Creativity Regained

 

Sketchpad: The Sundance Institute is rugged. Veteran directors haul equipment; movie stars carry their own food and sleep in cabins; everyone moves tables and chairs. The environment is enriched by what is not there as much as by what is. "When I started the institute there was no place for the artists to work," says Redford. "I mean it was raw here. They worked in the ski patrol house, the firehouse, and the maintenance shed. I was kind of embarrassed by what was here, but it was all I could afford to do.

"Later on though," says Redford, "I realized we'd done something very right." The primitive conditions forced the artists to be resourceful, to improvise, to stretch and experiment more fully.

Certainly Sundance could have built the slickest sound stages and editing facilities, but Redford and his staff believe that would push the filmmakers too close too soon to a finished product, and that that threatens originality. "We need to get away from preciousness, of having to have everything right," says Satter. "The workshop scenes [shot by the fellows] are deliberately primitive in terms of production values and design. It is process, not product, that is the cornerstone of the work."

Contradiction: A fellow lies on his back on an old couch inside an editing trailer. Hands over face. Exhausted and exhilarated. "You take your medicine and you build on it," he says. Within the last hour, Redford, Arteta, and Lehmann have dropped by, one after the other, to talk about the scene he is trying to cut. Their ideas are great. They also completely contradict one another. As the fellow plays their words over in his head, he gets an inkling of still another approach. His tries it, and that edit is his best yet.

At Sundance, contradiction is achieved by exposing fellows to as many perspectives as possible. Each session is attended by between 35 and 40 creative advisers, people like Denzel Washington, Sally Field, Glenn Close, Stanley Tucci, Alexander Payne, Kathryn Bigelow, and Jon Avnet. But rather than working with a single mentor whose approach and opinions they might uncritically absorb, the fellows get the divergent views of a slew of experts and must reconcile them into a vision of their own. They can also move among the institute's various labs -- including those for filmmakers, screenwriters, theater directors, and composers -- to see how ideas play out in different disciplines.

"We need contradiction to get to truth," says Redford. "Some of the most interesting things we see and feel have contradictory parts. It's a part of our lives. Let's use it rather than push it out and pretend it doesn't exist."

Generosity: It's 7:45 p.m. and the sun setting behind the mountains casts a soft blue halo across the canyon. Everyone from the labs -- about 75 people -- is savoring a hearty communal meal around big round tables in a big white tent. They are talking, laughing, and enjoying one another's company.

Redford would like to be among them. But earlier he'd watched one of the fellows struggling to prepare for a difficult shoot the next day. He'd seen her wrestle with the actors, wrestle with the material; and he'd sensed her confidence was shaken. Reaching for the key to the nearest van, he calls to her across the parking lot: "Let's go scout some different locations for the bus stop shoot tomorrow. There are three sites I want to show you. We can talk about the setups on the way."

Company leaders -- particularly the founder and keeper of the vision -- can set the tone for how employees behave toward one another. The tone Redford has set is one of generosity. And it is a kind of generosity that sets the table for collaboration.

The long-term yield on generosity is visible. Fellows leave Sundance with a kind of lifetime resource commitment from the institute. Staff often help alumni move their projects into production by running interference with commercial markets, working contacts, and making phone calls to connect artists with casting agents, producers, and sources of financing. Alumni, in turn, come back to Sundance to serve as creative advisers and help tyro innovators with their work. "If you create an atmosphere of freedom, where people aren't afraid someone will steal their ideas, they engage with each other, they help one another," Redford says. "The freedom of not being threatened by your colleagues creates a whole energy."

Story: Most evenings around 10 p.m., the institute's staff, fellows, and advisers stroll down to the Owl Bar, a rosewood haven imported from Thermopolis, Wyo., where the real Hole in the Wall Gang hung out more than a century ago. There, they kick back, quaff ice-cold Wasatch ale, and swap stories from earlier sessions: about experiments that succeeded and failed; ingenious solutions to difficult problems; breakthroughs, breakouts, and the occasional breakdown. The purpose of these gatherings is to perpetuate institutional memory and knowledge. A task that most organizations either undervalue or ignore, Sundance achieves -- characteristically -- by returning to the oral tradition.

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