excerpt from 'Sundance Confidential'

I was speaking to a New York-based film journalist in the Eccles lobby just after last night's showing of Allison Anders' Things Behind the Sun, a partly autobiographical drama propelled by the traumatic distress caused by childhood rape. And the journalist was livid in his dislike of it, calling it "film as therapy" (since it essentially deals with Anders' rape when she was 12, and the actual location where the rape occurred is used in the film), sputtering angry epithets like "please" and repeating an apparently long-held view that Anders (Gas Food Lodging, Sugar Town) isn't much of a skilled director.

Ten minutes later I was sitting on a shuttle bus heading back to town and speaking to another respected New York film enthusiast, and he was declaring without reservation that Things Behind the Sun was Anders' best film ever.

I can't comment myself, since I was only able to see the first 20 minutes before having to duck out of the main Eccles theater and into the smaller press-screening room to see Michael Rymer's Perfume, which will have its main Sundance screening at the Eccles on Friday evening. What little I saw of Things Behind the Sun told me only one thing, which is that co-star Don Cheadle (Traffic) was delivering yet another fine performance. He's had only one "off" moment recently, when he played that oddly felonious angel opposite Nic Cage in The Family Man.

I hit Main Street around midnight, and walked up to the Treasure Mountain Inn at the top of the hill where a party honoring Anders and her film was underway. I managed to elbow myself in and shuffle over to the corner where Cheadle and co-stars Eric Stoltz and Kim Dickens were standing. I asked to take some shots, and they quickly obliged.

I then briefly chatted with Stoltz, whom I'd first met while visiting the set of set of Bodies, Rest and Motion in '92, with the purpose of interviewing co-star (and Stoltz's girlfriend at the time) Bridget Fonda as a freelance assignment for The New York Times.

Stoltz talked about how he's doing the final editing on his first directed feature, a drama titled Annus Horribilis, which will air on Showtime. (It sounds like a horror film, but the IMDB synopsis indicates otherwise.) Based on a script by P.J. McIlvaine, it co-stars Mimi Rodgers, Karen Allen, and Allison Mack, with Stoltz himself taking a supporting role. Stoltz said he expected that Showtime execs would probably lean on him to change the title.

I left around 1:30 and crashed a half-hour later. I woke up this morning at 6:30 to begin work on the column. Covering Sundance is a great gig, but I'll probably need some kind of physical therapy when it's over.

--Jeffrey Wells