outsider. No matter how careful I am, that's what I do for a living when push comes to shove.

When these people reasonably talk about talking to the press as a part of the job, I have to realize that no matter how palatable and different I try to make it, I am still a part of their job. I am not the beloved part of their work. I am not a creative experience for the artist. I embody commerce. And the publicists need me as a part of commerce and I need them. And as roughcut.com grows, the mutuality grows and I get more. My world Expands, but it's still just more of the same stuff. If I could have a column in Entertainment Weekly, it would still be more stuff, no matter what influence I wielded and how much I got paid. Maybe I could do work for the good of this business, but it still would be a matter of the bottom line. Don't worry, I'm not quitting. And I'm not looking to take this column somewhere else. I love it here. And we are growing. I'd rather be part of that than to ride on the coattails of people whom I don't respect or whose work I don't respect.

But I looked into the eyes of Mark Borchardt tonight, the man who is the subject of the Grand Prize winning Jury Selection for Documentaries, American Movie, and I didn't see rampant joy. I saw a bit of melancholia. I saw a man who was here getting all this attention, but not for his work, but for being part of someone else's work. What would Borchardt give up to be up for an award here at Sundance? Everything. And that's the point. In our world, only the artist and the parent have the chance to feel it all. To be so occupied by love and fear and passion that nothing else matters.

And that brings me back to Ally Sheedy. Here's a person, whom I really don't know, but who seems to me to choose to feel. To feel intensely. To bite the apple. And around her are others who approach the work differently, but who take risks just as great every day. Where the work is the thing because it has to be. Where the heart runs as free as the intellect. That's what Sundance is supposed to be and, sometimes, it still is. That's what I saw in those eyes. That's what made me reconsider my life. I don't think this is a mid-life crisis. (If it is, I'm dying young.) Just a wake-up call. Just a memory of the richness of life. It's easy to forget. It's easy to just keep working. Particularly when you can distract yourself with something you love and goal to make it even better. At events like this, you find out where you fit in your industrial family. And what I keep realizing is that I don't really want to be a part of this family. I want to be a part of the family that I am paid to watch. And intuitively, I know that's not right.

I guess all I'm saying is that I love movies too much just to sell them. Perhaps I should be back in the business of reaching for the hand of God. Perhaps.

Thanks for reading and indulging me today. And I'll see you tomorrow for Sundance Day 10 and a new Weekend Review at The Hot Button. In the meantime, enjoy the Super Bowl.