9 People You Don’t Want to Meet at Sundance Film Festival

Larry Chiang hustles really hard at conferences. His channel here is meant to be instructional and humorous. Harvard recognized him and covered his ideas about mentorship in the Harbus article, “What They Don’t Teach You at Stanford Business School“.
By Larry Chiang

Sundance is an incredible film festival that attracts all sorts of awesome talent and of course, celebrities. Because of the celestial bodies swirling, it also pulls in some people you don’t want to meet.

Here are nine people you will want to avoid

-1- Hottie Seeking MRS credit

Nothing ruins a festival or a conference productivity than having a hottie in your hotel room text messaging you while you‘re networking :-I

Do as I read in Chapter 7 of my favorite book, “What They Don’t Teach You At Stanford Business School”, and forgo all sex at work conferences, film festivals and networking events.

-2- Silver Spoon Agent Boy

Born with enough family treasure to support his lifetime hobby called CAA Agent. Went to NYU for film just to have street cred to balance his Pasadena upbringing. He has staying power and is pleasant enough but his lack of urgency is kinda soothing and annoying at the same time. His girlfriend is the same but works at a studio doing TV and went to Stanford after high school in San Marino. Annoyingly perfect, he is one of the 9 Hollywood agents you don’t want to meet.

-3- Non Silver Tongued Casting Agent

I don’t need you to tell me I’m not talented enough… my 30 auditions without a callback conveyed that. Plus, even I were to master the Chubbock method, you would tell me, “they don’t pay me to act, they pay me to promote”.

-4- Day Late, Dollar Short.

Combines lack of talent with lack of hustle but has plenty of moxie. Went to UCLA film school only because his dad teaches there.

-5- PR Girls.

Actually, you wanna know them. I have this theory that PR girls can make or break your Sundance experience. I like them because they write my Business Week articles for me when I am sleeping over in their Sky Lodge Hotel room. Kidding!

-6- Mr PayPal.com.

Claims to be the founder of PayPal because he is. Comes and goes in and out of the industry on a whim. His last movie was “Thank You for Smoking”. His next film is ProsperAss (I hope 🙂

-7- Constantly Seeking Alpha

Alpha is an ROI bigger than the norm. This investment professional thinks he can shake up an industry with just $200k to invest. Reads every scrap of financial tid-bit related to the movie industry. You don’t want to meet ’em cuz he is just waiting to buy your film liquidated assets and sell the sequel, prequel, TV series, scene treatments, story boarded sketches, cartoon book, license who-knows-what-else and trademark squat a movie that actually made money but has a similar name.

-8- Mr. Strait to Prequel

Sees Sundance as a silly vacation. For work he buys properties, licenses it out to get his money back in simultaneous deal closings. He makes the prequels which is all gravy because his nut was covered by the licensing. Architects the savviest deals and dodges the calls from Harvard looking to do a case study. Went to SC for b-school and read “What They Don’t Teach You At Harvard Business School” when he was 13. Yes, his BFF is “Constantly seeking alpha”.

Now its your turn. Tell me #9

Good luck working Sundance and text me if you‘re coming to my AfterParty on January 23rd.

If you liked this, you may also check: Larry’s mentor Mark McCormack wrote this in 1983.

I edited this in 10 minutes. If I missed something, email me… larry @larrychiang dot com and include your cell in the subject line.


I started a credit company that changed a industry. Before the credit industry used to screw college students. Now, it still does, but just a little less.

Yes, I plan on doing this college marketing job until 2069 (I’ll be 90 then 🙂 Text or call me during office hours 11:11am or 11:11pm PST +/-11 minutes on my cell: 650-283-8008.