Sundance attendees feeling the after-effects

This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2012, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.

On his return from the Sundance Film Festival, the usually healthy Cricket experienced a whopping attack of the flu.

Turns out he's not alone. Apparently, a lot of people attending Sundance got hit with a bug of one form or another.

The New York Times' Michael Cieply and Brooks Barnes, writing in the paper's "Carpetbagger" blog, report anecdotal evidence from festivalgoers "buzzing about a severe intestinal complaint that has laid low a number of them."

The Times' writers count at least six publicists as coming down with illness — three of them severely enough to go to the hospital.

That's not counting the high-profile illnesses: Tracy Morgan's altitude-related collapse, Julie Delpy's migraine, and Parker Posey's cancellation of her Awards Ceremony emcee gig. And a top Sundance official told me of suffering a similar illness by festival's end.

A few sniffles after Sundance aren't uncommon. As Cieply and Brooks write, "Sundance is typically a petri dish. Every year a cluster of people return to Hollywood with colds due to lack of sleep (partying is one reason but so are midnight screenings) and jammed festival shuttles, where one person sneezes and 10 people get spritzed."

So, did anybody else come down with a case of the creeping crud while at Sundance? Add your scientific data in the comments below.