Tonight, the night before the Oscars, as has been the custom for the past 18 years on the night before the Oscars, were the IFP Independent Spirit Awards which honor the year’s best in independent film. Lost in Translation was the big winner, as expected, but other worthy films were honored as well. The IFP (Independent Feature Project) is a national organization that provides assistant and support to indie filmmakers. I consider myself very fortunate to be a member of this fantastic organization. The prerequisites are quite demanding: you have to give them $100 (tax deductible) every year, and then … oh right … there is no “and then.” That’s pretty much it.
The first film to win Best Feature was Martin Scorsese’s After Hours in 1986. I attended the Spirit Awards in 1992 while I was still at UCLA . Just six years old, they weren’t a big deal outside the film community. The ceremony was held under a circus tent covering the parking lot at Raleigh Studios in L.A. It was a really cool, low-key, informal event, hosted by Buck Henry with no TV coverage.
They’ve grown a lot in the last 12 years, receiving more media coverage, a much bigger ceremony on the beach in Santa Monica – although still under a circus tent – a live broadcast on IFC, and more “show” rather than simple “ceremony,” including fun but cheesy sing-alongs to preview the five Best Feature nominees. This year, for the first time, there will even be a red carpet pre-show hosted by Carson from Queer Eye for the Straight Guy airing before an edited rebroadcast on the more mainstream cable channel, Bravo. I haven’t been in this setting, but I guarantee it doesn’t have the quaint feel of the old Spirits.
Still, one reason I maintain my IFP membership is because it allows me to vote for the Spirit Awards. The nominations are selected by a panel put together each year by the IFP board, generally including filmmakers and critics. Personally, I often think the nominations have major flaws, but they only let us vote on the final awards. For instance, this year, I loved The Secret Lives of Dentists, but the film’s only nomination went to Hope Davis, and personally, I would have given it a Best Feature nomination over either Shattered Glass or Raising Victor Vargas, both very good films.
The voting for the Spirit Awards does not occur through a straight-ahead vote. Instead, it’s based on weighted ranking averages in order to not put films not as many people may have seen at a disadvantage. In every category, one is asked to rank the films from 1 to 5 (1 being the best), and if a voter hasn’t seen a movie he/she isn’t supposed to give a ranking to that film. So with that in mind, here’s my little review of the winners:
- Best Feature: Lost in Translation was the winner, but it was #2 on my list. Really, it was a toss-up, but I just thought American Splendor was just a wee bit better. Still, I congratulate the producer Ross Katz, who has already created quite a resume in a short time (and is also a really nice guy), on what is still a much-deserved prize.
- Best Director: Sofia Coppola won, but again, I ranked her #2 after the husband-wife directing team of Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini for American Splendor. Again, it’s virtually a toss-up to me, but I thought the way Berman and Pulcini integrated documentary interview elements involving the real people with bits of animation and the main scripted elements of the movie was just magnificent.
- Best First Feature: This category often holds some of the weaker nominations, but this year it was particularly strong. The award goes to both the director and producer, and Monster was the big winner, giving director Patty Jenkins the prize. I ranked Monster #1 ahead of House of Sand and Fog and Thirteen. Two other unreleased films — Bomb the System and Quattro Noza — rounded out the category, and while the former was OK, I really didn’t like the latter, a film which had some fairly cool digital cinematography of high-speed illegal street racing, but nothing else.
- John Cassavetes Award: Named after the late indie-pioneer, this award is given to the writer, director and producer of films made for under $500,000. The Station Agent sure as hell doesn’t look like a half-million-dollar movie, and I’m very happy that my vote helped give writer-director Thomas McCarthy the award. Only Peter Hedges’s Pieces of April was really any competition. Better Luck Tomorrow, Anne B. Real and Virgin each had their merits, but The Station Agent was by far the best in the field.
- Best Screenplay: Sofia Coppola won, and deservedly so. For me, the screenplay was the strength of Lost in Translation, and this time I gave Coppola my vote over the Berman-Pulcini screenplay for American Splendor.
- Best First Screenplay: Thomas McCarthy won for his script for The Station Agent, but he was my #2 pick in this category. Writer-director Peter Sollett and his co-writer Eva Vives script for the wonderful Raising Victor Vargas was my choice. The film is a wonderful coming-of-age teenage romantic comedy, but not like most of the crap made with the latest Disney Channel starlet using a write-by-numbers script.
- Best Female Lead: There is regularly cross-over between the Oscar and Spirit acting nominees, and occasionally one person wins both. This year, it looks like that will happen again, and Charlize Theron deserves it. She was brilliant in Monster, and while all the performances in this category were strong, there was never a contest who would get my #1.
- Best Male Lead: Don’t put money on this, but even with the Oscar/Spirit crossover mentioned above, I don’t believe two lead winners have ever been the same. This year may change that. Bill Murray’s phenomenal turn in Lost in Translation brought him the spirit and gives him a good shot at winning the Oscar tomorrow. He got my vote here, but this was one of the more difficult categories for me. Paul Giamatti was a very close second for me due to his amazing transformation into Harvey Pekar in American Splendor. Ben Kingsley was extremely powerful in House of Sand and Fog, and Peter Dinklage was just as great in a very elegant and subtle performance in The Station Agent.
- Best Supporting Female: Shohreh Aghdashloo is yet another actor who could take home an Oscar tomorrow night (although it seems fairly certain that prize will go to Renee Zellwegger), and tonight she did get the Spirit for her phenomenal and complex performance in House of Sand and Fog, and she was a close second in my rankings. I gave my vote to Hope Davis for her role in The Secret Lives of Dentists both because she was great, but also to help honor the film. This was also a tough category with two always-magnificent actresses — Patricia Clarkson and Frances McDormand — and a very talented young girl from In America named Sarah Bolger rounding out the field.
- Best Supporting Male: OK, so this was one of two categories that kind of pissed me off. I loved In America, even crying at the end which is something I never do, and while Djimon Hounsou is also nominated for an Oscar, I did not fall in love with his performance. In fact, he was my #5 choice in this category. How this award didn’t go to Judah Friedlander for his hilarious and dead-on mimicry of Harvey Pekar’s nerdy best friend Toby in American Splendor. He stole the movie, but this award was stolen from him.
- Best Debut Performance: Here’s the other category where my co-voters missed the boat. Thirteen is an interesting movie with some great things in it (especially the performances by Evan Rachel Wood and Holly Hunter, neither of whom were nominated), but sorry … Nikki Reed‘s performance was not one of them. Her flat delivery was at best OK and at worst distracting. She always sounded like she was reading her lines, which would be even worse than normal in her case since the big story about this film was that she had co-written it based on her own experience. Reed received my #5 ranking too, and how she beat out Victor Rasuk and Judy Marte who played the central characters of Raising Victor Vargas with such aplomb is beyond me, and neither of them were even my top choice. Anna Kendrick got my vote for her scene-stealing, show-stopping performance as an Eve Harrington type at a musical theatre summer camp in the very fun Camp.
- Best Cinematography: Declan Quinn won for his work on In America, and he did do a beautiful job. Still, I cast my vote for Harris Savides phenomenal, mostly-handheld camerawork in Gus Van Sant’s Columbine-inspired drama Elephant. I didn’t love the movie – in fact, I ultimately found it quite frustrating – but the cinematography is fantastic. Actually, In America was my third choice because my #2 went to M. David Mullen for his work on Northfork. The movie often bored me to near-death, but damn if it didn’t look great.
- Best Foreign Film: OK, this one was a bit disappointing to me too. Whale Rider is a great film. If you haven’t seen it, rent it … you won’t be sorry. But it rated third out of the four films I saw in this category. (Unfortunately, I missed Lilya 4-Ever, but I’ve heard it’s great.) If you read my “Best of …” list, you’ll know how much I loved City of God, and to me, the two aren’t even in the same class. On every level – visually, the sophistication of the story and storytelling, the soundtrack, even the performances — City of God is a superior film. I really don’t want to take anything away from Whale Rider, but this just isn’t right. For that matter, the wonderfully inventive (and slightly bizarre) French-Canadian animated The Triplets of Belleville was also nominated in this category, and it was my #2.
- Best Documentary: Last, but most definitely not least, documentaries have become more popular than ever, and this was a competitive category as well. The award went to Errol Morris for his extraordinary documentary The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara, and if I had it my way, I’d make sure that this film was mandatory viewing for everyone of voting age in the country. My #2 ranking went to the fascinating My Architect: A Son’s Journey which is still in some theatres around the country and definitely worth seeing. It concerns the life and career of noted architect Louis Kahn, directed by his son Nathaniel Kahn. This is not simply an adoring son honoring his father, however. Kahn led a very interesting life, fathering three children from three different women (Nathaniel was the youngest), all while remaining married to the mother of his eldest. They all knew of and lived within a few miles of each other, and the kids would see their father from time-to-time, but the film is Nathaniel’s voyage of discovery about the man he never really knew; a man who inspired and is a role model to many of today’s greatest architects including Frank Gehry, I.M. Pei and Philip Johnson.
Out of Focus 