Spout Crew Works at the Yarrow

I smell like a coconut cream puff. Having lathered cocoa butter on myself and pulled on not one, or two but three pairs of tights, three shirts, a sweater and two jackets, I'm ready for whatever frozen brutality awaits me outside.

"You should bring an extra dry pair of socks too," Herb warns me when I walk out to the kitchen to make myself a PB&J sandwich.

"Will do."

"And, gloves."

I pull my knit gloves from my pocket and offer them up as proof of preparedness.

"Good," he says.

As Brian, Berk, Herb and I pile into the car, I run through my schedule, most of which right now only includes press check-in, lunch with the indefatigable Karina Longworth and a debut press screening of Martin McDonagh's In Bruges.

"Sheri told me you went to college here."

"Came here on a ski vacation for two weeks and then stayed," Herb says.

As we drive south from Kimball Junction to historic Park City, Herb points out landmarks and ski resorts while giving a comprehensive area history. "All the money from the Hearst family came out of the silver mined in these mountains," he begins. "Now, within forty minutes of the airport are seven of the top slopes in the country."

The B-boys in the back rail against each other, and Herb turns around in his seat, slowing his acceleration, to stop the argument. "This is not what we do on the way to school. You're distracting me from driving," he says, in that tone of a quintessential father. As we pull up to the elementary school, Herb pointing out the Yarrow and Eccles Theatre for me, the boys calm down and focus in again on their homework.

"But, I didn't do much with Whiskers," Brian mumbles. He's referring to his gray-and-white stripped stuffed animal kitty.

"You ate with Whiskers, and you slept with Whiskers. You can say all that in class, babe," Herb says.

"Yeah, but..."

"I'll see you later, little gentlemen," I say as they scurry out of the mini-van.

We're headed to the press office at the Park City Marriott now, but before the drop-off, Herb whisks me around town, continuing his storytelling now with little distraction. "They have a sign here that points you to Main Street, but going to Main Street, for me, will always be this way," he says of our jostle down Park Avenue. "When the festival first came in the 70s, I took press photos that were published in the LA Times, but basically no one was at the screenings. Now with the festival and the resorts that have come in, it's built up. You can see they're developing this strip here. They're taking the old facades of the miner's houses, and they're rebuilding the houses up in the back and farther below ground level. Then they'll reuse the facades, and the houses go for a one or two million.

"Now, this lift here goes to the slope summit, and from there you can ski back home. You see those old metal structures? The lift goes along the same line that was the original trail for the silver to come down to the prospectors.

"Most of the old houses looked like that one," he points out a diminutive gray house, "Steps going up to them, only 800 square feet or so. It's a town that's burned down several times. There were volunteer firefighters for a while, but once the town started to burn, it would just spread."

We turn right onto Main Street, and Herb points out the post office. "In the late 70s, there was no mail delivery, and so everyone would just come here to pick up mail. It was a sort of town gathering."

We pass boutiques, upper crust bars and restaurants, and as the street stretches out before me idyllic, Herb points out more of the venues, painting a picture of the opening night limousine, celebrity driven excitement to come. He and Sheri have tickets for the Harry O's party, the night's fanciest by his rumor. I'm not good at parties. I don't mention this. Not that I suppose it matters much anyway; the parties are difficult to get into, so I've been told by numerous sources.

"Thank you for showing me around," I say, opening the door to the van.

Herb places his hands on mine for a second, and I feel how coarse his are from the cold. "Wear the gloves," he reminds.

"I won't forget," I promise.

There's such an easiness to the already bustling press office when I arrive to pick up my badge, that sadly I have little to say about the whole affair. It's so efficient, in fact, that I am left befuddled with my time before meeting up with Miss Longworth. Signing into press viewing stations, I pour over two films I've been anxious to check out and by half past noon scurry out into the snow to meet Karina.

She's immediately recognizable by her killer, token cat eyeglasses.

"Karina, hello. How's your Sundance trip been so far?"

"It's just starting," she says. "We got in yesterday, but we had to go back to Salt Lake City. I spent most of my day traveling back and forth in the rental car." She expands upon the story later, telling me that the rental car broke down, though fortunately she was in good company with Joe Swanberg and Ronald Bronstein, both of whom are out here producing video segments on the festival. "They were riffing out characters the whole time," she says.

A sketch of Karina in long and then broken phrases. There's a quality forcibly perceptive and yet innocent in her demeanor. There's no sense that she's jaded, although at times, when the conversation turns gloomily realist, she quiets a bit and turns away with a shy sigh. An infectious joyousness springs out of her, however, when the conversation shifts. Her thoughts aren't expressed self-consciously; there's nothing contrived in her analysis, but each idea is expressed with deliberation and a sort of pure intent. She's not the type of person one would expect to lie either to others, or more impressively, to herself.

We skip-hop over several topics, notably the current state of film journalism, the position of women film journalists and the release of Joe Swanberg's upcoming Butterknife, all of which are compelling threads, but here is what strikes me:

"Before you went to NYU, you were studying experimental film in San Francisco, and I was wondering if you ever miss making your own art."

"When I was in school, there weren't outlets like YouTube to distribute the type of work I was making," she says, explaining of her social and cultural commentary shorts. "Now, there are built-in outlets for that type of distribution, and so I could get people to see my work now. But, I'm also aware that releasing my films might affect my journalism work."

"I was having this argument with a friend when the Southland Tales review came out on indieWIRE. It's absolutely unfair to relegate journalists into an entirely objective space, particularly because, unless they're working for a well-financed daily, they are working for very little. Writing film journalism is a labor of love."

"I also find it hard to make more than one piece a month. If I could do a weekly show, I'd have that outlet, but I always found it easier to write than to make the videos themselves."

"Well, when you do put the pieces up, I'd love to see them," I say. "...While I love the journalism, I sometimes feel that I write so much in order to avoid making my own work again. It's as if that's just too hard, and so I put up barriers."

"I'm familiar with that," Karina echoes.

"And then I get burnt out."

"When I'm working like that, and I start to wonder, 'Why am I getting up in the morning?,' I get energized again by that idea that I don't know what's going on," she says.

The check comes sometime later, and Karina nabs it.

"It's on Spout," she says.

"In that case, I owe you all lunch."

I meet the whole Spout crew later, and like Karina, the guys are just as warm, intelligent and passionate as she is. And, now, like Karina before me in waiting to exchange the rental care with Swanberg and Bronstein, I'm the one in good company. It's a nice feeling.