Milbridge native’s film gets Sundance exposure

The creators of the short film “Scrabble” went to the Sundance Film Festival in hopes of making connections and possibly gaining a distribution deal at the popular Park City, Utah, event.

According to Milbridge native Katie Aselton, who stars in the film with her boyfriend Mark Duplass, they accomplished the first goal and are still actively pursuing the second.

“Scrabble” had the good fortune to be paired with the feature film “Word Wars,” a documentary about the national competitive Scrabble circuit. This earned the short exposure that it wouldn’t have received had it been packaged with other shorts in one of six collections screened at Sundance.

“That brought out people that wouldn’t normally have seen the film,” Aselton said by cell phone as she was preparing to head home to New York City from Sundance. “We met the president of the Sundance Channel, who said he loved the film, and he in turn introduced us to Peter Fonda.”

The film’s co-writers, Mark and his brother Jay Duplass, remain in negotiations with an Internet company which offers films for sale on its Web site, Aselton added.