Miller Time: Chasing the cool at Sundance

showed the bouncer their IDs. My mind raced with potential excuses. I lost my driver's license at the airport… I was pick-pocketed earlier today… I don't have my ID but I can give you a twenty instead… I desperately

wanted to get into the party. After all, there was a chance Reggie Miller would be at this party.

Normally the Sundance Film Festival is not the ideal place to spot mid-nineties basketball superstars. But this year was different. This year Winning Time: Reggie Miller vs. the New York Knicks was in the program. And we had heard rumors that Miller would be in town to watch the premier.

Ryan Sidhoo and I weren't even supposed

to be here, with two tickets for the exclusive Opening Night Party. But the merciful gods of Sundance graced us with a blessing. The walls of the tunnel had grown dark and our eyes locked toward the light.

There is a palpable excitement in the theater during the three seconds of utter blackness before a Sundance film. In the outside world, movie going is an independent

experience. You watch with maybe a few friends, making sure to sit as far away from every stranger in attendance. The movie theater of the outside world is like virtually every other public space in society; countless, faceless beings silently weaving amongst each other, eyes locked on the floor to ensure eye contact is avoided.

At Sundance, though, movie going is a communal experience. Only your fellow attendees can relate to the experience, only your fellow attendees understand the brilliance

or the stupidity or the emotions or the horror of a particular Sundance film. As a result, for one week every January, Park City exudes a vibe of community seemingly lost to time and globalization. Everybody is there for the same thing, and everybody has at least one thing in common: an interest in independent film. The invisible walls of public privacy collapse during this week in January. We are in a bubble, with the eyes of the world upon us, eternally linked by this shared experience.

The woman sitting next to Ryan on the bus was not a stranger, she was a fellow Sundancer. The woman was somehow officially

connected to one of the films. She was on the Inside. After some minutes of conversation, she pulled out two tickets.

"Are you guys interested in going to the Opening Night Party tonight? I'm still on east coast time so I'm too tired to go."

"Oh yeah, sure, thanks a lot," responded

Ryan coyly.

An hour later we were racing though the icy wind, battling thin air and thick snow, determined to reach the party before our veins froze. The orange glow of the street lights reflected off the icy roads and, as we ran, everything around us seemed to glow. Many cars passed us but the physical

exertion had dulled my ears and I could only hear the echo of my breath and the crunching of the snow beneath my boots. My chest and legs were burning from the running, but my face and hands were frozen from the biting cold. We arrived at the Park City Mountain Resort with numb cheeks and red noses. Surely this is not how important

people arrive at social gatherings.

I was next in line. Maybe he would not notice my birth date, I thought to myself. So I slowly and hopelessly reached into my jacket pocket for my wallet. A look of despair

surely shone from my face.

"Stop!" the bouncer suddenly exclaimed

at me.

He knew, Oh God, he somehow knew. Was the look on my face too obvious? Was my beard too short? Did my beanie seem juvenile? How did he possible know?

"Who is that on your shirt?" he asked.

"Uh, it's Manny Pacquiao," I answered, very perplexed.

"Oh! Yeah, the pound for pound king! Come right in buddy!"

And I was in. The search could begin.

Hope needs absurd justification to overpower

reason. The fact that Reggie Miller announced the Cavaliers-Lakers basketball game earlier in the day did not phase us. It was possible, after all, that Miller would simply fly to Utah right after the game. The trip would take no more than three or four hours right? Right?

So with vigilant eyes we prowled the party. Noting the faces we saw and the voices we heard. But something seemed off. Something felt… weird. We posted up in a corner of the upstairs room to regroup.

"This is quite an eclectic group of people," remarked Ryan.

"Yeah, I don't think there are any celebrities

here. Just a bunch of regular people looking for celebrities," I added, "I bet all the important people gave away their tickets to people like us and then went to a special secret Sundance Opening Night Party."

We observed the people around us. On the edge of the bizarrely bright dance floor was a middle aged woman, maybe in her fifties, grinding on a middle-aged man, presumably her husband, as she shouted the repetitious lyrics of the latest hackneyed Black Eyed Peas song. To our right was a group of three confused-looking girls, cameras in hand, standing idly in front of a linen Sundance Film Festival banner. A few feet in front of us, three bluebloods wearing white sailor jackets and brown loafers and holding brightly colored mixed drinks desperately

tried to flirt with a group of marginally

attractive, but scantily clad, women.

You could cut the pretension with a knife.

Just as the night seemed to be wearing down, a man with a Baron Davis beard approached

us and struck up a conversation. His name was Vince and this was his seventh

straight year at Sundance. Vince was a veteran, Ryan and I were rookies. Maybe he liked us, maybe he felt sorry for us, maybe he saw a little of himself in us, or maybe he was just nonsensically drunk, but for whatever reason, Vince benevolently took us under his wing.

"I've been coming here every year," proclaimed our new friend, "and every year I hook up with so many girls. It's so ridiculously