Long day yesterday. Up at 4 am in Cincinnati to catch my flight, then finally dropping my bag in the hotel room nearly 8 hours later, 9:45 am Salt Lake City Time—and the day hadn’t even begun!

I’m sharing with Irena and Yvette Tomllinson, the producer who logged so many hours and years traveling the world with Irena to gather all the stories of the film—she was on the first shoot in South Africa in 2002, making me, starting 2 1/2 years ago, the relative newcomer. They looked great, well and rested (they were still in their pajamas, an enviable position as far as I was concerned), and somehow all getting into that room together ratcheted up the excitement. After all that expended energy, finally the film will have its premiere tomorrow night, 8:30 pm in the Holiday Village cinema! After a little bit of catching up we finally threw on clothes and went in search of breakfast, more difficult than you might imagine. We ended up taking the shuttle and grabbing snacks in one of the filmmaker gathering places along Main Street, where we met John Murphy, who’s coordinating the press for Irena, who was very gracious.

We were all groggily eating our tepid bagels (hey, no one comes to Sundance for the food) when Yvette noticed a little slip of paper on the table: Filmmaker’s Brunch, 10:30 am, today, at the Sundance Resort, an hour away–and an hour and a half ago. Last bus leaving at 9:45, about when I was getting to the room.

Yvette to Irena: Shouldn’t you be at that?
Irena: I think that brunch is Tuesday. Isn’t it Tuesday?
Yvette: No. It’s today.
Irena: Well, it can’t be the one with Robert Redford. It must be a different one. I can’t have missed the one with Robert Redford.
All of us: No, no, someone would have told you. You wouldn’t have missed the one with Robert Redford.

A few phone calls later, of course, we find that it was, indeed, “the one with Robert Redford.” We were stunned, trying to cheer up Irena, but of course it was a major disappointment. I mean, Robert Redford. Turns out the young volunteer who’d given Irena her package of information didn’t tell her that all her major events were listed on the back of her credentials. Sure enough, when we turned it over, there it was.

We had tickets to a filmmaker’s meet and greet after that but none of us were in the mood to schmooze at that moment, so we did what any sane person would have done: went in search of swag. I have no idea who knew about this, or why, but we ended up in a basement room of one of the resorts poring through tables of anti-aging creams and chocolate sauces and graphic novels. Who decides the content of these things? The best part about it was the patterned fabric bag they gave each of us to carry our loot. Irena was offered $5,000 off a chartered airplane, a kind of hilarious perk for a microbudget filmmaker. We took the T-shirts though. But I skipped the self-tanning lotions of another table.

Back to the room to rest and plan: the rest of our day would be taken up with, we thought, a wine party hosted by Discovery at 4, the party for the filmmakers of “the Linguists” at 6, dinner at 8, a documentary filmmaker’s party at 10. We were all excited about the Linguists: It’s a doc about endangered languages around the globe, following globetrotting academics as they document the culture and rituals that rely on traditional languages. I, for one, would see any film starring globetrotting academics; and Irena had met them at a party in New York and said they were great. But our plans began to go awry almost immediately: “rest” became a visit from Christophe Julien, our composer in from Paris, Katie Hipp, our associate producer, and William Marks, one of the main water experts in our film. Somehow we all ended up singing the theme song of our film, in harmony, with Christophe on guitar. We reminisced on our long-distance composing last year, when I’d send Christophe quicktimes of scenes and he’d end up composing a score in his apartment that would be waiting for me when I got into work the next day. They all talked about the dance party the night before, when I was stuck in Cincinnati, and I loved hearing that William, who is very somber and spiritual in the movie, danced the night away to the spinning of DJ Spooky.

So. No rest. So onto the wine party: we hopped on the bus. We’re staying a little bit away from the main drag, but only 10-15 minutes away from Main Street on the bus—usually. We hit traffic. And not just go-a-little-slow-traffic. Like, sit in one spot for 25 minutes traffic. Our cheerful mood was rapidly seeping out of us, not helped by the fact that Maude Barlow, the Canadian activist who started it all, was waiting for us downtown while we were breathing in fumes at the top of the hill. Finally we all decided to hop off and walk, so our mood lifted. After twenty minutes of walking Irena and I picked up Maude, but then lost everyone else to the Stella Artois dance party by Sundance house. Maude, I rena, and I made the wine party with 10 minutes to spare, had a glass of wine, then went to find the “Linguists” gathering; when we found there was a line to get in, we decided against it and just went to find dinner.

Last time I was at Sundance, in 2005 with “Loggerheads,” I don’t recall it being quite so much of a madhouse! Irena put it best: “It’s like Mardi Gras. In winter.” Main Street in Park City is a small-town thoroughfare, lined with the shops and restaurants of any tourist town: to see it jammed with thousands of down-coated film industry folks, chattering on cellphones and waiting in line to enter exclusive parties, is a strange juxtaposition. Dinner was perfect though—Steven Starr, our producer, joined us, along with his old friend Amos Poe, director of Generation Blank and one of the first punk filmmakers. He was at the other end of the table and we didn’t get to speak—but I got to talk to Maude Barlow at length. She’s a lovely, inspiring person: I have the odd editor experience of finding it strange that, since I know the subjects so well, they don’t know me. But Maude is an easy person to talk to, especially when she’s on her passionate subject of water. I can’t wait to read her new book, “Blue Covenant.” She was telling us about something she outlines in the book: how we, with our development and construction, are actually interrupting the hydrologic cycle and sending our freshwater out to sea. Chilling stuff—and a wakeup call. Read the book to hear it explained much better than I could.

But the word is getting out there, which is all we can hope! Countdown to tomorrow night, when we get to show the film to the world. Let’s hope the world listens, and we all get our hands dirty to make sure water stays safe for generations to come.