What’s the Story?
In Park City this January, all of those attending the Sundance Film Festival were told in no uncertain terms on a daily, if not hourly, basis that “the story lives in you.” The statement was right there on the cover of the catalogue, so dominant that it replaced the words—“Sundance Film Festival”—that you’d assume would be there. (Those words were left to the catalogue spine.) Other words accompanied this insistent phrase on the cover, including “Obsession,” “Euphoria,” and “Graceful Chaos.” These were part of what could charitably be termed the strangest graphic system ever applied to a major film festival, which involved nothing more than blue colour fields and such odd, disassociated words in orange serif lettering: a banner on Main Street, the bustling thoroughfare at the heart of the Utah ski resort, showed the word “Selfish,” while another at the Prospector Square Theater announced “Irrational Madness.”
Whether or not the graphic design firm hired by the festival was trying to suggest something with these bizarre spurts of Orwellian Newspeak was impossible to tell, but there was no doubt about the core principle about how important “story” is and where it “lives.” The edict capped the festival trailer, and if you didn’t get it already, then Kenneth Cole drilled it home with the most astonishing sponsor ad, like, ever. In a three-minute promo for the brand’s winter coats and designed to honour the exceptionally dedicated and well-organized volunteer staff (these are the hardest-working unpaid people in show business, make no mistake about it), Cole’s daughter Amanda (credited as “performer”) recited a scriptwritten by three people, including herself
