Tea with Famous Strangers

            Following the premiere, Austenland hosts a small tea for cast, crew, family and reps. It is a relaxed and intimate setting, and the cast is running around getting one another’s autographs on the small movie posters lying around.  We aren’t super jazzed about the poster design, but we discover that nobody knew they needed posters until yesterday, so this one was quickly thrown together and printed last night.  Classic Hollywood. 

See?  Boring.

            I made a promise several years ago, and it is here that I must fulfill it.  My dear friend Scott is a native New Zealander, and he made me promise that if ever I saw his hometown heroes from Flight of the Conchords, I would pass along his fondest regards.  Ignoring celebrities is much more my forte, but I gird myself and head over to Bret McKenzie for a quick chat.  Scott’s initial message to transmit has not been updated since 2009, so I make no mention of Bret’s performance in the movie we just saw, or any congratulations about his winning an Oscar last year.  (I later feel terrible about this.)  It quickly becomes apparent that neither of us knows where to take the conversation after this, and it limps along from charity stuff to asking what I do, which obviously gets us nowhere.  Finally, blessedly, he asks me where I live in Los Angeles, and it turns out we live in the same neighborhood.  With relief we talk about restaurants until Jane Seymour interrupts and I turn to chat with Eddie and Jared Hess, who are talking animatedly about a mutual friend.

            I am starving, so I carry a few tea sandwiches to our table, which is next to Stephenie Meyers’s.  Being gluten-free, I can’t actually eat the sandwiches normally, so I have to open them up and use my teeth to scrape off the filling.  I do this hurriedly, hoping no one notices.  This has garnered me approximately three tablespoons of food, so I just fill up on water.  I feel proud of myself for this, because it means I have followed the advice of my Sundance elders.  I think about my Mormon nieces, who worship Stephenie, and briefly entertain the idea of getting an autograph for them.  It is quickly jettisoned.  This is Shannon and Jerusha’s day, not Stephenie’s.  The focus should be on them.  Sorry, nieces. 

            Emmy the Great, who wrote and performed original songs for the film, does a charming set.  She is wearing an adorable cat ear headband.  After her set we keep awkwardly running into each other and smile shyly at one another as we pass.

            Shannon and her husband Dean come to join us and it is a thrill to see her so happy.  She says that her face hurts from smiling.  Shannon explains that as an author, you write books that people read and experience alone.  Your words enter someone’s mind silently and just sort of stay there.  This is wonderful, of course, but aside from letters from fans, you never really get the feedback of what impact your words have on someone, or how they felt reading a sentence that you worked particularly hard to craft.  Seeing your words in a film, and hearing the audience’s immediate reaction, is overwhelming in comparison.  Gratifying and moving and emotionally overwhelming.  Shannon remembers the give and take, the creative process of writing with another person.  Both she and Jerusha have the experience of thinking, “See, I knew that line would work!”  They are glad they fought one another for these lines.  They feel lucky that they work so well together.

            Later in the party we are talking to a group of people.  We look down to discover that almost all of us are wearing Sorel boots.  We laugh.  Ricky Whittle complains about dragging around all of the additional weight of winter gear.  “My legs are killing me!” he gripes.  Ricky reveals that this was his first premiere, so he packed a beautiful suit.  After arriving in Park City he did a google image search of Sundance premieres and realized his mistake.  He had to scramble to find an appropriately casual but attractive outfit to pull together.  He insists the boots are the most important part of the look, as it makes it seem “as if you didn’t try.” 

            With a few hours to kill before the next event, Eddie and I throw our coats back on and find food for me.  I am excited to check out the popup Udi’s Gluten-Free Table, only to find that it isn’t open.  In a haze of hunger, we wander into a barbeque place.  I order some kind of confusing potato skins with beans on top, and a margarita in a glass shaped like a cowboy boot.  I poked tiredly at my beans and lick the crust of salt from the glass rim like a farm animal.  I guzzle more water and remind myself to wash my hands more, although they are already so dry and chapped that my thumbs are forming cracks.  I mentally add hand lotion to the list of Sundance necessities and wonder why no one has mentioned it.