"The audience never came back after the sound glitch," Sherman says gloomily after the credits roll, adding that the missing dialogue contained vital information for the story. Werner isn't so downbeat, but he does think that the audience took half an hour to re-engage with the narrative.

Robinson disagrees. "They still dug it," he says. "They laughed at the right places."

Later, at a Thai restaurant on Main Street, Sherman has a hard time eating the pad thai and curry chicken because his nervousness has given him stomach pains. "It's so nerve-racking to have a screwed-up screening," he says.

Tuesday, Jan. 23
Before this morning's "Go Tigers!" screening at Holiday Village, I see a middle-aged woman standing outside the theater entrance wearing a sandwich board. The sign on the front says "SUPPORT GROUP: Mothers of Indie Filmmakers." She's Lindsey Miller Lerman, a Nebraska Supreme Court judge, and her son has a 75-minute film at No Dance, one of the several Sundance alternative festivals that have sprouted up in Park City at the same time as the mother fest. There's also Slamdance and Slamdunk and Lapdance and TromaDance. (Troma is the studio behind tasteless comic horror masterpieces such as "The Toxic Avenger.") Last year Redford denounced them all as "parasites," and surely they are, but the newer festivals have captured some of the edginess and guerrilla ethos that Sundance lost when it became more assimilated into the Hollywood mainstream.

Lerman's son's No Dance film is called "Nebraska Supersonic." She's handing out fliers. "It's done in the mockumentary style. He made it with one-third the budget of 'Blair Witch,'" she says, proving that she's as well-versed in cinema as in law. "It has the sensibility of 'Spinal Tap' or 'Best in Show.'" Her son shot it at age 21; now he's 25. "He's been camped out in the dining room for the last few years."

After the "Tigers" screening, Bob Berney from the Independent Film Channel emerges from the darkened cinema. IFC's lower-level people saw "Tigers" at its earlier screenings and recommended it to Berney, the senior executive or "trigger guy," the one who has the power to make an offer. In the lobby, he tells Shaun Redick of William Morris that he loved the film. Redick tells the producers, and hope is restored after the gloom of last night.

Wednesday, Jan. 24
After six nights of staying up until 2 or 3 a.m. at parties or poker games or watching "Apocalypse Now" on cable TV, and six mornings of getting up at 7 or 8 for breakfast meetings or screenings, Sherman and Robinson are exhausted. They're both lying in bed at the hotel at 3:30 p.m. when the phone call comes from their agents. Sherman and Robinson are instructed to drive over to the William Morris condos at once. A deal's underway.

Cassian Elwes, the head of Morris' indie film practice, has sequestered the IFC executives in one of the agency's ski condos. He escorts the producers and 'Tigers' director Ken Carlson into a second condo next door. The idea is that Elwes will shuttle back and forth between the two parties, hammering out the terms of the deal. Cassian's bother Cary (who starred opposite Alicia Silverstone in "The Crush") is hanging out in the second condo, where Sherman and Robinson are brought to wait. He hands them a bottle of mineral water.

"You're going to sell your movie," he says. "Cool."

Thursday, Jan. 25
The news makes the Hollywood Reporter and then the other trade publications. The North American rights to "Go Tigers!" sold to IFC for a reported low-to-mid six-figure upfront payment. The price was less than the movie's production cost, but the deal gives the producers something rare for a documentary film: a theatrical run (as well as a later showing on cable TV, of course, plus home video). And if it does well in the cinemas, the filmmakers could earn back the full cost and even make a profit.

With three days left in the Sundance festival, Sidney Sherman is happy that he can finally try to catch one of the remaining screenings of someone else's film.

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