`Smoke Signals' Buzz Is Heating Up For Sundance

The Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah, begins Jan. 15. Film.com, a Seattle-based movie Web site and a partner with The Seattle Times, will file daily updates from the festival, with a special emphasis on tracking the local production, "Smoke Signals." Film.com can be found on the World Wide Web at www.film.com.

Name the last Indian movie you saw. "Dances With Wolves"? Hardly. "Powwow Highway"? Nope. "Thunderheart"? Forget it. "Kama Sutra"? Sorry, not that kind of Indian. The fact is, there haven't been any real Indian movies - that is, movies made by Indians about things Indians really know. But when the non-Indian world gets to know "Smoke Signals" after its imminent premiere in competition at the Sundance Film Festival, there are bound to be a lot more.

Sherman Alexie is an Indian. Not a Native American, an Indian. "I don't know any Native Americans," says the 31-year-old Seattle author and first-time screenwriter of "Smoke Signals." "Indians call each other Indians. Native American is a guilty white liberal thing."

Alexie is as disarmingly direct about his hopes for the movie's success as he is about the pitfalls of misplaced political correctness. Asked about the reaction he expects when he and Indian director Chris Eyre roam the Hollywood-comes-to-Utah streets of Park City, he says, "Chris and I are going to be darlings anyway with all those nice little liberals out there."

"Smoke Signals" has already generated a tremendous buzz. Drawn from a composite of stories in Alexie's book, "The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven," it's a picaresque tale of a young man searching for peace with his his dead father. Many have described it as a universal story that happens to be about Indians. "I'd say that the other way around," counters Alexie. "It's a story about Indians that happens to be universal."

The vision quest that led Alexie and Eyre into an impending whirlwind of festival schmoozing began in the spring of 1995. At the Sundance Institute's screenwriter's workshop, the duo developed the universal story about Indians they both wanted to tell. Alexie's much heralded writing had spawned a lot of interest from producers and Sundance honchos prior to that, but he was having none of it. "They all scared the hell out of me," he says. A mutual friend introduced him to Eyre, who was also being courted by the Sundance program as a talented new director who happened to be Indian. "They wanted both of us, but when we were together we were that much cuter," says Alexie. More important, they knew it made sense to take the plunge as an Indian filmmaking team.

The burgeoning Seattle company ShadowCatcher Entertainment had also expressed interest in developing Alexie's work. When he showed them the script - which then had the cumbersome literary title, "This Is What It Means to Say Phoenix, Arizona" - they immediately committed to making it their first production.

In early December, Miramax acquired the film for distribution, which only added fuel to the pre-Sundance fire. It didn't hurt that the round of distributor screenings created a mini bidding war among players such as October Films, Sony Classics and Fox Searchlight. Some have questioned the wisdom of committing to any distribution deal in advance of a Sundance splash, but to Alexie, it was nothing more than a load off. "I didn't care one way or the other how we got a distributor, I just wanted one," he says. "Besides, we did really well without waiting. I mean, it's Miramax."

"Smoke Signals" co-producer and ShadowCatcher founder Scott Rosenfelt was also happy to have the muscle of Miramax going into the festival. "It might have been possible to get more money by waiting until after Sundance," he says. "But we didn't want to go in as sellers. Early on we decided that if the movie was just OK we'd go to Sundance and try to sell it. But we knew pretty quickly that we wouldn't have to worry about that." Scuttlebutt is that everyone else is ready for "Smoke Signal's" pre-sold reputation, too. The movie will have several private screenings at the festival, in addition to those scheduled, including one hosted by Sundance founder Robert Redford.

The movie's name change has spurred grousing in some quarters that Miramax exerted too much pressure. Rosenfelt and Alexie wave such protestations away, claiming it was always their intention to come up with something more manageable. It's a cinch there won't be any such problems with a planned adaptation of Alexie's novel, "Indian Killer," especially after "Smoke Signals" opens the floodgates for all things Indian. The only name change will relate to Alexie himself - he'll be director as well as screenwriter. Though he had no prior ambition to direct, it became an obvious choice as soon as "Smoke Signals" went into production.

"Five minutes on the set and I knew this was what I wanted to do," he says. During editing, Rosenfelt asked him to do the honors on "Indian Killer," which ShadowCatcher had already optioned. "It was flattering," says Alexie, "and scary as hell."