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# From sleeping in a basement screening tent to Star Wars: Rian Johnson’s long road into Hollywood
- URL: https://www.readfoxtalk.com/from-sleeping-in-a-basement-screening-tent-to-star-wars-rian-johnsons-long-road-into-hollywood/
- Published: 2026-09-09T11:56:25.000Z
- Updated: 2026-09-09T11:56:25.000Z
- Description: At a Sundance Institute event at the University of Denver, Johnson looked back on arriving in Park City with “no money,” nowhere to stay and a student film Sundance had rejected.
- Author: Andy Green
- Tags: Arts & Culture

Rian Johnson came to the University of Denver on Tuesday night to talk about Sundance, filmmaking and the festival’s coming move to Colorado.

But one of the most revealing stories he told began long before *Star Wars*, *Knives Out* or even his first feature film.

It was 1997\. Johnson had made a film-school short with the unlikely title *Evil Demon Golf Ball From Hell*. He told the audience at Sundance Institute’s “Mostly True Stories from the Sundance Film Festival,” held at DU’s Newman Center for the Performing Arts, that the film did not get into Sundance.

“It will shock you to know it did not get into Sundance,” Johnson joked.

It did get into Slamdance, the scrappier festival running alongside Sundance in Park City. That was enough for Johnson to make the trip from Los Angeles alone.

What he had not figured out was where he would sleep.

He assumed he would meet people once he arrived and work something out.

“The thing I didn’t take into account was that I had no social skills,” he said.

Johnson said he got there and met “absolutely nobody.”

By nightfall, Park City was getting dark and cold. Johnson had his Volvo, but sleeping in it did not seem like a good option.

At the time, Sundance’s popularity had spawned a collection of smaller, stranger festivals around it. Slamdance was one. Johnson remembered others with names that became increasingly elaborate jokes.

Eventually, he found one tiny unofficial festival operation in a basement on Main Street. Inside, organizers had set up small tents with televisions playing films on loops.

Johnson went into one of them and watched a movie.

Then he turned off the television, closed the tent and slept there for the night.

“That’s how I survived,” he said.

Nearly three decades later, Johnson was telling the story from a stage in Denver as Sundance prepares for its first festival in Boulder.

At the end of the night, speaking directly to young filmmakers, Johnson filled in the years between those two moments.

“It took me seven years to get my first feature made,” he said.

The DU event brought Sundance leaders and filmmakers together to look back at the festival’s history and ahead to its next chapter in Colorado. Festival director Eugene Hernandez told the audience the first Boulder edition will run Jan. 21 through 31.