Taking place on the day before the Oscars, the Independent Spirit Awards were originally founded to honour American films which were financed and made outside the traditional Hollywood studio system. Now, in their 15th year, they have grown, like the Sundance Film Festival, from relative obscurity into a major media and marketing event. Of course, the movie business is a lot different now than it was 15 years ago, and the boundaries between Independent and Hollywood have blurred considerably.
With studios such as Miramax, New Line and the new USA Films (A recent merger of October and Gramercy) now considered "Mini Majors", the question of "what is independent and what does it all mean?" is becoming more and more difficult to answer. The Spirit Awards have recognised this problem and, four years ago, they decided to open the awards to all studios both major and minor, choosing to honour films with the "spirit" of independence: films made on a small budget with challenging, confrontational and thought-provoking themes.
Three of this year's nominated films were, in fact, from major Hollywood studios: Doug Liman's Go (Columbia); David Lynch's The Straight Story (Disney); and Alexander Payne's Election, which - although originally financed by the fledgling MTV Films - was distributed by Paramount. But where do you draw the line? By these standards shouldn't New Line's Magnolia or, for that matter, Dreamworks's American Beauty also have been eligible?
But let's not quibble. The Spirits are a great excuse for Hollywood to throw yet another awards party and also to honour great performances that have been overlooked by the Academy. This year's major Oscar oversight, Reese Witherspoon, as the voraciously ambitious Tracy Flick in Election was nominated in the Best Actress category.
Held in a giant tent erected on the beach in Santa Monica, the Spirits have a spontaneity and laid-back feeling that is the antithesis of Oscar night. Saturday afternoon was one of those glorious Southern California spring days in which any star can look his or her best. So there I was, rubbing shoulders with the likes of Diane Lane, Rosanna Arquette, Cameron Diaz, Gina Gershon, Julianne Moore, Jeff Bridges, Harvey Keitel, Quentin Tarantino and Terence Stamp.
The most glamorous entrance award had to go to Penelope Cruz who arrived on the arm of her director Pedro Almodovar (the victim of the evening's only real surprise when All About My Mother lost out to Tom Tykwer's Run Lola Run as the Best Foreign Language Film).
Hosted by Jennifer Tilly, the ceremony proceeded swiftly, the only disappointment being the "keynote speaker", indie producer James Schamus whose seemingly never-ending tally of indie facts and figures was no match for last year's hilarious trip down memory lane by director John Waters. The voting members got the awards exactly right: the big winner was Alexander Payne's Election, which took home Best Film, Best Director and Best Screenplay.
A frail-looking Richard Farmsworth took home the Best Actor award for his lawnmower journey in The Straight Story. Hilary Swank and Chloe Sevigny were named Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress respectively, for their sublime work in director Kimberly Pierce's Boys Don't Cry, The Blair Witch Project (arguably the most profitable film of all time) took home the award for Best First Screenplay and Best First Feature made for over $5 million.
At the press Q&A, Being John Malkovich writer Charlie Kaufman thanked John Malkovich for his sensational portrayal of John Malkovich and said that there was no celebrity whose portal he would be averse to entering, not even Ozzy Ozbourne's. Now that's independent spirit.
