Critics have to sit in the back of the theater

While waiting for the shuttle to take me to the opening-night movie, I meet a Philadelphia woman who says she is the film commissioner for the part of Pennsylvania in which she lives. She says that she has “two films playing here,” which means that two films playing at the festival were filmed in her area. The shuttle is late and she is worried that she will miss the 6:30 p.m. screening. I’m not worried because this year, for the first time in my experience, the Thursday-night opening is not in Salt Lake but in Park City, and the theater is a lot smaller. The result is that the press is not being let in. Instead, we’re being relegated to a special press screening , which begins an hour later. Sometimes being a second-class citizen offers it own rewards.