A bawdy CAA party at Sundance shocks guests, including clients

Creative Artists Agency's party at the Sundance Film Festival, featuring scantily clad performers and sex toys, provokes a public relations backlash.

By Chris Lee and John Horn, Los Angeles Times

2:45 p.m.|January 24, 2013

The capacity-filled CAA party, held on Park City's Main Street in the Claim Jumper restaurant, coincided with two other major events thrown by its main Hollywood rivals down the block: William Morris Endeavor and United Talent Agency.

"I thought it would be a tamer burlesque show integrating live art," Fogle said. "Instead, it was like going down the rabbit hole. It was like an acid trip the whole night."

Indeed, witnesses described an NC-17 mash-up of Cirque du Soleil and the orgy scene from Stanley Kubrick's "Eyes Wide Shut." Some 500 guests included an industry crowd of film executives, festival attendees and such marquee CAA clients as Nicole Kidman, Alexander Skarsgard, Evan Rachel Wood and Danny McBride as well as movie mogul Harvey Weinstein.

One attendee said she was particularly put off by the man in a rabbit costume on stilts.

"He was very creepy, walking very slowly," recalled party-goer Stephanie Cregger. "He was wearing a strap-on sex toy and a woman dressed as Alice in Wonderland was playing with him."

CAA client and Academy Award-winning screenwriter Nat Faxon said it was hard to talk about his new movie, "The Way, Way Back," while two women simulated a sex act on a bed nearby.

"It was difficult," said Faxon, "to have a conversation about my movie while that was going on right next to you."

chris.lee@latimes.com

john.horn@latimes.com