Russell as rocker hits a Sundance high note

By Mark Caro, Chicago Tribune movie reporter, ©January 21, 2002

PARK CITY, Utah -- The Sundance Film Festival is all about discovering the future stars of film, but, still, everyone gets a little giddier when the current ones show up.. .

And late Thursday night, the Yarrow Hotel's lobby and entrances were crammed late with dozens of parka-wearing festival-goers, mostly female, who were desperately seeking tickets for a documentary about a rock band that has sold about as many albums as Britney Spears sells during a costume change.

If these fans couldn't snag a ticket for this 11:30 p.m. screening in a 250-seat function room, they at least wanted a glimpse of the band's lead singer-songwriter, who was due to introduce the movie. Russell Crowe has fronted 30 Odd Foot of Grunts since it formed in 1984, and "Texas," produced by the band, shows the fellas recording, rehearsing, swearing, goofing off and playing a concert in Austin.

"This is a home movie," Crowe, having survived the fan gauntlet, told the audience before the screening. His face was sporting what looked like a week's worth of beard; his hair was longish, flipping up at the back of his neck; and he wore a red flannel shirt and dark overcoat as he stood in front of the screen and lit up a cigarette. No one was about to ask him to put it out.

From the moment Crowe stepped to the microphone, audience members began snapping away like wannabe paparazzi until he stated with typical brusqueness, "No camera flashes while I'm talking." "This is not about superstars," Crowe told the crowd. "This is not about cutting-edge film technology. It's a slice of life."

Still, the vanity-project aspects are unavoidable; if not for Crowe's star power, no band of similar stature and quality would be able to get Sundance and Miramax to promote such an advertisement for itself.

That said, the movie does pretty much what it intends to do: It makes a good-humored case for TOFOG (the band's almost-catchy acronym) as a cohesive, rocking band that honors the tradition of storytelling compressed into three-minute pop songs. Crowe gets across his love for music, even if he probably didn't envision playing concerts where the crowds appear to be about 85 percent female. . .

After the screening, Crowe, several of his associates and Miramax and Sundance representatives retreated to a club on Main Street. It had a small stage, but Crowe said performing without his bandmates -- who weren't in town -- would defeat the point.

Instead, none other than Graham Russell, half of the legendary Air Supply, played a solo acoustic rendition of "All Out of Love," and much of the club, including Crowe, joined in on the chorus. In fact, sing-alongs to sappy classics was a festival mini-trend; a few nights earlier, Swinton joined in a spontaneous, table-wide outbreak of "The Greatest Love of All" at a dinner for her new film "Teknolust."

But when Graham Russell entreated his friend Crowe to join him on stage for the end of the song, Crowe muttered one of his trademark salty phrases and stayed put. Afterward, the singer returned to the table, and Crowe said dryly, "Next time I show one of my movies, I'll stop it before the last reel and ask you to come up and act it out."

Copyright ©2002, Chicago Tribune

(Thanks to Darcy for providing this article)