Rock Energy Begets Synergy

This was the year the Sundance Film Festival sold its soul for rock ‘n’ roll.

There was heavy metal icon Ozzy Osbourne of Black Sabbath fame at a private party on Main Street, sitting on a large, canopy bed in a room with purple curtains that resembled a bordello, promoting director Penelope Spheeris’ new documentary about a 30-city Ozzfest concert tour.

Osbourne later joined the crowd in another room to watch the Reverend B. Dangerous, who caused people to groan and gag by placing his face on broken beer bottles and then asking a 250-pound man to stand on his head.

At one point, Dangerous looked out on the Hollywood crowd gathered to see his freak show and must have thought Sundance was putting on its own freak show. “God forbid you guys breed,” he told the audience. “Babies will be coming out with cell phones growing out of their heads.”

There was the Rolling Stones’ Mick Jagger, just in from Panama, wearing a long, black fur coat with an aqua-colored scarf dangling from his neck as he greeted “Saturday Night Live” executive producer Lorne Michaels with a “Good morning, my darling!” Then they retreated to the basement of a Main Street saloon to conduct press interviews for a new film they are jointly producing called “Enigma,” an artfully staged World War II mystery-drama directed by Michael Apted.

Later that night, Jagger ran the gauntlet of paparazzi for the world premiere of the movie that was held at a nearby high school. Then he attended a private, post-premiere party at a swank mountain lodge where he alternately stared into space looking jet-lagged or mustered the enthusiasm to get on his feet and banter with the guests.

Everywhere one went at Sundance this year, musicians were as prevalent as skiers or film crews.

Radiohead was here, but didn’t perform. Macy Gray was here, was supposed to perform, but didn’t. Singer-songwriter Jill Sobule did perform. Even DJ Qbert and Mixmaster Mike, two turntable stylists who have developed a loyal fan base as vinyl-scratching DJs at clubs throughout America, were in town to promote a Doug Pray documentary called “Scratch,” which explores the hip-hop world of “turntablism.”

John Mellencamp, who was in town to hype the new thriller in which he stars, “After Image,” was giving press interviews inside a hotel bedroom. Michael Stipe, the lead singer of R.E.M., had just jetted in from Argentina and was hustled to a makeshift studio on Main Street, where he posed for Premiere magazine with cast members of a prison drama he has co-produced called “Stranger Inside,” which will debut in June on HBO. Stipe was also here to promote another film he co-produced called “The Sleepy Time Gal,” which stars Jacqueline Bisset.

The musical group known as the Billy Nayer Show, which has thrived the last dozen years on the fringe of the mainstream, was performing on Main Street to coincide with the premiere of “The American Astronaut,” a film musical written, directed and starring lead singer and chief songwriter Cory McAbee.

Courtney Love was also expected in town for the premiere of her new film, “Julie Johnson,” which co-stars Lili Taylor, while a hip-hop artist known as Sticky Fingers appeared in not one, but two films, screening at Sundance: “Lift” and “MacArthur Park.”

Pray, who first came here back in 1996, said the growing presence of musicians is one of the dramatic changes he has seen at Sundance.

“Part of it is cross-promotion and people just getting shrewder and shrewder and more savvy about how can we promote our film,” he observed. “Sundance has gone way beyond film now. It’s this huge convention of culture creators.”

While some musicians have flown in to sell movies they are either starring in or have produced, others are being wooed to write songs for films or provide soundtracks that distributors can aggressively market in conjunction with the opening of a movie.

“I think most of the people in the music industry who are up here, and I’ve run into this a lot, when we told them that we have a film in competition and it’s a musical, they’re not really interested,” said drummer Bobby Lurie of the Billy Nayer Show. “What they are interested in is securing songs by the artists to put into these films and to sell for a great deal of money. It’s a marketing technique.”

He explains that it’s for “soundtracks--they have a whole section now at Virgin Megastores and Tower Records, where whatever the latest film that is released this week, there’s the soundtrack.”

Rock Stars Have Been There Before

The sight of rock stars at America’s premiere festival of independent film held annually in this picturesque ski resort is not new, but it is arresting nonetheless.

Take Ozzy Osbourne.

The tattooed heavy metal singer, whose fans don body paint, beat each other up in the pit, ogle women who willingly bare their breasts and consume a sea of alcohol and drugs before Ozzy ever comes on stage, was seated quietly in his suite at the Silver Lake Lodge discoursing on his life, his fans and the documentary Spheeris filmed over a two-year period called “We Sold Our Souls for Rock ‘n’ Roll.”

On this day, the 52-year-old Osbourne has his hair pulled straight back and dangling over his shoulders, his face is nearly as pale as the snow outside and his right arm shakes whenever he reaches for his ever-present cigarettes. It’s ironic, he notes, that after all his years of drug use, tobacco is the one habit he can’t shake.

Noting that he has done every drug with the exception of crack and free-base cocaine, he adds, “Tobacco, in my opinion, is the most addictive substance I’ve ever put in my body. I can’t put it down.”

It might surprise some, but aside from the concerts, Osbourne actually lives a quiet family life with a loving wife, three children and five dogs.

Although Ozzy was making an effort to promote the documentary, Sharon Osbourne said that her husband’s appearance at Sundance was not an attempt to connect with Hollywood like other rock stars.

“For our culture, for what Ozzy represents, we don’t belong in the film world,” says Sharon Osbourne, who is also the singer’s manager. “We’re not in that genre of music that flirts with film. We are more street. We are not the high-profile, Versace rockers that are seen with film people.”

She mentions that Ozzy did appear in Adam Sandler’s recent comedy, “Little Nicky,” but that was because Sandler is a personal friend.

Osbourne says one reason he agreed to do the documentary was to see what goes on down among the audience at his concerts because he can’t see farther than 10 rows out due to the lights. “I didn’t find out anything, really. It’s very interesting. I can’t describe it.”

Indeed, Osbourne doesn’t know what to make of Sundance.

“I was walking around L.A. last week going, ‘What’s the deal with this Sundance thing? What is it all about? What do I have to do, run around the town naked?’ You could tell me anything and I’d believe it because I don’t know a damned thing about it.”

Osbourne says he finds the area absolutely beautiful and he has ventured out into Park City for walks with his wife.

At a midnight screening of the documentary at the Egyptian Theater on Main Street, Osbourne showed up wearing sunglasses with an entourage. Young people in the audience yelled “Ozzy!” but he just looked straight ahead, munching on popcorn before the movie began.

Jagger Is Busy Promoting ‘Enigma’

Meanwhile, in another area of Park City, another 50-ish rocker, Mick Jagger, is busy using Sundance, with its hordes of media, to promote “Enigma.”

Accompanied by producer Michaels [“Wayne’s World”] and Victoria Pearman, Jagger’s producing partner at Jagged Films, Jagger takes a seat in the lower-level bar of the Gamekeeper’s Grille, an outdoorsman-themed watering hole on Main Street with lamps made of deer antlers and images of bison and moose etched into the leather backs of the dining booths.

The publicist has chosen the bottom floor because the law forbids smoking in restaurants, she says, and Jagger is known to smoke like a chimney. But when Jagger sits down, the rock star informs everyone, “I don’t smoke anyway.”

Jagger notes that it is his first time in Sundance.

“I went out last night,” he says. “I got the impression that everyone who loves skiing is incredibly out of it. There was everything going in this party last night. There were people falling over. Everyone had a video camera. Everyone had lights. There was nobody actually acting. Everyone was a director or a cameraman. I’m not naming the party.”

“The one that Macy Gray didn’t sing at,” Pearman interjects.

“And there was someone painting a picture live,” Jagger says. “That was rather a 1950s moment, I thought.”

Jagger says he has seen more cross-fertilization between the movie and music worlds since he began performing. “To some extent there is more movement than there used to be. It used to be very set. Movie music was once its own genre and there was no crossover and now it’s de rigueur almost to have a soundtrack album which has some sort of music whether it’s Bob Dylan winning the best song in the Golden Globes or whatever.”

R.E.M.’s Stipe, who has two film production companies, has produced or executive-produced 29 films in his career, with credits that include the Oscar-nominated “Being John Malkovich” and “Velvet Goldmine.” This is his 10th trip to Sundance.

“As long as I’ve been here I’ve run into people from the world of music,” he says. “There might be more of an organized corporate presence now. To me, that’s not necessarily a surprise.”

As Sundance falls victim more and more to commercialization and “Hollywoodization,” Stipe says, he wouldn’t be surprised to see Sundance evolve while other festivals rise to become what Sundance once symbolized. “It’s going to go this way,” he says. “And that’s not a bad thing.”

Mellencamp, who is making his first tour of Sundance, said the festival reminds him of being back in the 1970s when musicians would attend radio conventions, where performers would give interviews to stations that would then play their records.

Asked why he thinks rock stars like Jagger, Osbourne, Stipe and Love are so interested in movies, he replies: “I think all these people are very fortunate people and they can afford what they want to do. That’s how I look at myself. For 20 some years now, I’ve been writing, and arranging and recording my own records and take charge of the whole business. It’s kind of nice to stick your head out and try to do something else.”

Mixmaster Mike, who has been working turntables for half of his 30 years, says he definitely sees his type of music cross-fertilizing with film and Sundance is a place it can start.

“I got approached by a few directors to, like, score their movies,” he says. “I haven’t agreed because, right now, I’m working on scoring a film.”

DJ Qbert, meanwhile, has made his own movie called “Wave Twisters The Movie,” which features his own scratching synchronized to an animated, hip-hop film.

Asked if he is looking for a distributor at Sundance, DJ Qbert replies: “Anything can happen. I’m a man of faith, so whatever happens is meant to be.”

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Times photographer Robert Gauthier contributed to this story.