Sundance: Stars and Slopes Forever

And, thanks to the film festival, skiers and boarders can enjoy an apres-ski is that is way more widescreen than the typical hot tub, hot toddy and hot meal. Just walking down Main Street is a show, with all the stars from Planet Hollywood out and about. Last year, the long list included Kevin Bacon, Jeff Daniels, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Sidney Poitier, Jenny McCarthy, Chevy Chase and Anne Heche. Paris Hilton almost caused a drunken riot. And, say, was that Frodo Baggins sipping a chai latte? This year's galaxy of stars expected to attend includes directors Jonathan Demme and Wim Wenders; actors Ashley Judd, Lucy Liu, Sam Shepard, Bruce Willis, Sharon Stone and Justin Timberlake; and rocker Neil Young. Plus Ralph Nader and Al Gore.

I gathered background color for "The Parallel View" by spending a week in Park City during Sundance in the convivial company of the Ski Club of Washington D.C., which makes the trip an annual outing.

The only downside to an otherwise fabulous trip was a wee miscalculation at the Canyons that cut my location scouting short. But it at least had the courtesy of happening on my last day.

Park City by Ski

The first nice surprise about Park City was, believe it or not, the bus.

Unless you have a limo, the bus is the way to travel while at Park City, because the traffic is just rotten. Even if you have a rental car, it is better to park and ride once in town. Park City buses are frequent and free, and they take you to all three ski areas as well as to the movies, the market, the masseuse and the medical clinic, if need be.

Next to the hot tub, they are also the place to pick up info on cool parties and hot screenings -- lots of buzz last year about "Hustle & Flow" and "the penguin movie" ("The Emperor's Journey," aka "March of the Penguins"). People unload extra tickets to screenings on the bus, too, sometimes for free but generally for face value ($10 in 2005). And chatting with seatmates who turn out to be publicists, aspiring actors and production assistants gives an East Coast type some insight into the L.A. vida loca .

In "The Parallel View," the heroine, a champion snowboarder named Brandy, meets a young actor on the bus, and they make a date to go to a screening of "Lackawanna Blues," an HBO-backed festival entry that in Sundance 2005 played the Eccles Theatre, the largest venue in town. Later, they will spend a fateful day on the slopes at the Canyons.

On our first morning in town, a dozen ski clubbers could be found at the bus stop in front of the condos the club had rented, which were just a couple of blocks from the action on Main Street. (Anyone booking rooms now, though, probably will have to stay on the outskirts of Park City because of the cinema crowd crush.)

We were headed for the Park City Mountain Resort to get started with a free mountain tour. The garrulous guide there dispensed a bucket load of tips -- where to go for the morning sun, trails not to be missed, best places to find powder -- as he deftly sketched the area's history and ecology.

The ski runs at Park City are honeycombed by 200 miles of tunnels, he told us, and are punctuated by the ruins of the mining business that gave birth to the town in the 19th century. The skeletal remains of one building near the top of Thayne's Canyon figure as a spooky backdrop for a dramatic chase scene in "The Parallel View," as Brandy is pursued down the long, narrow trail by a Tonya Harding-variety villain bent on mayhem.

Even better, though, would be to get permission to shoot that scene aboard the now-defunct Skiers' Subway. When the resort opened in the '60s, our guide said, one "lift" was an old mining train that ran for a mile and a half through the pitch-black 1,700 feet underground -- that's a skyscraper of dirt overhead. Skiers then caught a hoist or elevator to the surface. In addition to the obvious phobic drawbacks, passengers emerged damp from the subway. A bunch of high-speed quads and even a six-person chair now whisk people up the mountain instead.

As a blue-trail skier, I found lots to like about Park City -- extended runs with beautiful views, some steep but groomed black slopes for the morning before the legs got mushy and a well-planned layout of lifts that meant almost no poling.