BlackBook

If you're in Park City for Sundance, you know skiing and movie screenings take a backseat to schmoozing (Merriam-Webster: "to chat in a friendly and persuasive manner especially so as to gain favor, business, or connections"). Filmmakers schmooze with distributors to get a deal, actors schmooze with directors to get a role, and journalists schmooze with anybody to get a story. But schmoozing is inherently smarmy, and most people in possession of a conscience feel dirty about doing it. The answer is alcohol, which flows freely at the following Park City spots that are sure to be filled with everybody on the Hollywood success continuum, from the lowliest starry-eyed intern to the studio mogul who's seen it all. Now grab your business cards, script, and Altoids and go get famous. Continue on to our Top List of Eight Great Park City Spots for Sundance Boozing and Schmoozing. 

Chef John Murcko was named “Best Chef in Utah of 2011” by Salt Lake Magazine. Let me say that again: He’s not just the best chef in Park City, the pristine ski town known for its upper-class residents and proximity to one of the biggest indie film festivals in the world, but in the whole irregular hexagon that is the state of Utah. He oversees two dozen or so spots in Park City, and his award-winning philosophy is to simply care about the environment and insist upon knowing not only where all of his organic, mountain-grown ingredients come from, but knowing the people who bring him that food. A life dedicated to the industry affords him those types of relationships.

This January, sketch comedy degenerates Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim brought their billion dollar movie to Park City, Utah. People laughed, cringed, and walked out of the theater. Great job!

How will you travel to Sundance? Perhaps dog sledding is an option you haven't thought of.

Slopes by Talisker (Kimball Junction) - Casual fine dining at the Waldorf Astoria Park City courtesy of chef John Murcko. 

The nice thing about being on a junket in Austria on Audi's dime -- which you can read about here, but you can read more about it on this blog come Monday, when I'll tell you all about how I flew out here on Business Class, raced cars on ice and did it for free -- is not only that I'm actually on this junket, on work time, but that I'm on this junket in a foreign land, with a few extra moments to devote to BlackBook's special cross-section of travel and nightlife. So, in the interest of "work," I ventured out into the town to see how the locals do the do. With a few fellow junketeers, we went out to the lovely Kaprun, Austria, which is about an hour outside of Salzberg, on the first night, and found out what Austria's apres ski scene was like.

These are getaways for lovers -- or lusters -- only, without the family, just-good-friends, kids, laptops (lap dancing and clothing optional) or other encumbrances. Either you want to see and be seen, or you don’t. Whether you’re after an in-room Jacuzzi, couples massages, meals, or just a fireplace and a view, read on.

“There are rules!” warns Bethenny Frankel, as a waitress approaches our booth at the downstairs bar of Bandit's, just across the street from her Park City home-away-from-home, Harry O’s, where her ChefDance dinner parties have been the top event in town for four years running. In case I forgot, we’re in Mormon country. “You have to order something to eat if you get a cocktail in a restaurant,” she explains.

The only reason a party in celebration of a film called Motherhood (featuring Minnie Driver, Uma Thurman, and Jodie Foster) is even worth mentioning is that it was full of drunk folk. Not that it was bad; Greenhouse has thrown compulsively fun parties all festival long. It’s just that after a week of the same party every night -- same people, different poster -- I don’t know. You just kind of want to abort the whole mission. (Sad movie-title pun intended to demonstrate desperation). Yay movie that already has a deal! Yay already famous people! Yay living in the back pages of US Weekly! Yay open bar!

Much has been said about the relative absence of the "independent spirit” at this year’s Sundance Film Festival. Chalk it up to hard times, or the competing weeklong splendor of the inauguration of President OHMYGOOOOODDDDDD, but the consensus is that this year’s fest, even more so than years past, was an underwhelming mix of hair products and press conferences. “Why!?” cried the latte’d and parka’d. “What have you done with our beautiful independent festival, Paul Mitchell!? No one is wild or crazy or smelly anymore! Where is 1991? Where is out Tarantino drinking paint thinner in the street?"