The last days of Sundance.

Feed Me: The last days of Sundance. “If we want things to stay as they are, things will have to change.” -Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, The Leopard Hello everyone. Two months ago, Teddy Kim asked me if he could go to Sundance to cover the film festival for Feed Me. I told him to put together a pitch and a budget and send me an email. Teddy and I met in college — I was at SUNY FIT, he was at Harvard. We were in the backyard of my ex-boyfriend’s parents’ house on a warm summer night on Long Island, playing beer pong, surrounded by friends who could quote movie dialogue verbatim.

I knew even then that it was all temporary, but I loved the little group we had while we had it. Ten years later, Teddy and I reconnected. I came across his movie writing on Substack and asked him to write for me. Since then, he’s become a good friend. He was the first person to text me when the Mexican Navy ship crashed into the Brooklyn Bridge. He was the first person to text me that Charlie Kirk got shot. Our conversations aren’t about tragedy, there’s more of a patina to it than that.

It’s more that he’s attuned to the kinds of moments that drop into the pond of culture and create the ripples I like to track. Below is his dispatch from Sundance. There are three mentions of a man identified as “G—”, two mentions of Catholicism, one hangover, a visit to the Chase Sapphire lounge, and a possible solution to aging. Today’s letter also includes: Audrey Gelman’s solo trip to Disneyland, an ominous resignation from an Anthropic researcher, Carbone’s Summer 2026 internship program, and I think it’s sad that Perrier — a beverage that once inspired Nas lyrics — launched a prebiotic drink. Have a story idea for me?

Reply to this email or text the anonymous Feed Me Tip Line: ‪(646) 494-3916‬ The Last Days of Sundance, by Teddy Kim. “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid are all dead now… but once they ruled the West!” -Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid are all dead now… but once they ruled the West!” -Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) Thursday For as long as I’ve loved movies, going to Sundance has been a dream, a pilgrimage. As I fly over the mountains, I take a moment to appreciate that I’m finally headed there. There’s a certain thrill in getting it together just under the wire.

After all, this will be the last year of the festival in Park City, its home since 1981. But there’s a tinge of sadness as well. It’s a bit like hearing the news that the Catholic Church is packing up and leaving the Vatican to set up shop somewhere else. Sure, the Church is more than St. Peter’s Basilica. American indie cinema will endure wherever believers continue to congregate, not just in one mountain ski town in Utah. There are also plenty of good reasons, economic and political, for the move to Boulder.

But when it comes to matters of faith, worldly justifications like tax incentives and logistics leave a little something to be desired. They’re all defensible reasons, but they give the impression that something is under attack in the first place. My first event is the afterparty for Josef Kubota Wladyka’s Ha-chan, Shake Your Booty! which I’m able to simply walk into. I’m exhausted by the day of travel but I try to oblige the film’s choreographic imperative, if not literally, then at least by making the rounds of the party, cocktail in hand.

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