EXCLUSIVE: As Tom Petty said a long time ago, “the waiting is the hardest part” — especially if you are the state of Utah bidding to keep the Sundance Film Festival against five other determined contenders.
“I just think, why would you uproot a festival with such deep roots here?” says Utah Film Commission director Virginia Pearce of the possibility the Robert Reford founded festival could find a new home in 2027 in Atlanta, Cincinnati, Louisville, Boulder, CO, or Santa Fe, NM.
After Sundance finally said the quiet thing out loud this spring, and declared it was opening up the bidding process for a move once its current contract with Park City finishes, a unified Utah proposal has been seen as the front-runner in what is seen in some circles as a Potemkin exercise. Still, offering up $6 million directly, as it has for years, the Beehive State has put forth a plan that recognizes the realities of both an evolved and post pandemic Sundance and an evolving Utah. It’s an ambitious plan that, at its core, would see the much larger and more accessible Salt Lake City become the festival hub and Park City highlighted as more of a special events and weekend satellite.
With a site visit to SLC in late August by the Sundance Institute selection committee, festival brass have been to all six finalists this summer and heard their pitches in person. At various points over the past few months, word has leaked out that Boulder is looking like a player or that the committee were unexpectedly charmed by the Cincinnati waterfront, among other whispers. Despite rumors that a decision of where Sundance will or will not be in 2027 would come this fall, it looks like it’ll be a few more months before a final verdict is given.
Of course, a lot can happen in a few months.
Certainly, with one-time Republican dissenter Utah Gov. Spencer Cox now having hitched his wagon firmly to the Trump train in the last dash toward Election Day, notions of SLC and Park City being aligned with Sundance’s values of inclusion and the unconventional might prove a harder sell.
Then again, few are selling the Salt Lake -centric Utah proposal as hard as Pearce.
The former Sundance Institute Associate Director of Artist Relations and Community Programs from 1998-2010 knows the festival inside out. Yet, as Pearce would be the first to admit, during the past decade while she has been running the UFC, there’s been a lot of musical chairs at the upper echelon of the annual shindig.
Virginia Pearce
Utah Film Commission
Not long after the selection committee came through town, Pearce spoke with Deadline about Sundance and Utah’s past, present and potential future. She also discussed how personal this can all be and the role politics and money play in keeping Sundance in Utah.
DEADLINE: So, how was the Sundance site visit?
VIRGINIA PEARCE: I mean, it was a bit surreal as an experience I have to say.
DEADLINE: Why?
PEARCE: You know, I’ve been equating this to trying to woo back a long-term lover. I mean, we’ve had Sundance in Utah for 40 years and there are a fair amount of new people there now. There’s new board members and new staff that hadn’t experienced Salt Lake. They’ve maybe been in Park City for a couple of years and a couple of festivals. Coming in to just the festival, you don’t really get to know Utah, and so that’s really what we wanted to show off.
DEADLINE: There’s a lot to show off, but what did you put in front of them to help convince them to stay?
PEARCE: Our whole concept was Main Street to Main Street. So Main Street, Park City and Main Street Salt Lake. We close our Main Street in Salt Lake City downtown a lot during the summer for something called Open streets. It’s in a car free zone, tons of restaurants and bars, and feels very lively. You close that off and create sponsored activations and events and music cafes. I mean, there’s so many things that Sundance has done over the years that I think they’ve had to cut back on just because of the structure of the festival and the new normal after Covid. We’d love to bring back, just create that bigger sense of community that maybe we’ve been missing the last couple of years
DEADLINE: Sundance talk about community, contenders like Boulder and Atlanta talk about community and the values of the festival, but this is mainly about money, isn’t it?
PEARCE: Let’s just be clear, it’s a lot about the money. The cost is, of course, an issue, and we have seen that escalate in Park City. I think a bit of it is demand. Park City is a small, exclusive ski town. Now, yes, it’s grown. Sundance has obviously grown too.
So, yeah, I am not surprised at the idea of needing to find somewhere easier and less expensive. I think Salt Lake provides a great opportunity. I think ultimately it was a really great day to show off the city that they may not have seen before, especially in that vein. And I feel really good about it.
DEADLINE: Okay, let me ask you, as a Sundance alum yourself and as the head of Utah’s Film Commission for the past 10 years, what do you think of the possibility of Sundance leaving Utah?
PEARCE: I just think, why would you uproot a festival with such deep roots here?
You know, 67% of their attendees are Utah based. I would hate for them to have to start over with all of that. I think we’ve grown up together. They’ve created a really amazing audience of very educated, sophisticated film watchers, now all year round. So, you know, I hope that they can see that that’s another value add that we have.
DEADLINE: The whole industry is changing, contracting, and Sundance has certainly taken some economic hits the past few years, we know that’s a vital part of this process happening now …
PEARCE: I think it’s always a nonprofit, right? And we do know it’s been a tough couple of years. I think not only Covid contributed to that, but as you acknowledge, the film industry is changing. Festivals all over the world are struggling. But when it comes to Sundance, I get it. ‘m not sure it’s ever going to be a huge money maker, but it should not be a money loss.
DEADLINE: To that, the state of Utah gives around $6 million to Sundance and your proposal offers infrastructure support and more, but do you think it was enough to win them over?
PEARCE: Look, I think part of our goal of this was just to make sure that the people at the table who are new knew that we have been at this a long time. We’ve been supporting Sundance for years and years and years since the beginning, and we’re supporting it a significant amount right now.
That being said, you know, we’re always wanting to have conversations with them about what makes sense. We want to hear, what are your ideas of growing a festival? Do you intend to keep it as is? Do you think you’ll stay with the virtual part or move to more in person? Like I haven’t seen a ton of structure or strategy from them, as far as what the future looks like. But depending on what that future is, I’m sure we can have conversations about growing our support as well.
Park City’s Main Street signage during the 2024 Sundance Film Festival
DEADLINE: This reimagining of Sundance where Salt Lake becomes the hub and Park City the satellite is a script flip that in concept alone plays to the inevitable fact the festival has outgrown the resort town. But up against stiff competition, doesn’t Salt Lake just become another city trying to twist itself into Sundance’s parameters? Maybe it’s the festival that has to change, not the location?
PEARCE: I think that’s one of the challenges with Sundance is going to face. And I think this will be a challenge, whether they move to Salt Lake or Atlanta or anywhere else.
DEADLINE: Why?
PEARCE: A festival in a city does feel different. Anyone who’s been to Toronto knows it was a little harder to create community for that festival. We talked a lot about that with Sundance when they were here.
To show them how we saw it, that’s really why we created the idea of this festival district. So closed down Main Street in Salt Lake City. You create a zone that feels very much about the festival. We have a festival shuttle system that is taking people to the district and from in the same way that they have in Park City. But we also do have events in Park City. But, I think you have to have a majority home base on Salt Lake. Otherwise, if you’re trying to split something 50/50, that just doesn’t work.
DEADLINE: Why?
PEARCE: Because one part of the festival is always going to be gravitated to more heavily. So, basing the festival out of Salt Lake, but having Park City heavily involved, whether that’s a special weekend, whether you are seeing screenings at the Egyptian or there’s activation on Main. Everyone’s going to have to reimagine, as we keep saying, but we don’t want to lose the Park City component.
DEADLINE: I’m pretty sure everyone wants to lose the pricey hotels and house rentals of Pak City. The overcrowding …
PEARCE: I mean, there are hundreds and hundreds of hotels and Airbnbs in Salt Lake City. Also, you could stay 20 minutes away and jump on TRAX system and be downtown, in a matter of minutes. So again, it’s just bigger. Plus, remember, we do big events here all the time, conferences that bring thousands of people at a time. We just did the NBA All Star game, and 100,000 people came into that, and there was no problem. Yes, major exclusive high end hotels downtown are expensive – but we also have a lot of Marriott Express or whatever the basic hotel is. There’s so many more economic options for people, both coming to the festival and working the festival.
DEADLINE: What do you mean?
PEARCE: I mean, based on the studies we did. If they moved staff lodging, the lodging that they pay for, and moved everything to Salt Lake, they’d save over a million dollars.
DEADLINE: This year?
PEARCE: Yeah, this year, right now. They could just do it. We could help them with transportation, running shuttles up and down the canyon right now. These are all ideas that we’ve had over the years, and have talked about implementing. You know, they just never happened.
DEADLINE: As this process is unfolding for Sundance, the bids, the site visits, their new-ish leadership, there’s obviously a very tight and one could say near unprecedented election taking place. Utah has had a pretty good relationship with Sundance over successive Republican administrations at the state level, but it is still very much a Republican state. So, in this time, in this divided America, do you think politics play a role in Sundance searching for a possible new home?
PEARCE: You know, I asked that question.
DEADLINE: And?
PEARCE: I was told, No. But I have a hard time believing that doesn’t have some impact.
All I can say about Utah is, yes, we have a Republican governor, but we have three Democratic mayors in our surrounding cities that all work incredibly well together. When we had the site visit, we had Governor Spencer Cox speaking at a lunch right before Erin Mendenhall, our mayor, very liberal Democratic mayor in Salt Lake. They work together all the time. Governor Cox, you may know him from his “Disagree Better” campaign. He is also the head of the National Governors Association and he’s a very good man.
Yes, he is Republican, and it’s tough to be a Republican right now in the country. I think you have to sway one way in order to remain relevant in your party. But he’s done what he can to navigate how to make everyone feel like they still have a place in Salt Lake, in Utah – and hopefully he got that point across to the committee when they were here.
DEADLINE: There’s the politics for Sundance, but there is also, in your day job, Utah as a location for Hollywood, a role it has held for decades and decades before Sundance was on the scene….
PEARCE: There’s a lot of support for film incentives and film production here in the state. Again
In that sense, so we increased our tax incentive two years ago with an additional 12 million, which for us, as a mid-range state, was more than double the $8 million what we had before. So, that was renewed last year in the legislative session.
We’ve done incredibly well with the small amount of incentives that we have, around $20 million a year, to be able to compete with other places and locations. You know, we get a lot of calls from filmmakers with them looking at Vancouver vs. Salt Lake. They ask, “talk me through how this could work?”
DEADLINE; What do you tell them?
PEARCE: All of the things that we talked about earlier – that Salt Lake is 90 minutes from LA, that the cost of living here is less. It’s very film friendly. People are still excited to see film crews in their backyard. Permitting is easy, and locations are variable. You can get that high desert look, and you could be skiing and golfing in the same day. So, it’s a lot of different looks within a couple of hours of Salt Lake, which really does help in terms of production needs.
DEADLINE: To that, the needs of Sundance seeking to revitalize the needs of Park City, Salt Lake, lots of moving pieces, five other jurisdictions in the running – what happens if the Utah bid to keep Sundance doesn’t succeed?
PEARCE: I guess I would just say, obviously we’re really pushing and hopeful that it does. But also, and we all acknowledge, Salt Lake, Park City and Utah has grown. This is not our only major event. It will be culturally sad, and deep and devastating for them to leave and for us to lose Sundance. But we’re a thriving city that’s doing a lot of things. We’re hosting Olympics in 10 years. It’s not as if you know this is the only thing that we’re doing.
