Low budgets honored at Indie Spirit Awards

It’s comforting to know that an awards show celebrating the 2009 film season can still exist without box office darlings Avatar and Sandra Bullock, as the Film Independent Spirit Awards proved Friday evening.

Since its inception in 1984, the Spirit Awards have been dedicated to showcasing and honoring films made outside the studio system. Championing filmmakers who work on a smaller budget, movies are eligible for nomination if the cost of the completed film is less than $20 million.

For its 25th anniversary, the event relocated from its residence in a Santa Monica, Calif., parking lot adjacent to the beach to a more urban and possibly less aesthetically pleasing location — the top floor of a parking lot at L.A. Live, cheekily called the event deck.

“In celebration of [its] 25th anniversary, we moved from a big tent in a parking lot to a big tent on a car park,” commented British comedian and this year’s host Eddie Izzard in his opening monologue.

The event also commemorated the landmark anniversary by highlighting memorable moments from Spirit Awards history in the form of video clips that were scattered throughout the show. Felicity Huffman, Paul Giamatti and Mickey Rourke’s were among the acceptance speeches featured.

Though the voting ballot lacked the familiar Avatar/Hurt Locker matchup — The Hurt Locker’s 2008 premiere made it eligible for last year’s awards — the void was quickly filled by another heralded film, Precious Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire.

Precious, which had its inaugural screening at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival and won the competition’s top prizes, follows an illiterate pregnant teenager in 1987 Harlem as she navigates a world of discouragement and abuse. After winning big at the Toronto International Film Festival and the NAACP Image Awards, Precious swept Friday’s event, collecting five prizes in total: best film, directing, first screenplay and lead and supporting female performances.

“Kathryn Bigelow’s not here tonight,” said an elated Lee Daniels when accepting the award for best director. “I am.”

While the film’s cast includes television personalities (Mo’Nique and Sherri Shepard) and music divas (Mariah Carey and Lenny Kravitz), Precious is the true success story of the season.

“We won already. Tonight’s victory was unexpected,” Daniels said in a press room interview. “And for the Academy to even acknowledge Precious, that’s a win for us.”

“This year has been a dream for me. A year ago, my life was very, very different,” added screenwriter Geoffrey Fletcher. “I’m so honored that our film was recognized with so many nominations.”

Featuring a virtual unknown in the leading role and financed independently on a shoestring budget of $10 million, Precious entered the 2009 festival circuit sans a distributor. But with tour de force performances and Daniels and Fletcher’s careful handling of a harrowing subject, the film defied expectations and has found audiences in the most unlikely places.

“After a screening at the DGA, an Asian man came up to me and I could tell he had been crying,” said Mo’Nique, who won the supporting female award for her portrayal of Mary Jones, Precious’ monstrous mother. “He said, ‘What I’m about to say to you is going to sound weird, but I am Mary Jones.’ And I was Mary Jones to my brother and my sister.  We both embraced as he cried in my arms — that’s priceless. I knew his life has been forever changed since watching that piece of art.”

Best female lead winner Gabourey “Gabby” Sidibe, effervescent as ever as she clutched her silver statue, echoed Mo’Nique’s emotional sentiments when discussing the filming of the movie’s intensely dramatic scenes.

“While the cameras were rolling, we were very much in the moment. [If] Mary and Precious are in a fight, we were in that fight. But as soon as Mr. Daniels said cut, we loved each other and hugged each other,” Sidibe said. “I’m not sure we understood what we were doing while we were doing it … It really is a testament to the genius of Mr. Daniels.”

There was also little surprise in the best male lead category: Jeff Bridges garnered yet another statue for his performance as the washed-up, whiskey-swigging country musician Bad Blake in Crazy Heart.

Bridges, who stars in the upcoming Tron Legacy, spoke of the difference between big-budget and independent films.

“They’re very similar sometimes, but perhaps the biggest difference is what really drives independent film is that passion of the filmmaker,” Bridges said. “When you have only 100,000 bucks and stick to it and make a film.”

Crazy Heart also picked up the award for best first feature for producers Robert Duvall, T-Bone Burnett, Rob Carliner, Judy Cairo and Scott Cooper, who also wrote and directed the film.

“I always felt even since the first draft that I had the spirit — the soul — of the piece,” Cooper said. “I just was trying to do what Robert Duvall told me to do, which was just tell the truth.”

Lynn Shelton, who won the Acura Someone to Watch Award in 2009, turned up at the podium this year as winner of the John Cassavetes Award for Humpday, a film she wrote and directed. The prize, which is named after the godfather of independent cinema, is given to a movie made under a $500,000 budget.

“The Spirit Awards have absolutely given us a voice,” Shelton said. “We’re not going to be at the Oscars on Sunday so having a forum that is specifically meant to celebrate this particular canon encourages you to pick up a camera and not wait for studio backing.”

The Seattle native is a powerful figure in the Mumblecore movement and has no doubt been one of the most compelling voices in independent cinema since her debut film, 2006’s We Go Way Back. Although Shelton is reluctant to label herself a “woman director,” she implied that Hollywood is still rather judgmental when it comes to women behind the camera.

“I would like for Kathryn to win [the Oscar], but I don’t think it will change things in the industry,” Shelton said.

Praise for Bigelow was also given by An Education director Lone Scherfig, who called Bigelow “an inspiration.”

While hosting organization Film Independent provides an outlet for offbeat and thoughtfully provocative filmmakers, the Spirit Awards have been criticized in recent years for only recognizing the higher end of independent films. This trend continued last Friday, where most of the films awarded were also those in the Oscar race, evident by the wins for Precious and Crazy Heart as well as An Education and Woody Harrelson for The Messenger.

The true spirit of independence, however, lay with those still new to walking the Spirit Awards’ traditionally blue carpet. In an effort to cultivate and encourage fresh talent, Film Independent hands out three cash prizes for up-and-coming moviemakers each year; these prizes include the Acura Someone to Watch Award, the Piaget Producers Award and the Chaz and Roger Ebert Truer than Fiction Award. The farthest removed from Hollywood and the most unrecognizable faces on the carpet, these filmmakers offered the best advice for those ready to dip their feet into the industry.

“Just go out there and do it,” said the Someone to Watch award winner Kyle Patrick Alvarez. “Jump off the cliff.”