Romantic comedies rule in the year 2000! If this year’s Sundance film festival is any indication of the months to come, we rabid moviegoers will be awash with quirky couples falling for each other in upbeat music montages and tearfully admitting their true love or irreconcilable differences in the closing scene. Have no fear; not every selection at the festival this year is so cute; the Park City Utah "Hollywood-on-ice" event included its share of controversial farce and misguided contemporary Shakespeare. But it’s not just a little depressing to see that a place hailed as a haven for the artist, the little guy, and the passionate filmmaker is really just L.A. in fur coats and ski boots, complete with leopard-print cowboy hats and beautiful ones massaging their arms and complaining about "cell-phone-elbow." I, however, was on a mission: to infiltrate the well-powdered and primped Sundance scene, grab at least one kernel of truth in the form of the next American Movie (one of last year’s sleeper hits, coming to video soon!) and get out of there before I was coerced into anything Prada. The following is a brief summary of my adventures:

Courtesy of Ariane Balizet Ariane Balizet (right),hobnobs with Hollywood and cosmetic icon Tammy "Look into My Eyes" Faye Bakker-Messner (left).

Jan. 21: Sundance kicks off with the Park City premiere of Joe Gould’s Secret, the new Stanley Tucci film. Not his best, but a great little film that offered me my first star sighting, Robert (Bob) Redford, who started Sundance and has now all but divorced himself from the proceedings. There was barely time to reapply my lip gloss before the start of American Psycho, one of the most anticipated movies of the festival (because it’s got sex and murder!). This romp through the mind of depraved, image-obsessed Wall Street executive Patrick Bateman (a bulked-up and impeccably groomed Christian Bale) whose life of empty power and status turns him into a killing machine. The problem is that what once shocked us into ironic awareness now seems mildly offensive and even funny, and American Psycho is almost, but not quite, smart enough to pack a punch. On a side note, however, can’t we all rejoice in the fact that Leonardo DiCaprio, the original pick for the role, backed out of the project? Christian Bale is so much dreamier.

Jan. 22: The day begins with Drop Back Ten, the first and worst of the myriad rom-coms at the festival. A reporter heads north to do an article on a teen star who turns out to be 27 and a wife beater. Then the reporter–excuse me, I mean journalist–hooks up with the estranged wife. What starts off as a witty look at young Hollywood turns into a lecture on domestic violence, and, to paraphrase poet Billy Collins, I begin to wonder if there aren’t two movies here, or three, or perhaps none. Then I enjoyed an $8 lunch of water, apple, and Danish, and back again for Waking the Dead, which stars Jennifer Connelly and Billy Crudup as lovers with opposing political ideologies. And one of them is dead. Proof that movie stars eat: at a restaurant that evening I eavesdropped on other movers and shakers in the bathroom, where I overheard "She’s such a bitch. I mean, she introduced me to Calista, but that was primarily for Calista’s benefit." I’m sure Ms. Flockhart is grateful for such a favor.

I am proud to say that I have truthfully partied with movie stars. The producer of Panic (which debuted at the festival) and his team of cronies threw a rousing house par-tay that night complete with a bad disco/eighties soundtrack, karaoke, and wundertwentysomethings Matt Damon and Ben Affleck. Also spotted: Ben’s little brother Casey, Emilio Estevez (sulking because he’s so short), Neve Campbell, Liev Schrieber, and Grant Show. All looked nervous and less attractive, and the lot of them booked when the cops came. Ah, the price of fame.

Jan 23: Mexican director Arturo Ripstein’s long but powerful adaptation of El Colonel No Tiene Quien Le Escriba (No One Writes to the Colonel), the novel by Gabriel García Márquez, provided the day’s somber start. In fear of having to think too much, I ran straight to the funny and formulaic Love and Sex starring Jon Favreau and Famke Janssen. We can forgive the fact that we’ve seen it a million times. Then the premiere of the aforementioned Panic, which stars William (Bill) H. Macy and Neve Campbell in a sort of American Beauty meets Grosse Pointe Blank project. Afterwards a gentleman from the audience stood up and asked Ms. Campbell if he could be the father of her children. What the hell is wrong with these people? That night I saw a greasy Ethan Hawke at an Independent Film Channel party, but since I hadn’t yet seen his tragic (in more ways than one) interpretation of Hamlet, I didn’t punch him.

Jan 24: Marathon Day! Girlfight kicked it off and turned out to be the first good movie I saw. A Nuyorican tomboy wants to be a boxer, so she sacks up and becomes one. At noon I squirmed through Michael Almereyda’s mutilation of Hamlet, which included more product shots than any movie I’ve ever seen (Pepsi! Blockbuster! Shakespeare!), and wasted an exceptional cast that included Bill Murray, Liev Schrieber, and the perfectly capable Julia Stiles as Ophelia in a ghost of a movie. After the screening, I hounded Almereyda for almost 5 minutes about his intentions with these drastic changes (imagine Hamlet without madness, theatrical references, and the entire threat of Fortinbras the subplot), to which he replied that the movie speaks for itself, and besides, he kept the original language. The question that followed mine was: "How long did it take you to shoot it?"

Thank God for Chuck and Buck, the best movie I saw at Sundance. Mike White wrote and starred in this unique, sad, and at times hilarious movie about childhood best friends Chuck and Buck. It’s twenty years later, and Chuck now prefers to be called Charlie, has a high-powered job in the music industry, and is about to be married. Buck still lives with his Mom. When she dies and Buck moves out to L.A. to be with his once best friend, we discover that Buck’s childish behavior is far from innocent and rooted in a troubled past that Chuck has blocked out and Buck desperately wants back. A true breath of fresh air amidst so much cut-and-dry heterosexual monotony.

Time for another romantic comedy! Happy Accidents, starring Vincent D’Onofrio as a time traveler from the year 2470 who finds a picture of 20th century codependent Marisa Tomei and sets out to woo her. Then, perhaps the biggest tragedy of them all, the truly incredible cast and painfully misguided result of Trixie, which stars Breaking the Waves phenomenon Emily Watson as a dim-witted and effervescent security guard in a small-time casino. I actually sat through the unforgivable Rated X, Emilio Estevez’s directorial debut about the porn industry (hey, Paul Thomas Anderson did it, why can’t I?) starring himself and brother Charlie Sheen as, well, brothers. Committed, a sweet and well-written little movie starring Heather Graham, Casey Affleck, and Luke Wilson brought the day to a sugary close.

It is impossible to write about the paradox that is Sundance without unfairly making fun of it. The scruffy, hardworking indie directors standing in the street in sandwich boards that read "Will Work for Distribution" and religious fanatics parading around crowds in the street screaming that only Jesus will save you have little to do with these big premieres and mind-numbing parties. There is a sense that filmmakers like Mike White from Chuck and Buck and Karyn Kusama from Girlfight are locals that rallied against and through the Charlie Sheens and Ethan Hawkes of this world: those who barrel through Park City throwing money left and right, breaking drinking laws, and endangering other skiers. At one party, I heard a man insist, "Well, that’s the thing about this town. When I say this town, of course, I mean L.A." Yikes. The jewel in Sundance 2000’s crown, however, was a little Showtime-bound documentary called The Eyes of Tammy Faye, a sympathetic but tongue-in-cheek life story of the infamous televangelist Tammy Faye Baker-Messner. The Eyes of Tammy Faye sums up this year’s Sundance itself: funny, but sad at heart, and even kind of gross when you get really close.