William Horberg

Sundance

On the road again.

Today it is the Sundance Producer's Lab in Utah.

I have been to Sundance many times over the years, mainly to the film festival, but my dad and his former girlfriend used to live part-time in Park City, so it was a great opportunity to bring the family up there for ski trips and reunions. Sadly they moved out (and broke up I might add) some years ago, so business has been my only excuse to get up there recently.

Several films I have been involved with were screened at the Sundance Film Festival. Sliding Doors played at Sundance (it was the opening night film) as did Birthday Girl, and more recently Alpha Dog had a special screening there.

My wife Elsa came up with me one year and it was the very first time she had ever seen snow. She grew up in Cuba, and her only prior travel outside the island had been to warmer climates or during the summer season. Even wrapped in a big down jacket like the Stay-Puff Marshmallow Man, she was fascinated by the white powder snowflakes, but she didn't like the cold.

But this is the first time I have participated in their lab programs. It is an honor to be invited, but a struggle to think of anything Positive to say to the participants in the current bleak landscape for independent filmmaking in this country.

Hmm. They say everything is cyclical, but the problems plaguing the so-called specialty theatrical film business - too many titles, eroding audience, competing alternate smart tv programming, stay-at-home options, lack of important critical voices and outlets - don't feel transitory, but part of the tectonic plate shifts we are all experiencing as our lives and culture hurtle along at warp speed.

Oh well, lots to think and talk about. And certainly an amazing environment to do it in. The Wasatch mountains are a spectacularly beautiful place in any season. I'm going to listen and learn as much as to proffer my own opinion, so I hope to have some interesting things to report on upon my return.

And I hope to slip in a little time to finish up McCarry's Old Boy's too.

Best wishes from The Mountain Top

william

Charles McCarry

You know how sometimes you find an author you like and you just want to keep reading his books forever? You finish one and then find out what else he has written and track them down and devour them too.

I read McCarry's The Tears of Autumn and was hooked. This alternate history spy thriller gives an incredibly compelling account of the Kennedy assassination from the angle that the whole plot was blowback for the CIA-backed coup d'etat against South Vietnamese president Ngo Dinh Diem. It is so meticulously plotted and beautifully written that it makes plausible and almost credible this somewhat far-fetched conspiracy theory.

The protagonist is agent Paul Christopher, and it turns out McCarry has written a series of books with Paul as the main character.

The Miernek Dossier was the next one I read, and I loved it too. The clever and elegant conceit of this novel is that it is presented in the form of a dossier or file in which letters, transcribed recordings, memos to file, diaries, wiretaps, case reports and other evidence are all presented to the reader, who acts as case officer to piece together the narrative, weighing the relative merits and credibility of the information presented as we get to know the voices of the various characters both living the events of this thrilling cold war spy saga and reporting on it. This was the first Christopher book.

Now I am halfway through Old Boys. Christopher dominates this book too, but mainly by his absence, as he makes a brief appearance at the outset to give an enigmatic clue to his cousin and fellow spy Horace, only to disappear. When he is reported dead under suspicious circumstances in the Uigar Autonomous Region of far western China (an area coincidentally where I spent a great deal of time in 2006 as it stood in for Afghanistan and was the location of most of the filming of The Kite Runner) Horace rounds up a posse of ex and retired CIA mandarins, who set off on a globe trotting adventure to find Paul or find the truth of his circumstances.

I'll report back when I finish.

But one thing I know for sure. This won't be my last McCarry.

William

My new blog

Well, they say that you can't teach an old dog new tricks.

But this old dog has finally opened up a blog, courtesy of the prodding and pleading of my better half.

I guess time will tell who wins - this Old Adage, or My Wife? I don't know about you, but I know where I'm putting my money.

In seven short months, Elsita has mastered this new weblog medium the way she has done pretty much everything else in her amazing life - by rolling up her sleeves and teaching herself the whole shooting match from scratch. For those of you who haven't caught on yet, www.elsita.typepad.com has become a must-visit destination for a worldwide audience who have come to view Elsa's unique world of art and insight and creativity, and once they discover her blog, they usually stick around.

In fact, I came to realize that I could find out a whole lot I didn't know about my very own family by checking in there every day. Thanks, honey.

But you know how it is. As I once heard poker legend Amarillo Slim put it "Get a little winner, gotta go to dinner." Things have been going so well for her with all this internet stuff, that now she's gone and taken up a (truly) lost cause, yours truly, and unleashed me on the wired world.

So here it is, my new blog, all shiny and unwritten and green and naive and un-designed and yet uncommented upon. Inspired by my wife, and perspired by me.

Remember, if you stumble in here and read anything remotely interesting, write me and thank me, but if this blog gives you the blaaahs, Blame Her!

:)

More soon.

william