Excerpt from:
“One Wild Night at Sundance”
The Advocate – Arts and Entertainment Section
Author: Anne Stockwell

Soon I find myself talking to a stranger who’s tall, dark, handsome, and burning with passion for his film, Ringers: Lord of the Fans. It’s a feature documentary on the worldwide phenomenon of fandom inspired by J.R.R. Tolkien’s trilogy, The Lord of the Rings, and it’s opening the Slamdance festival at 11:30 tonight. The tall, dark producer, Jeff Marchelletta, is a Tolkien nut himself, as are cowriter Cliff Broadway and straight-but-not-narrow cowriter-director Carlene Cordova. And at this moment they’re in the midst of discovering how it feels to be loved not for oneself but for one’s movie.

Cliff, who’s been known to host Los Angeles’s Lord of the Rings Oscar parties in drag-last time he was the Rohan maiden Eowyn-is pretty well beside himself, until he swings his cell phone into action, at which point he becomes terrifyingly calm and collected. Under his sleeve, Jeffrey hands me an invitation to the film’s premiere party, sponsored by Levi’s, set to kick off just minutes away. (“Don’t give this away to anybody else,” he whispers.) Elijah Wood is supposed to show; likewise Dominic Monaghan (now of the ABC TV hit Lost), who narrates the film. Contrary to type, I tag along.

Out in the quiet snow-banked middle of nowhere, the party’s roaring in a temporary building, reminiscent of the mess tent from M*A*S*H, set up by what looms up like a castle from Middle-Earth but is in fact a swank ski condo. Elijah hasn’t shown by the time I leave, but a rock band is kicking ass from the tiny stage, and as my cab pulls away toward town, two stretch limos pass me going the other way.