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Festivals without this brand of mad zeal, like 1999's Souldance -- an awkward, self-conscious experience involving two people, a hotel room and a large-screen TV -- may never return.

"There's never enough festivals," stresses Cabot Orton, co-founder of SlamDunk. "It is, lamentably, a public art form. Unlike writing or painting, it's expensive, it's collaborative, it takes a long time and a lot of work, and it's really for the public more than it is for the individual filmmakers. There are very few people cut out to be filmmakers, but it's an admirable thing to try."

Three years ago, Orton and his partners staged SlamDunk as a publicity stunt to create a buzz around their unfinished feature film. But when they arrived in Park City, Sundance was bowing to legal pressure and kicking out Nick Broomfield's contentious documentary "Kurt & Courtney." Realizing that careers are made over breaks like this, Orton scrambled to screen the film at SlamDunk's location -- the Park City Elk's Lodge. "Every cell phone in town was going off, people were running out of screenings to get there, we had 500 people in the street, and cops at the door running the whole thing," Orton recalls.

SlamDunk alternates small, experimental works with brand-name productions. Orton raves about "Dogdance 2000" (a film festival farce featuring the likes of "Pup Fiction" and "The Terrier Bitch Project") as well as "Woman Wanted," starring Keifer Sutherland, Michael Moriarty, Holly Hunter and directed by Sutherland under the pseudonym Alan Smithee. Sutherland allegedly removed his name when the film was reedited and re-scored.

"I could not believe they were considering showing it" at SlamDunk, says Orton. "I was very flattered, very honored and a little nervous. I've pleaded to have the cast come back and look at the film. Hey, if you're out there reading this, Keifer Sutherland, stop being a childish fucking actor, watch this movie and be so proud of the work you did as a director. Scorsese and Fellini don't edit and score their own works, and neither should you."

SlamDunk offers a spread of Woody Harrelson-endorsed bottled oxygen, and screens its films in the basement of Harry O's, a popular Park City night spot. To get to the screening area, you have to walk through the kitchen, where Mexican cooks stand with their arms crossed, vaguely disinterested, watching you like goldfish. When you sit down, your shadow blocks out some of the screen. Inevitably, at some point a viewer will collide with the aisle projector, knocking the film from the screen over onto the side wall, illuminating the menus and plastic flowers that betray the theater's previous life as a dining room.

Also providing alternative media outlets at Harry O's are Digidance, Jamdance, Webdance and Lapdance, the last of which was bandied about as the biggest and baddest party in Park City. This was due in part to the musical performance of DVDA, fronted by "South Park" brainiacs Trey Parker and Matt Stone. Parker and Stone -- whose 1997 short "Spirit of Christmas" and 1998 film "Orgazmo" both premiered at Sundance -- started off their set with a disrespectful little ditty called "Robert Redford Baby Fucker." Muttered Parker to the howling crowd, "I believe it was this time last year that Robert Redford called us the lowest of the low."

The grudge stems way, way back to 1994, when Parker and Stone's first feature, "Cannibal: The Musical," was forsaken by Sundance. The duo trekked up to Park City and screened the film anyway, and are therefore sort of spiritual forefathers of not only Slamdance, but the entire indie insurrection in Park City. "This year, 2000," claims "South Park" and "Orgazmo" producer and Lapdance director Jason McHugh, "is as wild as I've ever seen it."

Young, attractive hipsters exhaled plumes of steam into their cell phones as they waited in line for up to two hours to get in to Lapdance, ears freezing red because of their refusal to compromise their cleverly gelled hair with a winter hat. This is particularly amusing when you consider that it is nearly impossible to turn around in Park City without someone offering you a free stocking hat emblazoned with the logo of a film that has yet to be made, or, in many cases, even written.

So, although it is hard not to enjoy Lapdance's anarchistic revelry, it is easy to see how Lapdance's long lines also represent what is rotten in Park City. Park City is about being at a doorway and crossing over. It's not about what you do once you're allowed in, it's about simply getting in -- possessing that pass, holding that ticket, getting the Sundance seal of approval while everyone else presses their face against the icy glass.

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