How to Spend $1 Million In One Sundance Weekend

With Park City getting into full swing this weekend with the Sundance Film Festival, which started Thursday, there are a plethora of ways to enjoy the area in full VIP fashion. There’s flourishing real estate (homeowners include Tony Danza and Mitt Romney, plus Jeffrey Katzenberg‘s house is on the market for $20.5 million), five-star resorts and an affluent lifestyle, not to mention new openings like West Hollywood’s Rock & Reilly’s pub. Here’s how to spend $1 million dollars over Sundance Film Festival.

Exclusive Sundance Film Festival memberships

 Wealthy supporters can buy a membership to the festival’s Patron Circle, a benefit program that keeps Sundance growing. For $50,000, donors to the Advisor’s Circle (the highest of six benefit levels) receive all Leadership Circle benefits, which includes express tickets, two tickets to An Artist at the Table (the Festival’s premier opening night celebration), on-screen name recognition and personal Sundance assistance. 

Advisor’s Circle level of Patron’s Circle: $50,000

Buy out an entire luxury hotel

Washington School House, a 12-room boutique hotel in an 1880s-era school building, comes equipped with a chic apres-ski lounge, a heated terrace and plenty of privacy. Celebrities like Daniel Radcliffe and Matthew McConaughey have visited the property. It’s conveniently located in town with intimate quarters and a great guest-only restaurant to boot. Over Sundance, the buy-out for the entire hotel starts at $17,465 per night. 

10 nights at Washington School House: $170,465

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Buy art (or a cat) at Silver Queen Fine Art Gallery

The contemporary Silver Queen Fine Art gallery features a collection of unique, hand-picked art from local and international artists. The most successful artist, Nana Lopez, has sold art in six digits, and current work includes Matilda the Water Ox 15 x 9 Edition Size 6 ($140,000). Oddly enough, a client recently offered $200,000 for King Midas, the gallery’s resident cat, who has 1,600 friends on Facebook (including an Academy nominee and some famous musicians). 

Matilda the Water Ox ($140,000) + King Midas ($200,000): $340,000

Ski an entire mountain, all to yourself

While you can’t rent out your own ski lift or slopes for a day, Deer Valley (the most highbrow ski resort with five-star hotels and million-dollar homes) offers 2,000 acres of skiable terrain in which visitors can have the entire slopes to themselves when booking first tracks. Up to eight guests can ski for an hour with a ski host before the resort opens in the morning. 

An hour of private skiing for up to 8 people: $1,500

Become a member of Element Lifestyle

The luxury travel and lifestyle service that’s catered to high-profile clients since 2009 officially went public this past winter, giving anyone with serious cash the opportunity to travel with A-list perks. With their exclusive rolodex of A-list names, they are well connected, and have set up once-in-a-lifetime opportunities, like arranging real penguins in a hotel room for a party and shutting down the Louvre in Paris for a private and intimate dinner for a client. Element Lifestyle has the ability to create unique Sundance experiences that run along the lines of a private dinner with Jean-Georges Vongerichten himself at St. Regis Deer Valley’s J&G restaurant or a private concert on a mountain with Bob Dylan to celebrate a film’s premiere. 

Annual membership: $36,000; Dinner with Jean Georges at St. Regis Deer Valley’s J&G restaurant: $100,000; Private concert with Bob Dylan: $150,000; Total: $286,000

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Rent out the new Rock & Reilly’s Irish Pub for an industry event

The famed Rock & Reilly in West Hollywood’s Sunset Strip opened in Park City on Main Street last month, just in time for Sundance festivities. Celebrated chef Akira Back (who battled Bobby Flay on Iron Chef America) is showcasing his hit yellowtail specialties during Sundance. The bar has a max occupancy of 128 people for a night, which can set you them back from $20,000-$60,000.

Rock N Reilly Irish Pub for a private event: $60,000

Take home an original Fatali Collector Classified

Fatali is one of the most highly acclaimed Southwest photographers, whose signature cibrachome photographs of desert landscape are quite rare. The gallery on Main Street (one of his two galleries in Utah) recently consigned rare, sold-out images, which are now available for collectors. 

Back of Beyond (image size 30″ x 40″ inches) Desert Southwest, Utah 1999 is valued at: $162,000.

Total: 1,069,965