During Sundance 2006, as our trusty metabloggers documented, a bevy of films sold before you could even utter Whatchyou talkin' bout, Weinstein? But even after speaking with industry types and filmmakers galore, I still don't think there's a clear method to the madness of what lands deals.

For sure, there are open-and-shut cases. Little Miss Heaven sold because it worked; the much-anticipated and then much-maligned Open Window didn't because it didn't. Other deals draw on past successes — Right at Your Door was snapped up because it smacked vaguely of Blair Witch Project, for example. And then there are deals stemming from outright guesswork loosely masquerading as cynical scientific equations. As in the case of the somewhat hackneyed Wordplay (admittedly, a movie I really dug): Times crossword puzzlers = moneyed, educated leisure class = enough cashish to hire a babysitter + willingness to hit an arthouse flick on a Saturday night = good investment. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

In her Sundance wrap-up, Rotten Tomatoes' Jen Yamato noted that "commercially viable films were being snapped up while the truly independent award-winners remained largely unbought." Too true. It's interesting how the Sundance 2006 awards felt like booty prizes compared to the pie-in-the-sky distribution deals.The word on Main Street was that Sundance juries were actually encouraged to award deserving films that otherwise might lurk permanently under the radar. Hence HBO-sponsored docs The Trials of Darryl Hunt and Thin, though arguably the best entries in their category, were completely overlooked when came time for awards.

The question, though, is do those prizes make a difference? Hustle & Flow, the Memphis hip-hop drama, already had been sold for a then-record $9 million (Little Miss Sunshine sold for $10 million this year) when it scored the 2005 American Dramatic audience prize winner. It went on to make a decent showing in a nationwide release this summer, and this week was nominated for two Oscars. But Flavorpill favorite Forty Shades of Blue (another Memphis drama), which won the Grand Jury Prize that same year, has limped along ever since with scarcely any distribution. So who knows?

One night over at Slamdance headquarters, Four Eyed Monsters's (see picture above) filmmakers Susan Buice and Arin Crumley laid out a super-Slamdance (read: genuinely indie) solution to their distribution problems. Working with the Without A Box team, they are creating their own distribution-on-demand system. If it works, they just may be creating a precedent that could help other worthy filmmakers distribute work not perceived as mainstream-marketable. Here's hoping so.