Seattle at Sundance

There is no Zoo. There is no Police Beat. There is no Smoke Signals. In fact, there are no Seattle-made films at all this year at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah, which opened last Thursday and continues through Jan. 27. The most we can boast is a couple of Northwest-made filmmakers. Calvin Reeder acted in and directed several short film up here (including Jerkbeast); now based in L.A., he's most recently created the Sudance short The Rambler.

Then there's Carlos Brooks, raised in Bellevue, a late '80s alum of Interlake High School, where he got his start as a filmmaker. �We kind of carved our own way," he says by phone from Los Angeles, shortly before flying to Utah. "There was just the beginnings of a media department in the Bellevue School District. I got ahold of a video camera, and we did music videos in high school. And that was what started me going.�

Eastside cinemas were also part of his education, he explains: �The John Danz used to have this big dolphin that stood in the middle of the lobby. [The theater] was right at the end of auto row. That�s where I saw Superman, that�s where I saw the Star War movies�.and fell asleep during Reds. We used to live in an apartment across the street from the Crossroads, and I was like, wow—there�s three screens! I�d ride my bike to the Overlake Cinemas, and I saw everything. I saw Little Big Man at the Overlake, the rerelease. Why were they showing Little Big Man at the Overlake in the early �80s? And it was awesome!�

Two decades later, he explains, he began shooting his very first feature—which debuted yesterday (Sunday) at Sundance—in a fondly remembered location just north of town.

�The first frame of this movie I filmed in La Conner. Because I went to Western Washington University in Bellingham for a while before I went to USC. And I used to drive by the tulip fields every spring. So I wrote it into the script. We got this wonderful rainy great gray sky. And the flowers just popped. It was beautiful and very dreamy.� That scene is a prologue to Quid Pro Quo, about a wheelchair-bound NYC journalist (Nick Stahl) who becomes involved with a shady lady (Vera Farmiga, The Departed) while reporting a story on people who seek to amputate their own limbs.

Brooks studied journalism at Western, before transferring to USC film school. �And then there was a cable access channel in Seattle when I was going to Western. Cable access back then had a mandate, and they had allow public access to the equipment. And so we went in and we used it to make movies.� Those shorts were then shown on public access TV, likely Channel 29 or its precursor.

�I�ve been Sundance before," Brooks continues, "My wife had a film up there, that was 12 years ago." That film was Reality Bites in 1994, and he got an up-close view of the festival hoopla. �It was so crazy and crowded and elbowy, and yet kind of fun. There was some naivet� that this is easy." By "this" he means the process of getting your first script (or feature credit) into Sundance. "It was kind of ephemeral at the time. It was very light and airy and we were very naive.�

A dozen years later, he says, �I go back now as a grown-up. I don�t think all those elbows mean anything, all that jostling and bumping and excitement. I�m not jaded by any means. So that allows me to be kind of thrilled about it. People use that word a lot...in our industry. But I am really am thrilled.�

Unlike many, if not most films debuting at Sundance, Quid Pro Quo already has a distribution deal through a division of the same parent company that owns our local Landmark Theatres chain. Brooks says a release date hasn't been determined. Other festival screenings will follow Sundance. So what about SIFF?

�I would love to. I think that�s a great festival for us,� Brooks replies. Then, if all goes well with the project commercially, if more calls start coming to him instead of the other way around, he adds, "My wife and I want to move back." With two small kids, he notes, the price of housing in Los Angeles makes Seattle real estate seem a bargain.

We'll have more news later on whether Brooks and Quid Pro Quo make their way to SIFF. Our conversation ends when he gets an incoming call from his leading lady, Vera Farmiga, with whom he'll appear at Sundance. Perhaps that's the sign of a career on the rise.

Topics: Film

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