Sundance gifting is a myth

The myth: The Sundance Film Festival has enormous, extravagant parties where it passes out expensive clothes and high-end gadgets to trend-setting celebrities so they can set the standard of what you and I see, wear and covet.

The truth: The festival does none of those things.

"It is something we don't participate in or condone," says Katie Kennedy, associate director of corporate development for the Sundance Institute, which is the parent organization that manages the festival.

The problem is that on quaint Park City's Main Street, which serves as the emotional heart of the festival, it isn't easy to tell an official venue from one set up by any sponsor that cares to pay crazy rent prices.

Hollywood, and the press that follows it around, congregates in the Utah mountains and plenty of star-savvy companies are willing to polish their boots — or just give them new ones.

It may seem like splitting hairs to the outsider, but there is no such thing as an official Sundance gifting venue, officials say. The official sponsors — and there are many — donate a great deal to the nonprofit Institute and they don't shower celebrities with swag.

"I think we have always been aware of things that happened on the street that weren't part of the festival," Kennedy said, "Corporations reaping the benefits of the festival without giving anything back to the Institute."

Robert Redford has been vocal over the years about the corporate vultures, this year to Reuters.

"The festival has become a huge leveraging platform for a whole lot of people. The ambush marketers coming in promoting their products that have nothing to do with us, taking spaces on the street that we would give over to filmmakers — people making money off a festival they have nothing to do with."

Equally surprising, until this year, there was not an official Sundance party venue either. But finally, after 25 years of trying to emphasize films and downplay outside commercialism, the festival tried a different approach. Sundance hooked up with party maker Jeffrey Best. While that name may not mean anything to you it does to Madonna, who turned to him when she needed to host with some sizzle.

He caters to the elite party clientele, produces red carpets and post-Oscar celebrations for movie studios and that means he has been a fixture during Sundance for a decade, but always outside the official circles.

After growing more and more aware of each other over the years, the Institute and Best decided to partner up — a pairing that makes for strange bedfellows.

"They are a not for profit and I am definitely for a profit and you know we have to reconcile," Best said. "I think we reeled each other in."