Events Second half of Sundance the best

The stars had gone home. Or, that's what they told me.

It was the sixth day of 2011's 11-day Sundance Film Festival, and the preening, posing, promoting magazine faces had returned to the Los Angeles smog to troll for their next scripts. Those of us remaining just wanted to see some movies.

But then I was walking up quaint and sloping Main Street, coloured lights strung above and a dusting of snow on the roofs, when I spied a man with salt-and-pepper hair being interviewed by a television crew. Onlookers started snapping photos. You know, just in case.

"Who is that?" someone asked.

I shrugged.

"Is it someone famous?" someone else asked.

I shrugged.

A woman told me he was Denis Villeneuve, a French-Canadian director whose film, Incendies, was nominated for a foreign language Academy Award that very morning. So that's sort of a star. I guess. But then that's the second half of Sundance; you take your celebrity where you can get it. Or, better still, you don't get it at all.

The nation's most iconic film festival is well-known for its North Face-clad starlets, but after a few days those pretty folk go home and are replaced with a less-forbidding, less-chaotic and less-expensive Sundance. Hotels slash prices. Restaurant waits drop below two hours or disappear altogether. Movie tickets become easier to find.

For the second half of Sundance, Park City returns from LA East to a charming mountain town of 7500. Because those movie folk apparently aren't so good on the snow, it also is among the best times of year to ski here, making Sundance's second half an ideal winter escape.

Sundance's back half is so mellow that I arrived in Park City with no movie tickets but a simple plan: stand in line to buy last-minute seats to as many films as I could. And when I needed a break, I'd ski those empty slopes.

On my first day, a Tuesday, I began by heading to The Egyptian, the lone participating theatre in downtown Park City (nine theatres in town participate in the festival). Moviegoers already were in line for A Few Days of Respite, a story of two gay Iranian men who flee to France.

Like most Sundance movies, A Few Days of Respite was sold out, which left me to embark on a festival tradition: the wait list. Almost every showing of every movie has one, and it's among Sundance's highest-stakes games. Here's how it works: At least two hours before showtime (up to three for movies in high demand), line up at the theatre. Two hours before the movie begins, festival workers pass out numbers based on your place in line.

You're free to leave, but you must be back 30 minutes before the screening to line up again by number (a minute late and you're out). Then you wait while the remaining tickets are sold for $US15 apiece. Either you get one or word slowly trickles back that the show is sold out.

For A Few Days of Respite, I got number 16.

"Will that get me in?" I asked a Sundance worker.

"It should," he said. "Over the weekend, we were filling up pretty quick. People were bringing entourages of 30, which squeezed a lot of people out."

I took a place behind seven others in an underground gangway. We waited for 40 minutes before another Sundance worker announced she had 10 tickets that the film's director, who would join us in the screening, didn't need. We all got in - free.

"Best wait list ever!" she said. And unlikely to have happened a few days earlier.

Though I never was lucky enough to see another movie free, the wait list became a way of life. It worked (in the city library doubling as a private school, I saw Martha Marcy May Marlene, an expert thriller about life inside a cult), it didn't work (number 36 did me no good for a 9am showing of New York Times documentary Page One) and a couple of times I got lucky.

For Being Elmo, a documentary about the man who voices the ubiquitous Sesame Street puppet Elmo, I arrived almost two hours early. But the movie was so in demand that I scored number 62. Knowing such a high number was worthless, I instead did what I have for so many concerts and baseball games: I stood out front and mumbled, "Anyone got an extra ticket?" until someone did (and the spirit of camaraderie prevents scalping here).

After seeing three movies and striking out once, I was ready for snow. There are three resorts in town, and the most in-town of all is Park City Mountain Resort. It's so in-town that one of the lifts is in the heart of Park City.

I was primed to warm up on a simple run, but on the chairlift I met 10-year-old Jared from New York, who insisted I ski with him. He tried talking me into something called Widowmaker. We compromised at the slightly less harrowing Payday, the top of which looks upon miles of jagged, snowcapped Rocky Mountain peaks. Payday mostly mocked me as the clumsy flatlander I am, but so what? There wasn't a soul on the slopes beneath us.

Back up top, I met a retirement-age man named Jim, who, as a concierge of sorts, was directing skiers to appropriate runs. I mentioned how clear the slopes were.

"Who doesn't love Sundance week?" he said. "You ski by yourself! No lines, no waiting! All the Sundancers have all the rooms! They don't ski!"

I had planned to walk back to town by midday to wait for I Saw the Devil, a bloody Korean revenge tale of a man who chases, catches, tortures and releases his wife's murderer (so he can chase, catch, torture and release him again). But I was having too much fun; I skied an extra two hours and gambled on buying a ticket outside the theatre.

Muscles aching and lungs flush with mountain air, I lucked into that ticket just before showtime, bought a bottle of local beer in the lobby and eased into a cramped mid-row seat in the back of the packed theatre. About 30 minutes in, at the movie's first decapitation, a couple on the aisle several rows ahead grumbled about the gore and left. In true second-half-of-Sundance spirit, I gladly moved up and stretched out.

IF YOU GO

GETTING THERE: The Sundance Film Festival runs from January 19-29. Park City is about 30 miles east of Salt Lake City, which is served by several major airlines. There are shuttles between the Salt Lake airport and Park City and buses in town - which are free - so a car is not a requirement, but it is helpful.

STAYING THERE: Park City hotel rates dip significantly and availability increases after the first few days of the festival. Options are wide, from rooms as cheap as $US135 or dorm room beds for $US45 per night at Chateau Apres to entire two-bedroom condos for about $US400 per night. Also a possibility is a single room in a condo (check craigslist.org) because industry folk vacate space rented for a week.

DETAILS: sundance.org