A central tenet of the Film Independent Spirit Awards is “to support a community of artists who embody diversity, innovation and uniqueness of vision.” A timely ambition for sure, and, according to director Barry Jenkins, who attended the 34th annual event held Feb. 23, “the industry is responding.”
For evidence, said the director of If Beale Street Could Talk, take a look at the diversity of films nominated for 2019’s Spirit Awards.
Boots Riley, who scored the Best First Feature accolade for the anti-capitalist Sorry to Bother You, told journalists, “It’s an honor for me, and for other filmmakers with independent vision.” Plus, he said, the awards enable their winners to make more movies, a point also made by Jenkins — whose other awards include Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar and Best Picture Academy Award for 2016’s Moonlight.
Jenkins, Riley, and other Film Independent victors addressed the media in a press lounge beside an elaborate tent constructed on the sands of Santa Monica Beach. The show, along with the Academy Awards and Golden Globes, is one of Los Angeles’s three top annual tributes to cinema artists.
Richard E. Grant, after a long career as a supporting actor, and participating in numerous independent-minded features such as the 1997 adaptation of a George Orwell novel, A Merry War, won his first major prize. He received Best Supporting Male Spirit Award for his portrayal of AIDS-afflicted Jack Hock, in Can You Ever Forgive Me?
Forgive’s co-writer Nicole Holofcener, who co-won the Best Screenplay Spirit Award with Jeff Whitty, gushed, “It’s so wonderful that this movie about two crazy, untrustworthy lonely gay alcoholics got made.”
Grant described the film as “an homage to a generation of men I knew,” and also praised co-star Melissa McCarthy and Marielle Heller, the female director of Forgive, which has been described as the “Odd Couple Midnight Cowboy.
The 92-minute En El Septimo Dia about undocumented Mexican immigrants in Brooklyn, won the John Cassavetes Award honoring the best feature made for under $500,000. “Mexicans reflect the opposite of what’s mentioned about us, the hassles we go through,” said co-star Genoel Ramírez. “We’re not criminals.”
Mexican producer Lindsey Cordero added, “Immigrants are part of the texture of this country. We’re regular people.”
Debra Granik, who launched Jennifer Lawrence’s career with 2010’s Winter’s Bone, won the Bonnie Award for directing 2018’s Leave No Trace. The award bestows a $50,000 grant upon recipients.
Upon winning the Best International Film Spirit Award for the Mexico-set, Spanish language Roma, auteur Alfonso Cuarón opined that cinema is “at a moment of greater diversity that will make this category irrelevant.” Of the attention his Oscar-winning film has received, the director said, “what excites me most is that it opened discussions about domestic workers. The National Domestic Workers Alliance uses Roma as a platform.”
After accepting his Best First Feature Spirit Award, Sorry to Bother You writer/director Boots Riley, declared: “Growing up in Brooklyn I got involved with struggles against the power that profits. We can change things by withholding our labor. That’s a tactic for social change in my movie.”
Morgan Neville won the Best Documentary Spirit Award for Won’t You Be My Neighbor? “Who knew this was the moment to tell this story?” he said. “It’s heartbreaking to think what [Mr. Rogers] preached and the world we’re in nowadays. But he would address root causes and say to never give up hope. We have to live in a neighborhood together and be good neighbors.”
Winning the Best Female Lead Spirit Award for The Wife and accompanied by an adorable doggy date, Glenn Close philosophized, “There are so many invisible people in the world, who do the work that keeps us going. Roma is a perfect example of one of the invisible.”
My evening had a perfect Hollywood ending — I drove from Santa Monica to Emerson College on Sunset Blvd. in Hollywood, where actor Charles Reese presented the one-man show An Evening in History with James Baldwin, presented by the Eboni LA Alumni Association as part of its Black History Month programming. Baldwin, of course, wrote the 1974 novel If Beale Street Could Talk, which Jenkins had adapted for his award-winning film, as the rise of inclusive culture continues.
Ed Rampell is a film historian and critic based in Los Angeles. Rampell is the author of Progressive Hollywood, A People’s Film History of the United States and he co-authored The Hawaii Movie and Television Book, now in its third edition. This first appeared at Progressive.org.
From The Progressive Populist, April 1, 2019
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