The movie industry's alternative awards will take place Saturday afternoon in a tent at the beach in Santa Monica--a far cry from the chandeliers, TV cameras and black-tie clad celebrities at the Los Angeles Music Center where Monday's Academy Awards will be held.
The Independent Spirit Awards are usually the most irreverent of the awards season, where motorcycle arrivals have sometimes been as common as limousines, and the best picture nominees are some of 1992's most daring and offbeat: "Bad Lieutenant," "Gas Food Lodging," "Mississippi Masala," "One False Move" and "The Player." In addition, the Spirit foreign film nominees include "The Crying Game" and "Howards End."
There has been talk that this year's list of Academy Awards nominees, which includes a number of independent films, may have stolen some of the usual thunder from the Spirit Awards. Among the Oscar-nominated films are the non-studio releases of "Howards End," "The Crying Game," "Passion Fish" and "The Player"--all independently made.
"Yes, the lines are blurring," said Dawn Hudson, the executive director of the Independent Feature Project/West, the sponsor of the Spirit Awards. "It just shows that Hollywood has to work with independents to get the talented filmmakers who have their own voices and points of view."
The organization's chairman, Jonathan Wacks, said the purpose of the Spirit Awards is to "celebrate films that are eccentric and confrontational. Films . . . that subvert the prevailing cultural and aesthetic conventions. That's not what the Academy Awards are about." The reason why the two awards programs have so many overlapping nominees, as Wacks sees it, is: "Every now and then an independent film is so powerful that the academy (of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences) can't ignore it.
"I don't see the academy recognizing an independent film as a validation. If you look at the Academy Awards, a film usually has to be critically and commercially successful," Wacks said. "Those factors are not considered for Spirit Awards."
Wacks noted that such independent producers as Merchant Ivory (the makers of "Howards End") and Martin Scorsese now have deals with major studio-distributors. "But the IFP still concentrates on those filmmakers who work outside that system."
"What the Oscars have highlighted this year," said Hudson, "is only the tip of the iceberg" in terms of independent film product.
