How to Crash the Superbowl, pt 4
by Traveling MattSo last night Jonathan and I went to see Chronicle. The next morning the other guys showed up and I figured I'd hear about all the madness we missed out on. They said they spent the whole night looking for a place to eat because everything was overflowing, and wished they'd gone to the movie. When Frito-Lay isn't giving us something to do we have no idea what to do with ourselves.
Downtown Indy has been transformed into Superbowl Village. There's an NFL Experience expo, concerts, an astroturf field down an entire street, giant decals over everything, skyways connecting all the major buildings, and a zipline where people have been waiting for hours to swoosh down over the heads of thousands of crammed drunks and families. From our hotel we can not only see the stadium, but the highways where cars inch hopelessly slowly into downtown. The average wait for a taxi was an hour.
There are a lot of conversations about how the commercials were shot, what our chances are, and how the whole thing works. I think Bird of Prey was shot on a Red camera and the rest were shot on Canon 7D's or something similar. Some of us managed to pull it together in very little time, others planned for months and consider it a huge challenge to create a great spot and mobilize all possible resources. There's an agreement going around that if anybody wins a million, they have to stay out late and buy everyone champagne. But we're worried about all the other competition; even if we're lucky enough to be aired, we still have to measure up on the Ad Meter against every other Superbowl ad to win an actual prize. The one that terrifies me is the Chevy Camaro ad that won their commercial contest—it's the best Chevy ad I've ever seen. But overall, the conversation is mostly about how much we love each other's spots and at this point we'll be cheering for each other no matter who gets aired.
Joby and Jimmy are still leading the comedy charge, getting us all riffing about what the stupidest things they could possibly hawk at the Superbowl. "Hummus!" "Asparagus" "Reading Material! Get your reading material!"
We finally found a good spot to show the ridiculous size of this event. The JW Marriott is the hotel where a lot of the celebrities and premium media are staying. (We're in the smaller Marriott connected to it, and can wander around freely to soak it up.) There is an elite air in the good hotels, like some kind of upper-class Aspen ski resort, with shockingly gorgeous manicured women and indifferently suited power men all looking slightly bored and important. Like anywhere else, there's a lot of staring at smartphones.
Tonight we're going to the big fancy dinner, whatever that is, so we're dressing up. Then we're going to a concert with 50 Cent and Pit Bull, where I have to do my best to seem like I'm cool and like their music and didn't actually wish it was somebody like Coldplay or Fleet Foxes.
Right now, though, gotta rush downstairs and meet Danielle and Ryan, who won the State Farm "Discount Double Check" Superbowl contest and are getting treated to the Superbowl also! She works at Colley Avenue Copies and I walked in one day and found out that two Superbowl contest winners were standing in the same place, both from Hampton Roads. Amazing.
In 2003, I was selected for the Sundance Screenwriter's Lab. The Sundance Institute does not just put on a massive film festival every year; they have fabulous all-expenses-paid artistic development programs in film, poetry, theater, and more, and provide a kind of fertile creative soil which I never knew existed and might not have believed had I not been lucky enough (and believe me, it's more luck than talent) to get planted in it. You're housed for a week in the Sundance Village in Utah, surrounded by woodfire cabins, forested mountains, and Academy Award-winning screenwriters. The airfare is paid, the expenses are paid, and there are three grade-double-A buffet meals a day plus social events and–if you stick around a few days beyond the Lab–some free Film Festival tie-ins. There is no industry talk except around informal dinner tables, no producers, no worries, no focus on anything except the art and craft of screenwriting. Plus there's a THX theater where you get to watch prior films by your fellow participants, and get sneak-preview 35mm screenings of films that are about to premiere at Sundance. It was among the very best and happiest weeks of my life.
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