Dedicated volunteers are true stars of Sundance

PARK CITY — They're working for nothing, unless you count a free movie ticket and a Kenneth Cole jacket. It's been snowing pretty much nonstop since they got here, the temperatures are subfreezing, and just guess how many of the 1,523 do-gooders, free-thinkers, movie-loving Sundance volunteers have walked off the job so far.

Hint: three would be too high.

"Two! Two people have said, 'You know what, this isn't for me!' " says Emily Aagaard, who, as Sundance's volunteer coordinator does get paid, and she's as surprised as I am when she delivers the news.

"With the weather we've had, I'd expect like two every hour," she says. "It's actually shocking how willing and eager they are."

Bill Nother is one of the people she's talking about. Bill is standing at the Sundance shuttle bus stop on Kearns Avenue across from the cemetery.

Imagine going to a bus stop and waiting four hours to catch your bus — in 25 degree weather and it's snowing — and you've described Bill's job.

Officially he's a "transportation liaison." TLs stand outside and tell people what bus to get on and what time it's coming. Meanwhile, they get cold. They work four-hour shifts and get credit for eight on account of the often arduous working conditions.

You'd figure Bill would get tired of all this real fast and tell them where to take their job and shove it. But Bill is slow to complain. This is his 13th year volunteering at Sundance. Straight.

He's a postman in his other life — in Windsor, Ontario, Canada. Every year he schedules his vacation in the middle of the winter, books a flight out of Detroit and flies to Utah to work the bus stops.

He also views, on average, 14 movies, which is more than the average Sundance volunteer manages to see.

"It's the shorter shifts," he said, winking conspiratorially.

And just try to get his job — he's already booked his flight for next year.

That's the other shocker of a stat when it comes to Sundance volunteers: 75 percent of them are alumni.

They did this before.

The average Sundance volunteer has volunteered for three years, says Aagaard, a former volunteer herself, and many have worked longer. This year more than 100 volunteers are marking their fifth year.

Forget the lines to see the movies. This keeps up and there will be lines to volunteer.

You name it, the volunteers do it. The biggest job is inside the venues — taking tickets, ushering, managing lines, that sort of thing. But some people get to empty trash cans and clean bathrooms. Others run deliveries from the warehouse. Then there are the CLs (crowd liaisons), the works crew (snow shovelers) and DLs.

Some work full-time (80 hours), others half-time (40 hours). All together they contribute more than 60,000 hours — well over $500,000 if they were even getting McDonald's wages.

Without them there would be no Sundance.

Fifty percent are local and 50 percent are from out of state and out of country, like Bill.

Utahns are still bragging about the Olympics, when we had 18,000 volunteers and a turnover rate of less than 5 percent.

But these guys make those guys look like slackers. Two dropouts out of 1,523, that's .00125 percent. Even people who make money quit faster than that.

Lee Benson's column runs daily throughout the 2010 Sundance Film Festival. Please send e-mail to benson@desnews.com.