This veteran arts reporter on Sundance: 'I'm going to miss it'

PARK CITY — It's as hard as he works all year. Ten straight days of uninterrupted nonstop action. So much to cover, so little time. Long lines. Cold temperatures. Big crowds. Parking's a nightmare.

"It's like this tidal wave and whatever drenches you is what you're going to cover, because there's just so much," says Scott Iwasaki.

But, man, is he sad to see the Sundance Film Festival go.

As even people who haven't seen a movie since "The Sound of Music" know, the festival has been a Utah staple ever since Robert Redford founded it as the "Utah/United States Film Festival" in 1978. (The name didn't become "Sundance" until 1991).

That's 48 festivals.

Scott has been to the last 30.

For the first 14 years he covered the music side of the event for the Deseret News. Then, in 2010, he left the Deseret News and went to work for Park City's newspaper, the Park Record, as the paper's scene editor — the reporter in charge of arts and culture. Every January since, Sundance has been at his doorstep and in his lap.

And no, there is no truth to the rumor he went to the Park Record just so he could get a decent parking place — in the newspaper's parking lot — during Sundance.

But no one would blame him if he did.

Next year, of course, Sundance is moving on, relocating to Boulder, Colorado, for reasons no better explained than why Karl Malone once left the Jazz for the Lakers. It's kind of a head-scratcher. The Colorado legislature and the city of Boulder came up with $70 million in incentives that the Utah lawmakers didn't match, so that's one reason, but other reasons for the move seem murkier, less definable.

"Why is it leaving? I've been trying to figure that out," says Scott. "I'm sure funding has something to do with it, and I know there are people who don't like it, people who don't want it here because it's a nuisance to them personally, and maybe there's something behind the idea that anything that stays too long in the same place, people become complacent about. But I really don't know for sure all the reasons, to tell you the truth.

"All I know is that for me personally, it's sad. I'm going to miss it. I love the energy, and being a person who covers the arts, it was always there, always something you could count on."

All week, as Sundance has taken its final Utah bows, Scott has watched as many movies and sat in on as many interviews and panel discussions as humanly possible.

The panel discussions are his favorite — the memories he savors most as he looks back on 30 years of coverage. He remembers times like the 2020 panel discussion at the Egyptian Theater when "Hamilton" creator and star Lin-Manuel Miranda, sitting just a few feet away, "broke into impromptu song and raps during the panel, which was amazing."

Or in 2018 when he sat spellbound as George Lucas talked about the power of film and how "Star Wars" was really an independent movie he had to shop up and down the street before he talked 20th Century Fox into taking a chance on it.

Scott estimates he's seen about 400 films at Sundance, in addition to the "amazing" cast of characters he's watched shuffle in and out of Park City over the past 30 years.

Given the pending move, if it's any consolation, it's Scott's opinion that the live festival has been on a decline the last half-dozen years.

"I think the peak was 2019-2020," he says, "a lot has changed since then."

The 2020 festival, held just weeks before the COVID-19 pandemic, was the last time a non-virtual Sundance was held. The 2021 version was all virtual, and 2022 was mostly virtual. Sundance's films wound up attracting a larger audience those years, but the audiences weren't watching in Park City venues. About this time, streaming really hit its stride as well, further lessening the need to physically come to the festival.

"Streaming has made a big difference, as far as attendance," says Scott, "there's still people who go to Sundance, but there's a lot who, rather than attend in person, do it in their living rooms."

Time will tell if technology will continue to diminish the very thing that made Sundance Sundance: the human touch of acceptance. A place for independent filmmakers to come out of their closets and be recognized in the flesh.

That's something for Boulder to wrestle with.

As for Scott's personal streak of 30 straight Sundances, it might not be over if there's sufficient interest in the 2027 festival for the paper to send him to Boulder and report how that's going.

But he'll be on his own for parking.

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