Parker Posey, the doyenne of the Indie World (which is kind of like Greenwich Village’s version of “The King of Pop”) is on the Sundance Grand Jury this year.

I first met Posey in 2002 at Sundance. She was here with Personal Velocity and the IMDb team was here to launch IMDbPro. After our announcement we went to Cisero’s, a below-street-level establishment where a pretty raucous party was going on. Even Roger Ebert, who rarely goes to anything but screenings in Sundance, had been coaxed out.

We were interested in talking to Parker because, a year earlier, IMDb had lost, for the first time, a “Best Entertainment Site” prize at the Webby Awards, and she had been on the jury. Big back in the Internet Bubble days, the Webby Awards had some cache and we wanted to know if we’d lost because of something we had done (or not done), so we were curious about the caucusing and the process.  Parker is lovely in person; sweet and bright. I once knew a girl who had gone to school with her. She claimed that Parker was so beloved, and so special at their high school, that she went around bestowing bright red and pink kiss marks on those who pleased her, whether for a cute outfit or a recent school achievement. They were called “Parker Marks” and this friend claimed that, rather than being deemed some hideous Heathers-like fad of the popular clique that they sound like now, were deemed, by virtually everyone, as something rarefied; a gift from an ethereal being.

We’d been denied our Parker mark, of sorts, at the Webby awards so we approached her. She was with a hulking, behemoth of a guy, dressed in a sweater that, on a normal person would have draped and sagged but on his frame was stretched out like a rugby shirt on a rugby player.

After some back and forth we realized that Parker didn’t actually know anything about our site, the competition that had won, or the web in general. This was even more of a surprise to me since, seven years earlier, her Party Girl had been one of the first movies “streamed,” albeit unsuccessfully, on the web in conjunction with a company that I’d helped found; Film.com. I had just missed the event but the founder and the Point of Presence still regaled me with tales of Posey coming into our small offices, chain-smoking and acting incredibly fidgety.

She wasn’t fidgety with us though. She was just obtuse. The capper, as we drilled into why the jury had chosen another site only to have her continually evade any question we posed, was her counter. “You see,” she said, “I’m on the Web but I’m not really (and here she made air quotes) ‘on’ the web. I have a really small apartment.”

We were left to solve that one ourselves as the party, as parties do, shifted groups and realigned conversations. I found myself talking to the hulking behemoth who, it turned out, was a very nice guy. But he was worried about revealing much and wouldn’t tell me his name. I assumed he was a professional athlete but still don’t know his identity to this day. About this time he and I started to get hit with little bits of rolled-up beer labels and bits of coasters. Parker, whom I’m going to have to assume for her sake had gotten a bit potted in the ensuing time in the bar, was, in a good-natured but insistent way, pelting both me and the behemoth with anything she could find at her end of our table, about seven feet away. After this had gone longer than it really should have I took the bottle cap from my Bud, placed it between my thumb and middle finger, pointed my elbow in her general direction and flick-snapped it at her. The cap sliced through the air and pinged off of her pate. She showed pluck and grit by flinching, raising her arms and batting as if I had an arsenal of caps to Mask-like flick at her. Her behemoth boyfriend, in what I still view as a pretty classy move, stepped in front of me with a booming, “Hey!” “She was throwing crap at us,” I countered, justifying my actions. “Yeah but…” he left it with the impression that further flicking wouldn’t be tolerated and I certainly didn’t push it.

But I’ll be interested to see, after the winners are announced at Sundance this year, whether Parker Posey uses the same judging standards she set for herself in years past. I’d hate for a good film to get passed over because she’s got a really small apartment.