Utah-reared sisters have big jobs promoting Utah films

If Virginia Pearce was seeking tickets to a Sundance Film Festival screening — say, "Brigsby Bear" — she knows just whom to ask: her older sister, Sarah.

But that request might mean that Sarah Pearce, Sundance's managing director, would ask whether Virginia, the head of the Utah Film Commission, wanted to introduce the Salt Lake City screening on Jan. 27.

That's because Virginia's team is credited with persuading filmmakers to shoot their film about a children's TV show in and around Salt Lake City. Even more remarkable, one of the film's locations is at the Tower Theatre, where "Brigsby Bear" will receive its Salt Lake Sundance screening.

Family access sets apart The Pearce Sisters, as they are collectively known in Utah's close-knit film industry. Each has built a reputation as a hard-working, creative manager while working behind the scenes. Over the years, they started as volunteers at Sundance while working summer gigs.

For Sarah to rise to manage the Sundance Institute and Virginia to lead the state's film promotion efforts might be comparable to industry tales about mailroom clerks promoted to head film studios, says Geralyn Dreyfous, a Utah producer who co-founded the Utah Film Center. "It's amazing, right?" she says, adding they both work hard, get stuff done and don't complain. "And it doesn't hurt that they finish each other's sentences."

The Pearce Sisters' big jobs have missions that dovetail in promoting Utah's film industry, which is receiving a boost this Sundance season thanks to an unprecedented four Utah-made films to be screened at the festival, opening Thursday in Park City.

"People always talk about how friendly our people are," says Virginia Pearce of out-of-town filmmakers who come to work here, adding that they express excitement about the variety of accessible shooting locations.

"Unflappable" is a word applied to both sisters, with Sarah excelling at operational strategy, while Virginia is noted for the way she connects people. Sarah Pearce says she thinks a lot about managing creative people, who have a tendency to rebel against rules.

That sisters are in such big jobs "is uncanny," says Vicki Varela, head of the Utah Office of Tourism, Film and Global Branding. "They're both kind of knitters, I would say. They understand how to bring all the different pieces together into a beautiful whole."

Colleagues say the pair are graceful when their names are, inevitably, confused. "Everybody, oh my gosh, they get them confused all the time," says Varela of the Pearces, who are both tall and fair.

"It's fun to work together because we know each other so well," Virginia Pearce says, as the sisters tell stories of attending Sundance screenings as teens, returning year after year to wait in ever-longer lines at the Trolley Square box office. "We're respectful of each other's place in the world and our privacy," Sarah Pearce says.

Adds John Cooper, the film festival's director: "If I were in a foxhole, I would want Sarah on one side and Virginia on the other, because they could probably both outshoot me, outthink me and get me out of there."

'Digging in when no one is looking' • In an interview, The Pearce Sisters rely on each other to fill in dates in their unusual résumés. The Olympus High graduates were raised in Holladay by parents Ann and Maunsel, whom the sisters credit for their manners and work ethic. (Between the sisters in birth order is brother John, a scientist who lives in Alaska.)

"They've always been very, very close," says their mother, a former longtime member of the Ballet West board, while their father is a retired heart surgeon.

In their personal lives, the sisters and their husbands are also neighbors, having settled in separate houses on family property in Holladay. "They're just salt of the earth" is how Dreyfous describes the Pearces, explaining how two of the most powerful women in Utah film were once her mother-in-law's gardeners. "They have beehives. They grow their own vegetables. They live their own values. They believe in arts and the land."

Robin Marrouche, executive director of Park City's Kimball Art Center, knew Sarah Pearce for years as a friend before they became management colleagues.

As a wedding present, Sarah came over, unannounced, to relandscape Marrouche's garden with a truckload of plants before Marrouche's rehearsal dinner in 2009. "I've long forgotten who gave me which crystal bowl or which gravy terrine, but I can never forget who showed up with their whole heart and their creative spark when it mattered most," Marrouche says. "That's the kind of thoughtful person she is — needing no fanfare and digging in when no one is looking."

After graduating from high school, Virginia, now 48, followed her sister to the University of Oregon. Sarah, now 53, studied psychology and biology, intending to become a physical therapist, while Virginia studied journalism and French. When Virginia studied in southern France for a semester, Sarah joined her to travel through Europe.

After school, Sarah was repeatedly drawn to working in the hospitality industry, in and out of state. As a receptionist at Ballet West, she answered phone calls and cut cheese cubes for receptions. Her stint in sales for the Hotel Utah included giving tours "at the bitter end." Westin transferred her to Vail, and later she moved to Seattle, where she directed operations for a destination marketing firm.

In 1992, she moved back to Utah, where she taught skiing for a while, then ran her gardening business.

As for Virginia, she recalls her stint as a "photo girl" at Alta, developing film in the darkroom under the Sunnyside Lift.

For a time, she worked as a photojournalist for a Boston-area alternative newspaper, and then as a temp employee, she designed presentation graphics for Mitt Romney's firm Bain.

She went on to direct photography centers in Seattle and Maine, overseeing workshops with photographers such as Mary Ellen Mark and Jock Sturges. But after travels in Italy with her then-boyfriend, now husband, Chris Templin, an avid skier, he suggested they move back to Utah, where she began volunteering at the film festival.

In 1999, Virginia was a volunteer overseeing Sundance's volunteer crew, and in a pinch, she called on her older sister to manage the festival's Music Cafe. Sarah says she quickly realized how much she loved the excitement of working at the festival.

For six years, Sarah worked summers as a gardener, hiring Virginia to help out, while every winter the sisters returned to work at Sundance.

Eventually, Sarah was hired full time to oversee the Sundance Institute's move to Park City. At Sundance, she worked with and then eventually married Patrick Hubley, now programming director at the Utah Film Center.

For 13 years, she directed festival operations before she was promoted to oversee the institute. "Sarah came up through the ranks in all different roles," Varela says. "She earned her way."

One important gap in her résumé was the sabbatical she and Hubley took in 2005, traveling around the world, including a two-month stint working at the Dubai International Film Festival.

Virginia worked for Sundance in various jobs, including filmmaking services and overseeing the institute's summer labs, before she moved to Spy Hop in 2010 to direct the youth agency's marketing efforts. She's drawn upon that experience after she was hired in 2014 to head the Utah Film Commission.

The commission, a division of the Governor's Office of Economic Development, markets the state for film and television productions. It oversees the state's motion-picture incentive program and offers a mobile app and directories to help filmmakers scout locations and find local crews.

Steady through the drama • "They are a force," says Hubley of his wife and sister-in-law, adding that his 11-year-old niece, Roxie, seems to be modeling similar strengths. "Sometimes I can't get a word in edgewise."

At Sundance, Sarah is known for being cool under pressure and managing complex logistical arrangements, the kind of projects "where you have to have an air-traffic controller's chip in your brain," Dreyfous says.

Cooper remembers the year when a road crew cut off power outside Park City's Eccles Center Theatre just before the opening screening, and how Sarah jumped in to secure generators and avert disaster.

Sarah Pearce says she is proud of the institute's growth in launching London and Hong Kong film festivals, and their work to improve relations with Park City. That effort included pushing the film festival's dates to later in January, so local resorts would have the capacity to host skiers and families during the Martin Luther King holiday weekend.

One of Virginia Pearce's accomplishments was getting Utah's "Life Elevated" logo included on the film festival's "step and repeat" backdrops before every screening.

She's proud of her team's work to promote the state's digital media and gaming industries, as well as filmmaking, drawing upon what she learned about cross-generational storytelling at Spy Hop.

Insiders credit her aesthetic eye and "boots-on-the ground" knowledge for helping to extend small filming budgets.

Virginia Pearce says she's able to promote Utah from a native's perspective. "I've lived outside of Utah, and when I came back, it was such a different place, with so many thriving subcultures," she says. "That's a story I'm always trying to tell about Utah to filmmakers."

The sisters are good at "managing expectations" of what their organizations can do. "They have to balance a lot of things, living and working in this community, and they do it without making concessions on their principles," Dreyfous says. "They know the values of this community and respect them. They walk that line very rightly and respectfully."

ellenf@sltrib.com

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