The Independent Spirit Awards always seemed like a bit of sham to me. Films nominated can be made by studios if they have “original and provocative” content and the budgets can be as a high as $20 million. That’s not Transformers money, but it’s not a pittance. If they really wanted to support independent films, they’d only honor…you know . . . independent films. Still, Film Independent gives out these awards every year and at the 2008 ceremony Juno made out pretty well.
The movie about a high school girl who gets pregnant won the Best Feature prize and also awards for Best Female Lead and Best First Screenplay. Juno wasn’t the only movie to win multiple awards, though. The Savages, which unlike Juno was mostly ignored in the Oscar race, won for Best Male Lead and Best Screenplay. Julian Schnabel won Best Director beating out Gus Van Sant. I didn’t even realize Gus Van Sant released a movie last year. It was about a skateboarder who kills a security guard. Anyone hear of it? Well, it didn’t win.
I do have to give the Independent Spirit Awards credit for honoring two movies that have been lacking much award season hardware. The Lookout won Best First Feature and was probably more deserving of a Best Director nomination than Gus Van Sant’s movie. Once was named Best Foreign Film and is the first time I’ve heard of the movie being honored for anything besides its music, despite being one of the best movies of the year. All of the Awards given out at the Rainn Wilson hosted ceremonies can be found at the Independent Spirit Awards website.
