Dean “Dino” Georgopoulos’s resume includes business planning for Quentin Tarentino, teaching Don King to surf the ’net, building a “one box” live production studio for Orange County, and coaching hockey. I spoke with the New Hampshire native about one of his many innovations—ROADance—a shorts festival projected on a truck that he drives through Park City, Utah, during the town’s busiest time of year: the Sundance Film Festival, which starts Thursday, Jan. 19.

So should I call you Dean or Dino?
I’m a Dean, that’s my actual name. There’s a percentage of friends before college that call me Dean, but everyone I’ve met since 1987 calls me Dino.

You’re an alumnus of the University of New Hampshire and a native New Englander. What do you make of the New England filmmaking and exhibition community?
I grew up in Manchester. It’s something I’m very proud of. When I know someone in LA is from New England, I let them know that I am, too. My parents and sister live in Rye, so I come back for Christmas and other events. Portsmouth is like my second home.

You don’t have to be in LA to get your “Blair Witch” done, or your documentary, or whatever story you have that you feel is compelling. Just learn the tools of the trade: How do I shoot? How do I get the best possible sound? Have at it. If I got on the map as a filmmaker and could make movies at the budget level that I want, I’d move back in a second.

Why ROADance?
I was the head of programming for an Internet company called DEN (Digital Entertainment Network). It was basically the 800-pound gorilla of the streaming media business in the dotcom age. We produced 6,600 hours of content over 14 months. But due to many factors we went out of business. The long and the short of it is that the bankruptcy court trustee for DEN contracted with me to sell a majority of that content.

I was literally in the shower, where I do my best thinking, and I had the idea to take a truck and project the video while I drove around Park City. So in 2002, I did ROADance to market the DEN content.

Did you ever find a buyer?
I met a guy at NAPTE (National Association of Television Program Executives), and according to him, he’s the largest private content owner of anyone in world. Supposedly he lives next to the Kennedys on the Cape. I pitched him and two days later, his father, who’s 82 years old and can’t hear, shows up in a 16-foot cube truck and gets my guys to fill the truck with tapes. This man proceeded to drive it back to Hyannisport in 48 straight hours.

So what’s in store for this year’s festival?
I’ve been so busy with two of my own projects, a mock-documentary called “Saving Stanley” and another feature called “Project Street,” that I haven’t had as much time to really solicit for submissions. But it can be pretty last minute. I’m still confident that more submissions will come through. I have three or four friends whose films are screening, and I’ll probably run their trailers. The other thing that happens is that people go there with a project they just finished, and when they see what a feeding frenzy it is they look for ways to make themselves stand out from the crowd, so they say to me, “Oh my gosh! Can you put my trailer on your truck?”

What are you looking for in a submission?
The ideal is a one-minute silent short, so people can understand it. It’s an emerging genre. Some are promotional; some are pure entertainment. Others are made for specific reasons, almost like documentaries, focusing on 9/11 or important topics. There’s a group that goes around showing shorts like this about animal cruelty. The whole genre of showing films or trailers in public spaces has increased tenfold.
 
So you project films on a huge truck and drive it up and down Park City’s Main Street. Sounds simple enough, but I understand you’ve had some legal trouble?
The bottom line is that I show movies for free and Sundance doesn’t like that. My third year I got shut down, a cop gave me a ticket, then they wrote a bunch of laws into the city code to make what I do illegal. So in 2005 I got a permit to operate in a drugstore parking lot. I still don’t have permit for this year. They want me to have a physical location, but it’s not about the physical location, it’s about driving around the city and adding to the festival atmosphere.

How would you describe the atmosphere at Sundance? What is it that makes you keep going back?
I’ve never seen a bad film there. I’ve never bought a festival pass and gone as dignitary. I go there and whatever I have time to see, I see. There are times when I’ve waited in line and never got a ticket. But that’s part of the fun and it’s when you meet people, usually younger filmmakers and people very interested in genre of film.

Also, the cold weather is a humbling experience. In California you don’t really say things like, “Hey, it’s sunny and 70, great to see you.” But at Sundance, even the biggest Hollywood star might say, “I am so cold, what about you?” I wear a very specific outfit when I’m there, a green jacket and these red- and black-plaid hunting pants I got from the Kittery Trading Post like 25 years ago. So I stand out like sore thumb and some people recognize me! It’s like an immersion back into my New Hampshire life.

Your father was a politician, you studied political science in college, and you had a major role in helping Al Gore start up his new cable channel, Current. How do politics relate to your current endeavors?
If you’re a politician you can never get 100 percent of people to agree with you. You are constantly failing somebody. Everything you do is being criticized or scrutinized. If you make a movie that resonates with an audience, you’ve affected people but you don’t have the enemies. I want to use the technology and tools of filmmaking to affect policy without the negative repercussions. Working for Al Gore really cemented the gratification of a goal to get people to use technology to tell stories from wherever they are.

For more information on the festival, visit www.roadance.com. NEFilm.com published a version of this interview in October 2005.

Erin Trahan writes about film and obsessively programs her DVR. Contact her at erin[at]erintrahan[dot]net.