A year ago today, I was preparing to leave for Park City, Utah, where "Loggerheads" was going to screen for the first time at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival. It was a stressful, but exhilarating month of striking the prints, putting together press kits, printing one sheets and hammering out the lodging and transportation details for actors and crew and friends who were coming along for the ride. I recall a feeling of anticipation I'd never experienced. This year's selected filmmakers must be feeling the same. There's no way around it. Sundance is the goal for nearly every indie filmmaker out here and the weight of expectation around this one week in January is sometimes overwhelming.

I'm thinking today of those young filmmakers right -- the Sundance Class of 2006 they're called -- whose lives will be forever changed in a couple of weeks. It's true. It isn't possible to go through the Sundance experience as a young filmmaker without being changed, for better or worse or both, to greater or lesser degrees. I imagine what those chosen ones are doing today. They are so busy and so stressed out right now. And so excited. They're doing last minute print checks, making sure the colors are balanced and that flesh tones aren't too red or too blue. They're fighting with their producers over who stays in which condo, for how many nights, and who gets a bed and who is relegated to the sofa. They're figuring out how to get one actor's flight changed so that she can come in, promote the film and fly back to the set where she's working and get another actor from New York to Park City without having a layover in Chicago. They're reading about the competition and wondering who will win the coveted prizes. One of them is looking at the screening schedule, studying it carefully and realizing that his film is going to screen during the brunch when all the filmmakers get to meet Robert Redford and realizing that he probably won't get to meet Mr. Redford. They're printing posters and hundreds of postcards that no one will see and that they don't really need and will only create litter in the streets. They're fretting over sales agents, publicists, party tickets and SWAG, industry slang for "stuff we all get." (Want to know a secret? We don't ALL get it. Prepare thyself.)

As we say Down South, "Bless their hearts."

A few weeks ago, The New York Times ran an interesting story that sort of demystified the selection process of the Sundance festival. Usually I avoid articles about Sundance. It was a trying week for me, personally and professionally. Even the name-- Sundance (gulp)--makes my stomach drop. But I managed to get through this article and when I finished, thought, "I wish I'd read an article like this last year." It's worth a glance, if only to reassure filmmakers whose films are not chosen that there's a method to the madness that isn't necessarily based on which ones are the best (which is subjective anyway).

Here's a photo from of me at Sundance last year with Diana (the inspiration for the film), her husband, Tom, and "Loggerheads" producer and friend (yes, my producer and I are actually), Gill Holland, the one wearing the cool Norweigian sweater.

I like this picture. It has taken a year for me to be able to look at it without getting that sick feeling in my stomach where the whole experience comes rushing back.

I remember that day so clearly. The picture was taken immediately after what we would realize later was the best screening the film would have all week. Fifteen hundred people. Thunderous ovation. A fantastic Q&A. Much better than the previous day's premiere screening. We'd walked out of the theater into the bright, blinding Utah sun. I was dazed and there were rumors that Steven Spielberg had been in the audience (turns out that's exactly what they were: rumors). Many friends were in attendance, including Laura and Jon, who'd flown all the way from Winston-Salem, NC.

It was a magical day. It was before I got sick (the "Sundance flu" they call it). Before Dennis Harvey's absurd review had run in Variety and crippled the film out of the gate. It was before I realized I'd made a mistake by not identifying years at the beginning of each of the storylines in the movie. Before I knew that we wouldn't sell the film for as much money as we'd hoped. Before I had the distance and perspective to appreciate the sacrifices and risks Gill and everyone who invested in the project made. And it was before I realized that the enormity of it all -- the Sundance Mythology, especially -- was, in fact, not enormous at all, but just one more stop on the ride. A big stop, yes. But just a stop.

This is the image I want to remember.

*